DIY Major Scale Mural

A Majorly Cute Scale

Here's a DIY to create a scale you can proudly display at home.  Have your child pose for 8 photos. In each photo, she'll sing ONE of the solfege and show the hand signs.  Print out the photos.

OPTION 1: Create a poster or chart with staff lines, and mount the cute photos going up, up, up.  Hang the chart in your child's room so they can practice solfege anytime!  Show me your charts- I want to see what you create :)

OPTION 2: Frame each photo in a cute frame and hang them in a vertical arrangement (have a tall, skinny wall space to fill?). Everyone who comes to your home will see your brilliant child showing off her solfege!  Here's a site that can teach you to make fabulous ribbon-hung vertical frames.

Show me what you make! I want to see some MAJORLY cute scales :)

-Gina Weibel MS

Let's Play Music Teacher

DIY Major Scale

In today's Do-It-Yourself projects, we'll show you how to make your own major scale in a key other than C.  With 12 different keys on the piano, you have many ways to personalize your scale. 

Creating scales on every key is a skill we teach in the BRIDGE curriculum for Let's Play Music graduates, but you can have fun at home with this right now.

Gather Supplies

You won't need a hot glue gun or chop saw for this part, but there are a few mental tools you might need.

TOOL #1: EARS.  
You've been singing the major scale in Let's Play Music songs like The Red Balloon, so your ear is well trained to hear what a major scale sounds like going up and down.  

Even if we didn't give you any more theory lessons, you could go figure out the major scale just using your ear. You might be thinking, "I can't play the E-flat scale. Nobody has told me which notes to use. That sounds very advanced."  Guess what!?- You already know enough to figure this out. Trust me!

Are you that excited? Go to the piano. Cover your child's eyes and have him blindly pick any ONE key.  Open eyes.  Play that note and sing "up up up up..." in a major scale as your fingers go up the keyboard. 

Any time it sounds wrong or off, try skipping to another key.  You will need some white ones and some black ones.  You won't play every key.  You will be able to figure out what sounds like a major scale! You will be able to figure out which black keys you need. AMAZING!  (keep reading if you don't want to feel like you're guessing.)

TOOL #2: SOLFEGE.  
You've mastered the solfege names and hand-signs for each tone of the major scale. You are going to love applying them to your major scale.  

You may have already read the earlier articles all about solfege, in which we explained the MOVEABLE DO system. The scale starts on 'DO', but Do can be any key on the piano, white or black!  

When Do is C, we say "we are playing in the key of C."  When Do is F, we say "we are playing in the key of F." You get the idea.  ANY NOTE!

Your scale is a major scale when you sing Do Re Mi while playing the notes up.  And THEN you'll be able to play/ transpose any song into your scale by singing the solfege.

Think about it: Three Blind Mice is mi-re-do. mi-re-do. sol-fa-fa-mi. sol-fa-fa-mi.

Once you have your major scale you can play mi-re-do and sol-fa-fa-mi....and it will be the melody for Three Blind Mice, just a little higher or lower. 

Yes, transposing (playing in a new key) is that easy to wrap your brain around. Now you're motivated, so let me help you easily create that major scale.

TOOL #3: SEMITONES.  
The major scale is really a system of relationships between pitches.  Each pitch is identified by the wavelength that generates the sound.

In the pentatonic scale article, I explain how cultures around the world build scales based on relationships between pitches of different wavelengths.  

In our Western music, we like to divide the range of wavelength into 12 equal divisions (semitones). That's why our pianos have 12 different notes. Playing a piano key and then the very next piano key is a semitone, the smallest unit you can change pitch in piano playing.  Semitones are also called half steps in music theory circles.

Moving by an increment that is 2 semitones large is called a tone or whole step. 

The following pattern of relationships that we have come to prefer and love is our major scale.  

Whole-Whole-Half. Whole-Whole-Whole-Half.

The pattern is very pretty to look at when Do is C because we can play all the white keys. The piano was built to make it natural to play a major scale in the key of C.

Looking for a mnemonic to help you remember this pattern?  When it's super hot/sunnyt outside, you should wear white (not dark) clothes to help you feel cool, right?  

Imagine the silly man who insists on wearing dark clothes on hot days. You ask: 

Why Won't He Wear White When Hot!?

Let's build a scale again!  Go pick ANY key at the piano.  Take steps using the pattern that defines a major scale: WWH, WWWH.  As you go, your ear will let you know if things are going well or if you slip up!

My daughter chose to start on D as Do.  We followed the pattern and learned that in the key of D, you'll need to use F sharp and C sharp!  



Let's Play Music Bridge

Check out how we teach the pattern of whole steps and half steps in the LPM Bridge program with songs and games. You'll love this!




Montessori Method

Italian educator, Maria Montessori, understood the simplicity of solfege, major scales, and key changes.  She also understood the natural and easy way children can learn to hear and internalize aural skills.

In a well-equipped Montessori classroom, you might find beautiful tone bars like these.  Unlike the piano, black and white bells are all the same size, making key changes easier than pie.

The paper strip has green gaps painted on it, to indicate the step pattern for a major scale.  A child as young as 4 can spend hours creating new major scales. She slides the strip left and right to ANY note and looks to see which bells are steps 1-8 (or Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Ti-Do). She pulls those bells slightly forward and plays the major scale.  A scale in the key of C is shown above.

