Rocky Mountain: Perfect for Pentatonic
In the last blog post (catch-up here), we talked about teaching more complex rhythms: ti-tika and tika-ti. And before that, I’ve written a few blog posts about more teaching more complex rhythms. I feel like it’s now time to look at solfa again – YAY SOLFA!
Whether you’re a classroom teacher, visiting music teacher or 1:1 instrumental teacher, this blog will give you tips and ideas for experiencing voice types in a Kodály inspired way.
This is an excerpt from my Solfa from Scratch Course which is available to all Doremi members (try it for 14 days for £1 here). Not only is it great for musicians who want to improve their own musicianship, but it’s great for ideas to teach Kodály musicianship to our students!
We’ll be using this song to:
- Practice the rhythms ta, titi and ta rest
- Practice do, mi, so and la
- Discover a new note! Re
Introduce Rocky Mountain and the Actions
Listen to my song:
Next Step: Recap and Ostinato
In the next lesson, recap the song and add something to make it more complex and keep them focused:
Do you remember this song?
Shall we sing it together? (all sing it together)
Let’s do it with the actions. (all sing again with the actions)
Now let’s sing it again but with an ostinato:
Say and clap this rhythm:
Titi ta titi ta
Let’s keep the clapping ostinato going while we sing Rocky Mountain.
Practice this a few times with your students before going on to the next step.
Solfa Time!
Let’s sing the rhythm names:
titi titi titi titi titi titi titi ta (sh)
titi titi titi titi titi titi titi ta (sh)
p.s. I’ve written (sh) to show where the rest is but you might prefer to be silent on the rests since really there are no sounds on the beat if there’s a rest.
There are some question marks on my picture above… what do you think the pitch of the last note and first notes are? (at this point our students aren’t likely to know and it gives us another opportunity to repeat the song so they can listen)
Let’s sing it again (with rhythms)
(Sings) Finished here and started here. (sing this to highlight that the first and last note are the same).
They’re both do!
What do you think the last note of the first phrase is?
Let’s sing it again (with rhythms)
Sing it again but pause at the end of the first phrase this time. If they need a hint, sing the triad from do on a “lu” sound.
It’s so!
If this is the last note of the first phrase, what the first note of the second phrase?
Is it higher or lower than so?
Higher!
What is it? (la)
At this point our student will have identified:
do so la
They’ll be in a great position to fill in the gaps, which leads me onto…
Three for one: Repeating Bars
We have some repeating bars, so I’ve colour coded them to show the repeats. Let’s work out the solfa for the yellow bars. We only have to work out the solfa for one bar and we get two for free!
Sing it in a “lu” sound so you don’t need to think about rhythm names.
Sing it again with the do at the beginning and the so at the end, see if you can work out the rest of the solfa for one of those bars.
How many dos at the beginning? (3)
Followed by…. mi!
So:
Do do do mi do do do mi
do do do mi so
Now the next phrase…
It starts on la.
Let’s point the shape of the pitch by pointing in the air.
What do you notice? (it’s going down)
Are there any repeating notes?
So what do you think it is?
La so mi do
Let’s sing all of the first phrase, the green bars and then I’ll ask you what you think the first note of the purple bar is.
(teacher sings up to the first note of the purple bar)
What do you think it is?
Mi
New Note: Re
How many different pitches are there in the purple section?
(Teacher repeats the purple section)
3!
So we have three pitches, it starts on mi and finishes on do! So we need a new pitch!
Which titi is the new note on?
(the second titi)
We’re not going to name the new note yet, we’ll try to describe it first…
What can you tell me about the new note?
Let’s compare it to mi…
Is it higher or lower than mi?
(Lower than mi)
Let’s compare it to do…
Is it higher or lower than do?
(Higher than do)
So it’s between mi an do.. It’s a step in between mi and do.
Here is its name and the handsign:
Let’s sing the whole thing in solfa:
Do do do mi Do do do mi
Do do do mi so
La so mi do la so mi do
mi mi re re do
Responses