Rhythmic Building Blocks for Elementary Music

55 - Infinite Possibilities with Rhythmic Building Blocks

This is a little different from normal episode outlines -

This is a topic a really enjoy. It’s one small piece of the pedagogy process that opened up a lot of doors for me when I learned about it. I thought it would be nice to talk through.

As we’re wrapping up the year, this can be a nice avenue to explore for the first time, or to revisit if it’s already a well-loved favorite for your students.

We’ll talk about what rhythmic building blocks are,

What are Rhythmic Building Blocks?

  • Short fragments of rhythm

  • 2-beats (normally)

Constructing Rhythmic Building Blocks:

  • How are they created?

  • Where do they come from?

  • “Elemental” speech patterns

  • What is a natural rhythm to derive from the text? What is a natural rhythmic extension of the meter?

Traditional Building Blocks:

  • Ta ta

  • Ta-di ta

  • Ta-di ta-di

  • Ta ta-di

  • Ta (rest)

  • Elementaria (Keetman): monkey, elephant, alligator, anteater, snake

“Untraditional” Building Blocks

  • Keetman’s building blocks are useful for

    • Simple duple meter

    • A beat, a beat subdivision, a beat without a sound

  • What about the other durations we work with?

  • As the meter changes and the rhythmic set of our repertoire changes, our naturally-derived speech patterns also naturally change

  • Planning Binder 3rd Grade taka-di - Bubblegum Bubblegum

    • Bubblegum bubblegum (taka-di ta-di)

    • How many pieces (ta-dimi ta-di)

    • Sticky sticky bubblegum (takadimi taka-di)

    • So sticky (ta ta-di)

    • Pop! (ta rest)

  • Purposeful Pathways, book 3, compound meter - Birds of a Feather, p. 58

Notation and Building Blocks

  • Before notation is introduced:

    • Thematic text and an image

    • Thematic text and graphic notation

  • After standardized Western notation:

    • Thematic text and stick notation

    • Rhythm syllables and stick notation

    • Stick notation

  • Already with these options, our brains can shoot off several different directions.

  • What’s the purpose of the activity?

  • What will move students from the known to the unknown?

  • What information do we get from letting students choose their building blocks?

How might we use them?

We could break this category down by several different categories

  • Medium: Movement, speech, singing, playing instruments

  • Skill: Improvisation, arranging, sight reading, etc.

  • Pedagogy: Imitate, explore, label, create

For our purposes, because this is specifically a Schulwerk term we’ll explore it with that lens.

Imitate

  • I speak a pattern, you speak it back

  • I clap a pattern, you clap it back

  • I speak and clap a pattern while stepping a steady beat, then pause and let you speak and move as the echo

  • I speak a pattern while tiptoeing, stepping, or sliding to the rhythm, you tiptoe, step, or slide the echo

  • I speak a pattern with thematic movement, you echo with movement and speech

  • I play a pattern on an unpitched percussion instrument, you echo

  • I play a pattern on a barred instrument or recorder (single pitch) and you echo

  • I play a pattern on a barred instrument or recorder using two pitches and you echo

Explore

  • Students create their own movements for each card

    • (This is the length of the two steady beats, the key is not to make the movements too elaborate)

  • Arrange for body percussion as a class or with a partner

  • I give you a pattern with body percussion, you echo the same rhythm but improvise changes to the body percussion

  • We use the same pattern on the board but each student group comes up with different dynamic interpretations

  • I play a combination (single pitch), you play a the same pattern with an improvised toneset

    • This is improvisation, but the pedagogical focus here is rhythm, not pitch. The rhythm stays the same.

Label

  • I speak a rhythm combination with thematic text, you echo on rhythm syllables

Create

  • I speak a rhythm combination, you improvise a different rhythm back with speech

  • I clap a rhythm combination, you clap a different improvised combination back

  • In a small group, students arrange cards to create a B section to the known song. Students in their group choose if they’ll perform their B section with speech, body percussion, movement, or a combination.

  • In a small group, students create a rhythm combination and assign a body percussion combination to their order. The teacher or a student leader walks around the room as the class sings the main song. When the song stops, the group the teacher is in front of performs their rhythm for the class.

  • In a small group, students arrange cards to create a B section to the known song. Students arrange their rhythms for barred instruments or recorder using a known toneset, then write down their melody in graphic notation, solfege syllables, or the 5-line staff

Kodaly Pedagogy and Rhythmic Building Blocks

There are equally endless possibilities for Kodaly-inspired educators. We’ll only touch on a few here, but we can use our imaginations to think of options.

Many Kodaly educators break down the practice phase of learning into different areas of focus:

  • Reading / Writing

  • Partwork

  • Inner hearing

  • Memory

  • Form

  • Improvisation

Logistics the classroom:

My highest recommendation is that this happens within the context of repertoire, not as an isolated exercise.

Modeling appropriate options for exploration and creation is key. Start with the whole class first, then break into small groups.

Scaffold options - we don’t jump straight to thirteen options with movement and instruments. Scaffold the choices and model each step.

I could go on and on about all the possible ways to think about and use rhythmic building blocks. I have a whole list of other considerations and learning pathways we didn’t get to.

Using Repertoire that Isn’t Connected to a Rhythmic or Melodic Concept

Listen on

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Season 1 | Episode 54

Show Notes

How often do you integrate other repertoire that is not just focused on preparing and practicing specific melodic or rhythmic concepts? Is it just when preparing for Christmas or Spring concerts?