Then she finds letter discs and labels the notes of the scale.  Finally, she can choose a song card from the collection and play her favorite songs based on steps (1-8) or solfege. No matter what key she is in, she will be able to play her favorite songs.


The final beauty of this practice is that it is self-directed. A student can change key, label the scale, play a song, and repeat endlessly and correctly with very little adult interruption needed.

Change Keys

Now you know how to create a major scale anywhere...so you can transpose songs into other keys.  

Ready for some more fun? 

A RED CHORD (I)  always has notes  Do-Mi-Sol.  
A BLUE CHORD (IV) always has notes Do-Fa-La, 
YELLOW CHORD (V) always has notes Ti-Re-Sol. 

Now you can make chords using your new scale (in your new key).  I challenge you to play all of your favorite Let's Play Music songs in the key of D, or A, or F#.  Do you like the way these tunes sound in different keys!?  

My daughter decided to replay all of the Green and Yellow book songs in the key of D, just because it's fun to transpose. 

Practicing making chords in new keys is a little tricky because you have to remind yourself which notes are part of your scale and which are not.  The good news is, your HAND ALREADY KNOWS how to make the primary chords. You only have to adjust a little bit to incorporate the "magic" black keys. 

The more you play this game, the more comfortable you become with automatically finding chords and melodies in new keys.

-Gina Weibel, M.S.

Let's Play Music teacher

One More Time: Podcast featuring Let's Play Music

Musician, teacher, and podcast producer, Art Moore, recently hosted Let's Play Music teacher, Kara Olson, on his podcast show for teachers, 'One More Time.'  

After taking Kara's son, a Let's Play Music graduate, as a guitar student, Art noticed musical skills his student had gained from Let's Play Music. Art was curious to know the inner workings of the program - do students like learning solfege? Do students learn to read music? Why the focus on self-accompaniment? and how does LPM consistently turn out musicians who have a complete set of musical skills?

Listen to the complete program here or read the show below:

Art: Tell us what you do and why you're here

Kara: I'm a teacher for Let's Play Music- a music program for kids. I'm nervous because I'd like to be able to adequately express myself and explain this program because it really is a wonderful program for music education for kids.

I was introduced to it about five years ago. I went to a sample class when my oldest was about four. I was really impressed with the curriculum and it looked SO FUN to me. I was thinking of signing my daughter up, but really what I was thinking is "this looks like SO MUCH FUN... I want to teach  this." 

I went to school and graduated in elementary education. I always loved teaching kids and loved music- so this was a perfect program for me to use my love for kids and music, and do this in my own home.

This is a program I teach in my home. It's a three-year curriculum. The foundation is based on proven philosophies and research about the way children learn. It's a comprehensive course that develops a complete musician.  It's not just a piano course or just for singing: it's designed to complete a complete musician.

Art: As you teach kids, you're working with them not only on piano, and voice, and rhythm- it's attacking all of those at once?

Kara: Exactly. One of the biggest fundamentals is using solfege

Art: Which I LOVE. I'm a huge fan of solfege, but I have no idea about how to teach it. I use it in my life all the time. I learned it in college and I use it all the time, but I have no idea how to teach it.

Kara: I learned a little bit about it, but I never solidly learned the hand signs or learned how to use solfege well until I trained for Let's Play Music. Now I'm really seeing how it can benefit kids and help them to visualize and feel pitch relationships.  We do the solfege right from the very beginning.

Art: Can you describe what solfege is? For listeners who don't know?

Kara: Solfege is a teaching method developed by Zoltan Kodaly. He's one of the music masters that Let's Play Music bases their practices on. Solfege is basically using hand signs and syllables for each tone in the major scale. It really helps to develop those pitch relationships and to be able to sing it in tune.

Art: A good example is from the Sound of Music? I listened to that for years and had no idea what that was. When I went to college I finally got it. They really did a good job with that.

Kara: Exactly. I learned the history behind solfege at our teacher's symposium. The syllables were based on a chant. Those syllables have changed a little bit over time.

We use solfege to teach the major scale, and we use the Do Re Mi song... I'll sing it for you. 

Do, a deer, a female deer.  Re, a drop of golden sun. Mi, a name a call myself.

Fa, a long long way to run. Sol, a needle pulling thread. La, a note to follow Sol.

Ti, a drink with jam and bread, and that brings us back to Do.

So, we teach them going up and down. We also include a lot of movement. One of the ways we use solfege in addition to the major scale is in teaching patterns.

We start off in class each week singing the Let's Play Music song:

Let's play music, music, music

Let's play music, here we go...

We're gonna have a good time,

good time, good time,

We're gonna have a good time

Mi Re Do.

I'll show the students the hand signs and they'll mimic. They'll get a feeling for how it feels and how it sounds. We use our bodies, we even have a floor staff they learn to move up the scale with. We'll sing songs that have those melodic patterns in them, like:

Three blind mice, three blind mice...

I'll say, WAIT! What does that sound like? It's Mi-Re-Do.  We use folk songs to teach these melodic patterns. They'll pick them out. They're training their ears and brains to be musicians.

