Winter, Holiday and Christmas Repertoire
The most frustrating thing about Christmas songs is being suddenly asked to teach repertoire with concepts our students haven’t learnt yet; Jingle Bells with dotted rhythms anyone? And if they have a version that has changed the dotted rhythm, we have more problems because they know the sound of the dotted rhythm version! Just before Christmas is not the time to learn new concepts just because it happens to be in a Christmas song.
I’m Bound Away: A Shanty Great for Tam-ti
As well as being a beautiful sea shanty, it’s excellent for teaching the dotted crotchet and quaver rhythm: tam-ti. Below I’ll give you ideas for
Lavender’s Blue
We’re going to explore an English folk song and use it to help our students discover new elements.
Rocky Mountain: Perfect for Pentatonic
We’ll be using Rocky Mountain to:
• Practice the rhythms ta, titi and ta rest
• Practice do, mi, so and la
• Discover a new note! Re
Step Back Baby: Teaching ti-tika and tika-ti
My last few blog posts have been about more complicated rhythms and how we can guide our students to discover them using a Kodály inspired approach. The most important element of the Kodály approach is singing, using our voice. It really comes into it’s own with the rhythm that appears in the sone Step Back Baby.
Microsteps to Syncopa: as easy as uno, dos, tres, cuatro…
Microsteps to Syncopa: as easy as uno, dos, tres, cuatro…
Going beyond tika-tika: which rhythms to teach next?
I decided to write my next blog about which complex rhythms you could introduce after tika-tika. Of course, alongside preparing and presenting the next rhythm, our students need to practice tika-tika.
Roads to new rhythms: a Kodály approach to teaching tika-tika
In this blog I’ll tell you how I use this song and others to introduce more complex rhythms and why I think Down the Road, in the way I teach it, is such a great song for presenting one particular complex rhythm…
Going lo… teaching low so and la
I think Hi Lo Chikalo is great for presenting low so and low la. Below, I’ll show you how I do it and some ideas for practising low so and la with other songs.