Music Monday - Using song cues for learning intervals.

I’m sure that we have all used song cues in the learning and teaching of musical intervals (the difference in pitch between two sounds). 

An understanding of intervals is crucial to our understanding of the shape of music, the structure of scales and chords and intune singing. Understanding intervals is also pretty important for passing music theory exams!

My earliest memory of using song cues was thinking the opening phrase of “My bonny lies over the ocean” to identify a major 6th  as a child preparing for the aural component of AMEB piano exams.

During my teaching career I have created lists of song cues and used other teachers’ lists and suggestions too.

Recently a community of singing teachers I am part of was discussing the challenges of singing a perfect 4th. One member posted the following link as a comprehensive list of song cues for intervals. It was certainly one of the most comprehensive I had come across and so I share it with you. There seems to be a song for everyone on this list.

https://www.earmaster.com/products/free-tools/interval-song-chart-generator.html

Happy music teaching!

Music Monday - Vale Stephen Sondheim, 22 March 1930- 26 November 2021

In the days following Sondheim’s sudden death at age 91, the internet has been saturated with an outpouring of reaction to the loss of the ‘Shakespeare of Music Theatre’, arguably the greatest writer of the form in the 20th century. In the past few days, singers, actors, teachers, writers, directors, artists and journalists have articulated tributes far more eloquently than I can.

My first Sondheim experience was the movie of West Side Story in 1961, though like many at the time, I thought of it as mainly Bernstein’s piece. 

Some years later in late 1973, on my first solo trip to Sydney as a young adult, I saw A Little Night Music at Her Majesty’s Theatre (restored after fire destroyed it in 1970). This was a pivotal point in my musical life. I can still remember sitting up in the dress circle, trying to absorb it all.

In my 30 plus years of teaching singing at WAAPA, I have been privileged to work with and learn from three Sondheim devotees. Firstly John Milson, founding head of Musical Theatre at WAAPA. It was John Milson’s ambition to direct all of Sondheim’s musicals. Denis Follington followed John Milson and would often say “To sing Sondheim well, you simply follow all the instructions contained in the score – Sondheim has written it all down for you.” I was reminded of this when watching the Times Square tribute below. Most recently, retiring former head of Music Theatre, David King, has taught, played, MD’d and researched all of Sondheim’s works.

What a huge legacy Sondheim has left for us all.

Please look at the three links below. They are among my favourites from these recent days. 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/parenting/stars-react-to-the-death-of-legendary-composer-and-lyricist-stephen-sondheim/ar-AARcsbU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKSYeMgamIA

https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/VIDEO-Broadway-Sings-in-Times-Square-to-Honor-Stephen-Sondheim-20211128?utm_source=newsletterdaily&utm_medium=email

Music Monday - Musings on a choral festival

I volunteered at a choral festival yesterday. The festival is an annual event for government schools here in Western Australia and yesterday took place on a beautiful cold, sunny Sunday after weeks of rain.

Over the course of the day, we heard 20+ choirs, all a high standard, and several which were memorable for the best of reasons. Stylistically, the repertoire ranged from Gregorian Chant through to beat-boxing, with lots between.

 How wonderful for students to hear excellence in performance from a choir in quite another style to their own! 

There was a real sense of ‘family’ and inclusivity within each choir.

The day was not without its challenges though. As always, choir directors received last minute emails and text messages from parents who decided spontaneously to do something else on that sunny Sunday. (Would they tell the sporting team coach that their kid was not going to play that day, I wondered?) And of course, sickness precluded some students from attending – and presented stress for the directors when those students were on key parts in the ensemble. One of my colleagues and friends had to stand in for 2 missing parts in a beautiful 11 part unaccompanied ‘Magnificat’.

The festival is non-competitive. Choirs receive comments from an adjudicator and receive a ‘grading’ – good, excellent, outstanding. But there are no winners – a healthy thing, since the point of the festival is the opportunity to perform and hear choral singing in many genres. 

However, the grading system creates an unofficial sense of competitiveness which is not always in the spirit of the festival. A grading of ‘excellent’ is interpreted as ‘average’ (since it is the middle grade in a scale of good, excellent, outstanding). If an adjudicator’s comments included something like “this was excellent singing” there would be a sense of achievement – but as a grade it can bring disappointment. 

Are we so geared to grading in arts education that we can’t accept just a critique from an adjudicator?

In conclusion, another colleague remarked that the football derby playing that day (a game between the two state teams) had attracted much news coverage and thousands in attendance at the stadium. But here we were running a government run music festival with zero news cover. Yet another indication of arts v sports in Australia? Wouldn’t it be fantastic to have arts + sports!

The power of music and song in children’s theatre

Last week I took our 4 -year- old grandson and his Mum to our state theatre to see a school holiday offering for young kids – “Room On The Broom”, based on the award winning children’s picture book by Julia Donaldson and Alex Scheffler, published by Macmillan Children’s books.

The show was in the main theatre, the Heath Ledger Theatre, and because ours was an impromptu decision to attend, we were seated in the last available seats, right up at the back of the circle and some distance from the stage. This did not bother young William in the least; he was intrigued by the size of the theatre and the height from which he was watching the stage. It was the largest theatre he has been in, to date, and I’d imagine it was the same for many in the young audience. Around us were children ranging in age from babies to around the 8 years mark. Lots of grandparents.

I wondered how we would all fare up there, so far from the action on stage, when the show started.

As it turns out, the physical distance did not prove a problem for William, nor for kids of similar age. Younger children were more easily distracted, but that age were distracted downstairs in the stalls as well.

The show was just the right length – about 55 minutes – and delivered with an energy of around 150%. This would be exhausting for an audience if sustained for much longer,  but seemed an important component in holding their attention in this short show.

There were puppets – big, realistic, glove style puppets. And the actors operating them provided their voices. (At one stage the actor managing the dog and the frog mixed up his accents but no one much minded). Suspension of disbelief was abundant, which was wonderful to see in this audience. (Side note – last holidays we went to a puppet show where the puppets were made of fruit and veges. This was a step too far for our 4- year- old – “You can’t really make a puppet out of vegetables, can you?”)

The main actor characters were the witch and her cat – a costumed actor -  and the audience loved them.

But by far the component of the show which held it all together and brought kids’ attention back to the stage was the music. Backing -tracks and live singing – in parts, and of a high standard.  Fun songs with catchy but easy tunes. Towards the end we were all invited to join in the refrain of the final song – and we did it lustily. Audiences love to join in.

As the performance ended, William declared, “That was a really good show”.  And it was. But without the music it would have been so much less. 

As we walked to lunch in the city, I was thinking about how enriching music and song is to so many of young children’s learning. It is of course learning in its own right, but music also enables so much more in us.