Art: That is brilliant! Especially the part where you identify it in the songs you'll sing throughout the day.

Kara: 'Do' is strong and stable, like the fist shape. We teach them Do is home. We teach perfect pitch and relative pitch. The more we teach solfege, the easier it is to sing in tune and to master relative pitch.

Art: I've noticed with the hand signs, they move up as the scale moves up. It helps me hit those pitches when I'm singing if I move my hands.

Kara: Using my hand signs, really does help you feel where those pitches are.

Art: How do kids react to this? Do they enjoy solfege or doing it grudgingly?

Kara: I think it's a gradual thing. They like it because it's actions. It's a little tricky but I encourage them. When we're singing the first song, we tap to the beat, too, to make the songs fun for them. I feel like they gain a love for it, and later they're able to play the solfege on the tone bells and then on the piano and then how to dictate it later...

Art: That's so cool! What are some other main ideas beyond solfege?

Kara: We also do a lot of movement. Full-body involvement. The move we involve the body, the more children will internalize these concepts. Experience precedes learning, so they don't really realize what they are learning until later when we label and identify it.  So, we are big on doing movement and games to teach concepts. Every song that we teach has a reason behind it. We do a lot of that.

We teach rhythm in a fun way with BUGS. Our chant goes:

I like bugs, every kind of bug I see. I like the big ones and the flat ones and the fuzzy purple flat ones. People think they're yucky, but I just don't agree, no you can't bug me!

BUG, BUG, BUTTERFLY, BUTTERFLY, GRASSHOPPER, GRASSHOPPER

CATERPILLAR, CATERPILLAR, SLUUUUUG!

Art: That's brilliant. An accidental way of learning all those rhythms, to later on be identified for the notes they are. That's brilliant.

Kara: And it really helps them to feel it. We do a lot of games. We feel like rhythm is something that needs to constantly be taught. We have emphasis on steady beat in songs. The first semester of the first year, we focus on steady beat. They listen to a lullaby and feel the steady beat of their heart and the steady beat of the song. Or I'll play a tambourine and say make your feet match the beat of the tambourine. It helps them get an idea of what beat is and then we add in those bugs to develop that rhythm.

Art: So at this point there's no introduction of music notation? Is that correct?

Kara: Notation- so, when we introduce the bugs, we show how the bug has one body and looks like the quarter note- there's a quarter note on the other side of the flashcard. The beetle has two body parts in the picture, and they look very much like the notes they really are (the eighth notes). So that's how they're introduced to rhythmic notation.

For melodic notation, I have a magnetic staff board that I use. We actually sing a song about a red balloon, it goes:

up up up up, up up up up.

And it floated and it floated and I wanted it to come back

down down down down, down down down down.

I caught it!

They see how my balloon magnet goes up the staff and down the staff, like our bodies go up and down. Later we use black magnet notes, and we teach what a baby step or a skip look like.  A baby step is from a line to a space...

Start on a space and you can go just to the next line

Or from a line back to a space is really just as fine

We go line space line space line space line

And we have a song about skips...

From a line to the next line, that's a skip, that's a skip

Or from a space to the next space, that's a skip!

So again, they're feeling it, reading it on the staff, seeing how it works.

Art: So you have songs for EVERYTHING?!

Kara: Yes!

Art: That's, of course, THE BEST way for kids that age to learn things. I still remember little songs my mom taught me. I still remember to this day.

Kara: This really is a great way to internalize the concepts. I feel like they'll remember the songs forever. I have a ten year-old who graduated, and she loved it. And my eight year-old graduated and they still love the songs and those help them with their music training now on piano and guitar. They remember these songs that teach them these concepts.

Another thing Let's Play Music emphasizes is staring a lot younger than when kids would be ready to play a music instrument. They start at age four or five, when their fingers are not ready to play the piano, and they're probably not able to read.  Music learning starts young, I mean, really from birth.

Art: It's almost innate in every person.

Kara: Yeah, it starts when you're born. Or even in the womb.

We take advantage of the music learning window by teaching the younger child and helping them develop those concepts when they are four or five. The next year we introduce them to the keyboard and they actually learn beginning with chords.  They don't learn melody first, they learn to accompany themselves singing by playing chords.

We actually have songs about chords starting in first year. They learn red, blue, and yellow chords. Those are the I, IV, and V chords in music. So, they learn them with colors first and that's a beginning for reading music. They'll learn how they're notated and how the chord shape looks. In third year they'll learn what chords are actually called so when they graduate and go to traditional lessons...

Art: Forget traditional lessons! I don't want traditional any more- I want to do the Let's Play Music method!

Kara: They do this program for three years and then we refer them to music teachers like yourself, and those teachers help them continue to progress. That's why we like to give teachers background on how they've learned music, so teachers can help them go forward.

We have a program called Connections where we connect with music teachers and help them learn how we teach music so that they can our graduates and then they can refer their very young kids to us. We take them for three years and send them back to the teachers.

Art: I wish I had known more about this! I will continue to refer people to you all the time. People ask me "how early do you teach music?"  I'm familiar with the Kodaly method, and I was taking students who were four or five, and we were doing some similar things, but not nearly as well as you guys.  They would eventually grow into their traditional lessons, but I don't think they got nearly as much value as they would have out of Let's Play Music. It's amazing.