54 - How Often Should We Use Rep that's not Connected to Rhythmic or Melodic Teaching?
Victoria Boler
 
 

What goes into learning rhythmic and melodic concepts?

What is the role of incidental learning?

How are these decisions impacted by scheduling?

Integrate other repertoire often as you want, and as often as you see it serving your students in the long run.

Incidental & Deliberate Learning Experiences

When we have deliberate learning experiences, we have a clear objective, we have an activity that meets the objective, and we have an assessment to make sure the objective was met.

Incidental learning is like allllll the learning that takes place around the target objective. Students are always learning. Students are always watching and listening.

Incidental learning creates the backdrop for aural awareness that students use later, especially in audiation, or making predictions. In audiation, students collect musical patterns, they hold on to them, and then use them as predictions on new situations. We need the patterns to exist authentically before students can use them later.

In my opinion, a convenient parallel is with language acquisition. Students hear and engage with language outside of the sight words they learn at school. The sight word objective still stays. But movies, TV, conversations with friends, books they’re read….. all these things play into an aural landscape of language.

This is a field of study I haven’t jumped into yet. Lucy Green and Ruth Wright have done work on a related field of informal music education.

What goes into learning rhythmic and melodic concepts?

Sometimes we talk about learning a rhythmic or melodic concept and we imagine that means primarily reading the notation. That’s true in some situations - for some teachers, that’s what they care about.

However, there’s another way to approach learning that’s much more holistic. When we prepare and practice musical concepts, we are engaging in singing, speaking, playing, moving, partwork, improvisation, arranging, aural identification, community collaboration, critical thinking……

Preparing and practicing involve so so so so so much more than figuring out the number of sounds on a beat and learning how to read it in standard notation. That’s part of it. But that’s the tip of the iceberg.

If we were learning how to read and write a symbol primarily, we would probably need a lot of additional music to round out our musical skills beyond reading.

Some people do divide the curriculum into isolated units on musical elements - like a unit on form, a unit on dynamics, etc. - I’ve created these lessons in independent contract work. And at the end of the day, these can be joyful, active music rooms where learning takes place.

Interdependent Elements

When we present music authentically, in a context, there’s no way to separate rhythm from melody from form from expression. We’re always using repertoire not connected strictly to the objective because that’s how repertoire works. The way to get away from interconnected elements and move toward isolated elements is to move to something like a sight-reading drill.

Rhythmic Objective, Melodic Unknown. Melodic Objective, Rhythmic Unknown.

Because there’s no way to isolate elements

Betty Larkin

Sulla Rulla

One, Two, Three, Four, Five

When Can I See You Again?

“Just for Fun” as a Curricular Objective

Very often, we’re using material that isn’t connected to a rhythmic or melodic learning objective. This is especially true for younger grades, but it applies to older grades as well. Warm up routines, change of page sections, or closing routines are all great places for this.

What happens after the fun activity?

Basically every day there’s something used that isn’t connected to a specific learning objective.

Sometimes it’s time to shake things up. Sometimes we feel like we’re in a rut and for our own sake, it’s time to try something different. Especially at the end of the year, using more folk dances, children’s literature, or other “one-off” units can be like a breath of fresh air.

Isolated listening activities, movement activities, instruments, etc.

These to me are like the garnish on top of the dish that brings the whole thing together. But if you were just to hand someone a fist full of cilantro and some salt, they might not feel happy about the meal as a whole.

An important point: listening activities and movement are absolutely a crucial part of what I consider to be a well-rounded curriculum. But again, these are movement activities and listening activities that are naturally embedded.

Scheduling Considerations

How often do we see students?

If we have a schedule where we see students several times a week, we might make a different curricular choice than someone who sees their students once every eight school days, or once a week for one trimester out of the year.

What vocabulary and learning experiences will best equip students to engage in music?

Concerts, Repertoire, and Curriculum

In general, my preference is for the concert to be an authentic showcase of what’s happing inside the classroom. My preference is not for learning to happen in a play-based, active way, and then have learning paused while we learn songs that are divorced from the musical learning. My preference is for the public-facing storefront to be reflective of what’s going on inside the store.

How Often will we Include Repertoire Not Connected to a Rhythmic and Melodic Concept?

It depends on what our rhythmic and melodic work look like.

As often as you want, and as often as you see it serving your students in the long run.

Extending a Short Piece for a Concert

Listen on

Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify

Season 1 | Episode 53

Show Notes

I am working on planning a recorder concert. My district requires that fourth graders have a final performance which I am super excited about. I just don’t really know where to start when planning. Recorder tunes are so short and I am not sure how to plan an engaging show full of that.

Extending a Short Piece for a Concert
Victoria Boler
 
 

Creative Choice:

Improvisation:

  • 16 beats

  • Same rhythm, improvised melody

Form & Texture:

Ostinati:

  • Add rhythmic ostinati

  • Transferring rhythmic ostinati to pitch

Round

Rondo

AABB

ABA

Media:

Body percussion

Pitched percussion

Unpitched percussion

Singing

Student Perspective:

Scripts “Listen for this”

This is what our notation looks like, and this is how to read it.

Performance Road Map

On music notation, on a whiteboard in the back, on the floor of the stage, etc.