Kara: And it's really fun for kids to learn in a group setting. They're with their peers, having fun. It really does make them feel comfortable. It's a great environment for learning music.

Art: Is this program available nationwide?

Kara: Pretty much. It started in Mesa, Arizona. The founder majored in music and she was looking for a music program for her kids. She had in mind what the perfect program would be she wanted for her kids. She found one she really liked, but it didn't have solfege in it. Basically, she developed her own perfect program that she wanted for her kids, and that's where it began. It started with a few teachers and has grown so much. There are lot of teachers in Arizona and here in Utah now. It really is growing fast. The program's only about fourteen years old.

Art: So it's very young, but built on principles that have been around. Kodaly was a prestigious educator of music for children. To see his methods used in a cool way - I get excited about that. How do you find your students do when they transition into regular music lessons?

Kara: I've been teaching for four years. It varies. If they jump right into private lessons right when they are finished with Let's Play Music, they continue to progress and do really well. There are some that may take a break, and sometimes they forget things, and that's natural. I feel like they do have a really strong foundation when they go on to music lessons.

I actually have one of my graduates, he accompanied a song at a church function and that was so exciting for me because we emphasize that- the ability to accompany other musicians, which is not easy to do. And he was able to do that.  I do feel like it's helped them succeed at music lesson and develop more skills that just piano.

Even now, I have come across pianists that don't have the best sense of rhythm or can't lead music. There are a lot of skills that you don't necessarily learn...

Art: There are skills that every musician should learn at some point, but not everybody has them for some reason or another.

Kara: And being able to sing and sight-sing, those are great skills.

Art: I also teach brass instruments. I find that being able to sight-sing greatly improves their ability to hit pitches. In college my instructors says that every tuba player should be an opera singer and every opera singer should be a tuba player! Hilarious, but the principle there is true. If you can sing it, you will be better be able to play it on your instrument. Especially instruments that require that tuning by ear.

The solfege and sight-singing just become very important at that point. Very cool.

So, just a couple more questions. Tell me more about accompaniment and how you introduce that to kids.

Kara: Well, we start off with that in the first semester. We use an autoharp in class.  We sing:

This is the Red chord, Blue is next I said, Yellow is the chord that leads us back to Red.

So we're teaching those chords and we're teaching their function. Red is stable and dominant. Students are learning how chords progress.  Later on, they play these on the piano, and then they learn how to improvise using chords.  They have to figure out which chords sound good with that song as they sing it.  So, they have to develop that ability to harmonize and improvise.

Art: So, playing by ear. That's a skill that is hard to teach.

Kara: In the second year they're doing more accompaniment with piano. In the first year they're doing that with the harp. We have several songs with chord maps they read to know which chord to play. The autoharp is really easy because they just push a button and play. In the second year, they play those simple chords and learn to feel those shapes well, and they're able to transpose easily.

Later they'll add the right hand and add melody to it, but in the beginning it's just playing chords and singing. In the recital we sing and they all accompany the kids while we sing our songs.

The songs we do have those three chords. They read them and play them and they sing along while they are practice so they are accompanying themselves.

Art: That would help with timing as well. That's amazing. That's a different kind of focus. So many times we focus on melody and the accompaniment part just never comes together. Once I taught a girl, about age sixteen, about inversions, and she just about went crazy. I can do that!? 

Well, this has been the best half hour. I've been wanting to talk to you about your program for a long time. I do teach your son guitar and I see this training come through.  Where do we go to find out more and find teachers in our area?

Kara: The website is www.letsplaymusicsite.com.  And when you get to the website there's a box for finding a teacher in your area. A bunch of teachers will pop up, hopefully. You can see what their schedules are. You can contact them. You can watch videos of music class.

There's another program, not required, but like a preparation for Let's Play Music. It's called Sound Beginnings and it's for kids ages 2-4 and younger siblings. It's giving them even more music exposure. We do a lot of preschool concepts through song. They learn colors and numbers and nursery rhymes. A lot of games and activities. They'll listen to classical music and do actions and dance around. It's really a lot of fun and it's really a good introductory course. I do a little solfege with them and they'll do a little bit of rhythm and instrument recognition. So that one is also on the website.

Art: I teach a lot of adults and older teenagers who are just staring out. While they can develop and grow and have amazing musical lives, there's something great about starting so young and seeing that progression in kids. It's worth the time and effort to find the right program for that. 

Kara Olson is a Let's Play Music and Sound Beginnings teacher in South Jordan, Utah. You can find out more about her classes by searching here.

Seven Foundational Elements of Sound Beginnings

The Sound Beginnings music program prepares children for success in kindergarten and Let's Play Music. That's fantastic! How is it done?

Today's post will walk you through the seven research-based elements that stimulate growth in the areas particularly crucial to the development of your young child. These elements make up the foundation of the Sound Beginnings curriculum and help us get to the heart of an effective class.

Literacy and Kindergarten Skills

Sound Beginnings not only teaches music, it also introduces children to kindergarten concepts like colors, rhyming, manners, telling time, shapes, calendars, name recognition, counting, adding, literacy, and sequencing. 

Research has proven that music has a powerful effect on language learning. As children sing songs and recite nursery rhymes during class, they learn new vocabulary, develop auditory discrimination, enhance phonemic awareness, and improve their memory skills. Sound Beginnings classes also prepare children to read by teaching tracking left to right, verbal sequencing, and concepts about print during musical story time.

I imagine (I have an active imagination) that the creators of Sound Beginnings had a conversation like this:

  "Let's select songs to use in class. We'll definitely need plenty of simple melodies that are easy to learn and in the correct pitch range so the students can internalize musical patterns."
  "Okay, we have tons of options here. What do you want the words to be about?"
  "Oh yeah, words. Kids just love words."
  "Well, as we all know, music is a powerful tool for teaching just about anything. I passed my college chemistry class by singing the solubility rules song, so I'm sure we could teach kids about kindergarten skills like telling time, calendars, colors, days of the week...you know... and they'd be learning music at the same time."
  "That's super efficient! I'm so excited I feel like singing about it right now!"

Hey parents: you can use this music-class superpower to your life: anytime you want your toddler to learn a skill or behavior, add a song! Here's the song I sing (over and over and over) until my kids get their seat belts on. As you can guess, my teenagers get buckled before I finish the first word:

Whenever I get into the car

I put on my seat belt before we go far

'Cuz Mom will not drive until she hears 'click'

so put on your seat belt, and please be quick!

Rhythm and Beat

Keeping a steady beat is the precursor to all accurate rhythm-making. In class we clap, pat, stomp, jump, flap our arms, and play simple instruments to the beat. We imitate rhythmic patters with our voices, on instruments and with our bodies. We incorporate eurythmics (movement-based rhythm training) that is perfect for toddlers.

Curious to see if you can keep the beat? Take a simple test like this one. You'll listen to the drum to find the beat, then you'll tap along to match the beat, and then... all by yourself... you'll play a steady beat. (Post in the comments and tell me what your score was) Wahoo! 

Once your child internalizes these beat-basic skills, she'll really be ready to make music.  The American Council of Piano Performers, in a post on how to perform, says "the audience will rarely notice an error in pitch, but they will ALWAYS notice a disruption in rhythm."

Getting the beat right is fundamentally important, so we spend plenty of time on practicing with our toddlers.

Voice and Pitch Development

The singing voice is the foundation of music education. Sound Beginnings channels the young voice into beautiful singing by providing proper vocal modeling in the correct range. Solfege hand signs are used to teach pitch relationships. Ear training is emphasized and a minor third (SOL-MI) pattern is used to teach in-tune singing.

I just love solfege. It gives us words to talk about what we're singing and gives us a tactile way to feel in space what we're hearing in our ear. It takes challenge of singing and makes it a whole-body learning experience. In these articles (Part I, Part II, Part III) I explain what solfege is, why we love it, and how you can use it.

My active imagination thinks the creators of Sound Beginnings and Let's Play Music had a conversation like this:

"Alright folks. What tools are we gonna use for teaching these toddlers to sing?"
"Um, well, I have an idea...it's something we did in all of our college voice classes and sight-singing classes. You know... solfege."
"Are you crazy? Toddlers don't go to college. Young children learn through full-body involvement and integrating as many senses as possible. Young children need to be active and physical to learn. Give me something I can use, people."
"Well, that's just it- solfege is a way to use your hands and body to better focus on what you are hearing, and involve more of your body into what you are making your voice do."
"In that case, we'd be fools not to use solfege with toddlers and children! I'm so excited I think I'll start singing about this!"

Fine Motor Skills

Fine motor skills involve hand and finger use and play a valuable part in higher-level learning skills like writing. As students participate in finger plays to favorite nursery rhymes and American Sign Language (ASL) they gain finger dexterity. As they manipulate instruments and tactile props in class they develop stronger muscles in their hands and wrists.

Looking for more fun ways to strengthen little hands? Check out this post with (piano and non-piano) ways to encourage growth and strength. Not to worry: Let's Play Music class is designed to let your child's ear and mind develop as fast and awesomely as they can, even though we know finger strength will take a few years to catch up. That's one reason we use bells and autoharp in year one.

Gross Motor Skills

If you peek into a Sound Beginnings class, you will see skipping, crawling, dancing, and playing. Children learn best by doing! Full body movement builds muscle strength and hand-eye coordination while developing balance in young children. Gross motor development also aids in brain hemisphere development.

The basis for the importance of movement and sensory experiences was derived from studies which compared brain structures of animals raised in various environmentally normal, deprived, and enriched settings. The enriched settings provided the opportunity to interact with toys, obstacles, and treadmills. Research led to the conclusion that stimulation is a significant factor in overall brain development; animals from enriched environments had larger brains with more synaptic connections. It is suggested that physical activity is a significant determinant in early development of the overall brain, not just development of motor skills.

Whatever you are doing with your child, take her to activities where she can move around and be active while learning.

Classical Music Experience

Sound Beginings classes teach intelligent listening and understanding of classical form in a fun and interactive way. Each semester we study the timbre of specific instruments and how they are divided into family groupings. Our 'smart moves' dances involve the whole body in an enjoyable classical music experience.

Really great dancers (and aerobic instructors, right?) use their body to follow the beat of the music, listen to the patterns and form of the music, and create movement that "feels like" the music itself. This awareness of how music is put together means your child will learn to anticipate what comes next in classical songs and enjoy them even more. When the Orange semester of Let's Play Music comes around, he'll be composing his own songs using the same concepts of form and pattern!

And why should you be interested in the fact that little Johnny is developing a love of listening to the classical genre? Loads of recent research shows that listening to classical improves memory, boosts creativity, lowers blood pressure, boosts brain power, fights depression, improves productivity, and makes you taller. (My active imagination came up with the part about being taller.)

Parent Bonding

A child learns when a child feels loved. In Sound Beginnings we teach parents how to play with their child in an educational and nurturing way. Purposeful touching, eye contact and partner activities develop the highly significant parent/child relationship.

In our blog post on creating relationships, we give some tips for having a strong relationship with your family, and for how to grow closer together through music.  In class, your actions teach your child, "This is a fun thing I like to do. I like to play with you. I like to be with you. You're important to be. This is something we can learn and have fun with together." 

When music is a venue in which you build a positive relationship and make memories of happy moments, students love music and are more willing to work at becoming musicians!


Now that you know the seven foundational elements of Sound Beginnings, find a teacher for your youngster, or forward this blog post to someone who has a child ages 2-4 so they can reap the benefits of this great program.  See you in class!

-Gina Weibel, M.S.
Let's Play Music and Sound Beginnings Teacher




 

Let's Sing! Help Me Sing on Pitch

In the article Let's Sing! Part 1, we gave some tips for getting youngsters interested in singing, and explained how singing is a fundamental part of musicianship training: the first year of Let's Play Music class focuses on helping your child think tonically.

Singing in Your Brain

If your child's brain is hearing in tune, how will her teacher know? What test can we do to find out what she's hearing in her mind?  

Singing is the best feedback. In order to sing in tune, the brain must first hear in tune.  All ear training is actually brain training, and will help any musician rise to a higher level (even if you decide to be a guitarist or trombonist instead of a singer).

If singing in tune, singing on pitch, carrying a tune in a bucket, and Echoing Ed make you nervous, keep reading for tips on how to finally get on pitch.

The Echo Family 


In every year of Let's Play Music, teachers will present a variety of ear-training games in class and will almost always request singing from the students as feedback to see what they have heard and internalized. Don't worry, it feels like a playful game, not an exam!

Teacher Kim Seyboldt and her Echo Edie

In your first year you'll meet Echo Ed, and if you've been in Sound Beginnings, you know Echo Edie (Ed's baby sister). Both of these puppets make sounds and sing, and ask children to echo back to them.  

Ed sings two notes "loo loo" and wants to know: were you able to hear the exact pitches I just sang? Pitch is the quality that lets you determine if notes are high, low, the same, or different. Pitch is determined by the wave frequency, and identified by the note name. Even if you can't identify the exact pitches, "you sang an E, then G," you probably can hear that the first note was higher and the second lower. You can likely sing back a matching note.

Were you also able to hear the exact interval between the two notes? If you sing back the same notes, your teacher knows you certainly did hear it all correctly! 

A new student might sing back using different notes, or a different interval. She might be confused because she can't hear the difference between the pitches yet (keep training the ear) or because she can't get her voice to reproduce the sound she hears (keep training the vocal muscles).  Training the ear and training the voice go very naturally together. Most LPM students make progress in both skills simultaneously.

Built to Sing

The good news is, humans are wired to sing. It can be learned! Don't give up! The vocal range (entire span of pitches a child can produce) is remarkably wide from birth. Infants can imitate and experiment with their vocal instruments and even match pitch as early as three to four months of age.  Purposeful singing can begin at around twelve months. At this time, adults can recognize snippets of songs to which youngsters have been exposed.

We've said before that music is a language. If you child has mastered English, she's focused on the skills necessary for producing the sounds of English words.  But what about that wide vocal range that she had at birth? If she doesn't experiment with it now that she has achieved the goal of speaking, her brain stops paying attention to all the different sounds she can make, but doesn't need. This is one reason we love Sound Beginnings classes: we help babies and toddlers continue exploring and understanding sound before they settle into just a small set of skills.

I'm reminded of an embarrassing incident, before I became a Let's Play Music teacher, in which a friend tried to quickly teach me some Mandarin Chinese.  Words differ in meaning based on tone and pronunciation. I had a hard time hearing the difference between tones that were rising, falling, falling then rising, or remaining flat, especially when spoken quickly and mixed into a string of words.  She thought it was hilarious that I couldn't distinguish between the "obvious" differences.  That five-minute teasing didn't go very well, but I feel confident that with practice I could train myself to hear what my friend was trying to explain.

The same can be said for our students. With some practice, they will be able to think tonally and show it by Echoing Ed. With repetition, exposure, and engagement, children extract the meaning behind the pitch exercises. They naturally start to "get it."

Echo Ed sings sol-mi-sol.  Are you confident enough to echo back? Pictured: Shelle Soelberg

Sol-what about Sol-Mi?

Using the singing voice beautifully is a learned, complex skill.  Childhood, as I mentioned, presents a window of opportunity when students are open to all experiences and are willing to explore their voices without feeling timid. No one expects them to be experts. If we show them that singing in class is the thing to do, they'll belt out some fabulous sounds.  Adults must be brave enough to try singing, too!

Educator Zoltan Kodaly emphasized singing for improving musicianship.  He

Can you sing it in your mind?

helped children master  the first step: 'inner hearing' or audiation. This is the ability to accurately hear music in the mind/imagination.  The culminating skill involving audiation occurs when a student reads notated rhythm and melody and makes musical sense of it, 'hearing' it even though it is not played aloud.
That is exactly the skill my childhood friend, Jess (from part 1), was so well trained for. Any of us who've had a song stuck in our head (an earworm) definitely can audiate to some level.  The second step is training the voice to get the sound out.


Researchers have discovered there is a progression in children's perceptual sensitivities, moving from simple to complex. The easiest interval to hear, identify, and produce is a minor third.  You'll hear it when we sing "sol-mi".  

The first few weeks, Echo Ed will sing loo-loo with this interval.  In Sound Beginnings, we have two songs each semester (with reading notes on the staff) that use exclusively sol and mi.   

Tip: Revert to Sol-Mi. Any time a student is struggling to echo back on pitch, I go back to practicing with just sol-mi patterns.  It is worthwhile to help the child master several patterns or songs (mi-sol, sol-mi-sol, mi-sol-sol, etc.) before moving on.

Why does Ed sing 'loo-loo' instead of 'sol-mi' in the beginning? Because we begin with experiencing and internalizing the pitches.  Even though these two words are the same (loo) they don't  sound the same.  We help the child focus on the one aspect that is different: pitch.

Only when tunes with sol and mi are mastered, la, is added. Dozens of songs can be composed with these three notes.  You know children love and practice with these intervals because they naturally use them over and over when they make up their own songs.  You know...these songs:

• Nana-nana boo-boo! (sol-sol mi-la sol-mi)
• Trick-or-treat! Smell my feet ! (sol sol mi.  Sol sol mi.)
• Give me something good to eat! (sol sol mi-la sol sol mi)
• You ca-an't catch me! (sol mi-la sol mi!)
• Ring around the rosy (sol sol-mi la sol-mi)
• Rain, rain, go away (sol, mi, sol sol-mi) 
• Ding-dong *this is your doorbell* (sol-mi)

Tip: Any note is Sol. Let's Play Music teachers are required to have this particular skill, so you parents may as well practice it, too!  Play ANY NOTE on the piano.  Imagine it is 'sol'.  Now sing Sol-Mi.  To check yourself, take three half-steps down (that means go down 3 piano keys of any color).  Get good at hearing and singing this interval, no matter what note we start on.

This video shows you exactly how to practice and echo sol-mi:

   
Tip: Vocal Channeling. It's not uncommon for some children to have a limited singing range (even just 2-3 notes!). When they sing, the words and rhythm are correct but the song has a monotone sound to it.  Expand a singer's vocal range with channeling, swooping, and siren-singing.

This video shows you how:
  

Tip: Go to his range. Any time a student sings back using a different starting pitch than my own, I repeat the exercise using the pitch he just sang (and is clearly most comfortable with).  A struggling child can often hear and sing a minor third when we 'meet them' at their favorite starting pitch.

This video shows these examples with a real student:

Tip: Snuggle up. Hold your child close, with cheeks touching your mouth near his ear and his mouth near your ear. Very quietly sing 'sol-mi' and have him quietly echo back. This personal, loving game helps youngsters focus on listening. He can hear and feel the vibrations of your notes through his cheek. 

Tip: Not Quite Right. When your child echoes back, it won't always be on pitch. . 

• Adjust pitch and go on to the next example. Don't dwell on mistakes.
• Praise him for playing the pitch games with you. Smile!
• "I love hearing you sing." "I love your sweet voice." "This is how singers learn to sing, and you are doing it!" "Every time you sing, your ears and voice and brain are getting smarter!"
• Keep the mood fun and silly. Keep practicing/drilling and coaxing him to your pitches.

Tip: Act like you're four. If your child is hesitant to sing or echo in class, use all of the above sol-mi songs at home frequently to encourage fun/silly singing. Your child will start using those phrases himself.  Warning: once you invite your child to say "nana-nana boo-boo" to you, you may never hear the end of it.  

Tip: Compose. It also pays off to invent songs using the above patterns using sol, la, and mi and use them all the time: "Get into the ca-ar. Don't forget your sho-es." (Did you just sing that to yourself?)  These short tunes can be repeated during the day and there's a good chance you'll get some back: "Re-ead me a sto-ry. Or I won't go to sle-ep." Your child doesn't need to know he's improving his ear; it just seems silly and fun.

Do and re are added next, one at a time into songs for echoing.  Singing a pentatonic scale (Do-Re-Mi-Sol-La) is easier than mastering the entire diatonic scale (Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Ti-Do), so we practice the pentatonic scale in Sound Beginnings class.  Songs that include Fa and Ti are introduced last.

It's a great idea to sing lots of pentatonic songs at home (they are easiest to sing). Read about the pentatonic scale. 

Singing Voice and Speaking Voice

We all seem competent walking around and climbing stairs,  but only someone who has specifically strengthened and trained their muscles will be able to pull off a back handspring.  Our vocal equipment is also composed of muscles, and like all muscles, they respond to training and strengthening.  Muscle memory applies to vocal muscles just like it applies to our fingers: when we repeat and practice actions, our brain and muscles remember how to do it. It gets easier. It  feels automatic. 

So, each person has only one voice.  When using it for speaking, muscles create succinct sounds at moderate volumes with small changes in inflection and pitch.  This seems easy because we have lots of practice speaking, and we don't demand great exertions.   

When singing, we use the same equipment in a very different way: producing vocal overtones at great volume, held for long periods, covering a large pitch range. It's not surprising that singing requires more training than speaking, and that a singer often sounds very different when singing than when speaking! 

Can you sing an octave like the major scale?

A Let's Play Music student is learning how to get into his 'singing voice.' At first, he may be nervous to try to make sounds outside the few pitches that he uses for speaking.  Activities like swooping and hooting are used in class to encourage exploration of the vocal range. The tessitura (span of pitches that are comfortable for singing, smaller than the total vocal range) for Let's Play Music children is between middle D and treble B, so our songs are written within that range (except the major scale going from middle C to treble C...a little stretch).

Tip: Be A Siren All Day. If your child has a hard time leaving his favorite pitch (sings monotone), play siren games as as often as you can work them into daily life.  When driving toy cars or airplanes, make swooping high and low sounds.  Fly a bite of food on your fork with swooping sounds before it makes it to the hangar.  As you walk down the hallway with a laundry basket, announce that the ambulance is coming and "wee-ooo wee-ooo".  Now that you've modeled the swooping, encourage your child to do some, too.  He'll get in the habit of experimenting with high and low sounds, and start to expand his range.

Carrying a tune requires us to jump from note to note, covering the intervals exactly. We practice in class by working out our voices, practicing the intervals as they appear in songs and isolated.  Working the voice muscles in this way builds muscle memory to give us confidence that next time we need to jump the given interval, we instinctively know exactly how much to flex our vocal chords. 
By the third year, teachers show the students intervals with their hands (solfege) and they audiate and then sing.  This sight singing is a testament that audiation has occurred and that students' muscle memory for vocal muscles is well-developed.

Use tone bells to train your voice!

Tip: Muscle Memory. Play Do-Re-Do on your tone bells. Sing it back.  As you go about your day, sing Re-Do-Re or Do-Re-Do and have your child echo you. If you can't quite remember it, or can't quite get it right, go back to the piano or bells to check.  Tomorrow add Do-Mi-Do to your repertoire, then Do-Fa-Do, etc.  Any piano key can be Do!  Your vocal muscles are mastering the intervals.


And what if you have the child who is happy to sing loud and proud, but doesn't notice that he's not hitting the right notes?

Tip: Listen to Yourself. Encourage your child to listen to himself. In a large group, it's easy to get carried along and lose track of what sound is coming from our own voice.  It might help to sing along sometimes to a very quiet CD so he can really hear his voice.  In a large group he might need to plug one ear occasionally so he can hear his voice separate from the rest of the class. 

We're Singing Now!

If your child is able to sing along with the CD and even feels comfortable singing without the CD, he is likely ready for a bit more challenge!  Creating harmony challenges the child's ability to audiate: can he hear his part and sing it, even when other singers are doing something different?

Ostinati (short, repeating melody) and rounds are the best way to teach children to hear and sing in harmony. An ostinato produces harmony because the notes are sung against the main melody of the song.  When we sing "Three Blind Mice and you are asked to sing 'mi re do' over and over, you are singing the ostinato.
This is an easy way to introduce harmony because it has a persistent nature; the student can focus on repeating his harmonic melody while also hearing the main tune.

Singing songs in rounds, like "Are You Sleeping" and "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" gives a slightly more challenging opportunity to create harmony and strengthening audiation.  Now he must audiate and sing his entire song while not being distracted by other singers.  

Tip: Increase the Challenge. If your child is catching on to singing, repeat the songs and activities from class.  Assign family members to sing in a round, sing an ostinato, sing two-part songs like "Horsey Horsey", or multi-part songs like "Solfege Sea Friends" or "Treble, Bass, Line, and Space." Long car trips or hikes are a great time to initiate a singing challenge!

Sing Now, Sing Later   

I have had a few parents say to me, "we will give it our best shot, but what if he just doesn't learn to like singing?"  

In Let's Play Music, we will do our best to equip your child with skills to succeed as a musician.  A musician who rarely takes time to sing can still be a virtuoso on his instrument.  Although he hasn't trained his voice to confidently and accurately produce the pitches for singing, his brain is able to distinguish and audiate them.  This skill will be powerful to him as a musician, and could not have been introduced at age four without a few years of singing.

Please tell us in the comments- have you had a reluctant singer? or a child who struggled to match pitch? How did you help?

-Gina Weibel, M.S.
Let's Play Music Teacher 

Don't miss part 1: Let's Sing: Why singing is fundamental
Another post you may enjoy: Musical Superpower: Perfect Pitch