The Choir Director Corner Podcast
The Choir Director Corner Podcast
099. Diving into Music Literacy with Your Choir: Sound Before Sight
The question came from one of the members of our CDC Community Membership: "How, or where, do I start in teaching music literacy to my choir, when almost all of my singers are beginners when it comes to sightreading?" Our elementary general music colleagues know--it's all about starting with "sound before sight"! We need to give our singers an aural vocabulary to work from before we give them tools and strategies to start tackling music notation.
In my teaching I've developed a 5-stage process to get my singers from sound to sight, and I'm sharing that process with you in Episode 99 of the podcast. For each of these stages, I'm also sharing you an example of a rehearsal activity or game that I use to help move my singers down the road to being musically independent! If you're looking for guidance on how to get started working on music literacy with your choirs, or you want to make the music literacy work with your choirs more efficient and productive, then this episode is for you!
If you want to dive deeper into topics just like this one, then you should really check out the Choir Director Corner Community Membership! Inside the membership there are Online Courses, a Resource Library with over 50 PDF's and Google Docs, and "Monthly Missions" Trainings where we focus on a specific topic, and you can ask questions and get feedback on how to tackle your biggest teaching challenges. And, as a member, you'll get access to our brand new CDC Searchie Hub, the AI tool created specifically for choir directors!
And now, when you sign up for the annual option, you'll get two months free: 12 months access for the price of 10!
Leading a choir doesn't have to be a DIY endeavor--it's better when it's done together! Come join an awesome online community of choir directors just like you over at:
choirdirectorcorner.com/membership
and hello my friends. Welcome to the choir director corner podcast. My name is matt walker, I'm your host. Thanks so much for stopping by and joining me for today's episode.
Speaker 1:Well, today we are talking about diving into music literacy and I had one of our members of the Choir Director Corner Community Membership recently ask me about how to get started with music literacy with their choir. They are someone that they're teaching middle school to high school in a new position and was basically starting at ground zero. There was very little experience with the singers he was working with, with really anything related to music literacy and so, working with singers that age, his question was how do I get started? What do I do? What's the process? How do I start to incorporate this into my rehearsals?
Speaker 1:And immediately the phrase came to mind sound before sight. Now, if you've been teaching a choir for you know even just a little bit, you know even a few years and you've delved into sight reading music literacy at all, you're probably familiar with this term. Sound before sight. Our general music friends at the elementary level are very familiar with this because they know with those young musicians in their classroom they don't start off right with notation. They're doing all sorts of things to build that sound vocabulary with music. And then you know, slowly then working in solfège, syllables and different rhythm systems and things like that. But everything is by sound, right. There's nothing that they are doing right away identifying or analyzing anything by sight.
Speaker 1:And if you think about how we learn to read, I think about both of my kids, you know, when they were in preschool and going to preschool and they had phonics and it was all just about the different sounds, right. And then eventually they would get to sight words and these were words where they just kind of had to sort of memorize them a little bit, but it was common objects, things that they ran into every single day. And then they would use the different sounds that they learned about in phonics to sort of associate those with the words, the sight words that they were seeing, right, and so it was learning by association. But again, everything was about the sound at the very beginning. There might have been with the phonics, you know, for a particular sound, you know apple, you know there might have been one word that they saw to associate with that, but really it was diving into the sound.
Speaker 1:So really the same type of thing and so, getting into whatever term you want to use, you know, music literacy, sight reading, you know it's all kind of talking about the same thing. Really, how you want to start is with that sound before sight. That's what they're doing at the elementary level, and if you've got singers at the middle school or even the high school level, like I do, that are coming in with very little, if any, choral experience, or maybe you're someone where they've got some choir experience, but the people at your theater, they don't do anything with music literacy, and so maybe the singers are just learning everything by rote, which is okay, there's nothing wrong with learning by rote. However, when it comes to music literacy and working with Soulfish, working with Takademi, that's going to be a little bit of a struggle. Right, started with some of these tools, some of these systems to help them not only read music, but they can also serve as a practice tool as well, right? So getting into the different steps, as far as what this looks like in my choral classroom, step one going from sound to sight Obviously, the first thing is we've got to be able to match pitch right, and so this is at the age levels that I am working with.
Speaker 1:I'm working with high school, but even when I was working with middle school, this is not, you know, a place where we spend a whole lot of time on. Not you know a place where we spend a whole lot of time on. Now, if you're getting into, you know, especially middle school, we've got a lot of changing voices. That might be something that you know. You do some exercises or some games and spend a little bit of extra time at that stage, but really it's not taking us a whole, a whole lot of time at this stage. Yeah, general music at the elementary level sure, they're spending a whole lot of time doing singing games, all sorts of things you know, call and response, just singing back and forth and having fun with it. Right, and that's sort of what I would suggest as well is finding an activity, a game, something like that, where they can just practice this, you know, just singing back and forth, a type of call and response, and at the same time you can sort of work tonal memory a little bit as well. So one, you know I'm going to talk about some different rehearsal games or activities for each of these steps in my process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so for this one where you're just looking at matching pitch and I'm also working on some tonal memory as well is what I call interval telephone. So you remember the old, you know the kids game telephone where you line up, you know, and people that are on a team they line up and someone says something, you know, to the second person. The first person says something to the second person and the idea is that they pass it along by whispering it to the person next to them and then you see if the person at the end is got it correct as far as how the message started out at the beginning. Does it end up being the same at the end or is there lots of funny things that happened to it along the way? So, in a similar vein here, dividing the singers up into teams, up into teams, and so then, just like with telephone, where there's a thing that starts off at the beginning, singing just a simple two bar melody, you know, just using a neutral syllable, you know use do or day or la, or whatever, and so for the different teams, you know taking them to the side and okay, here is your two bar melody La, la, la, la, la, la, la, and then they go and they have to silently or silently as they can, as quietly as they can, sing that to the person that's next to them. And the goal is that they pass it along accurately so that the person at the end of their telephone line can accurately sing the original melody that you sang to those very first singers on each line.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's like a game of telephone. So they each sort of get to practice singing and then also echoing the person that sings to them, right, so they're analyzing in their brain and it gets a little bit like a call and response in a way. But again, testing that tonal memory, building up that tonal memory, and then, you know, kind of makes it fun too as sort of a little gamification of the activity. And so then, after the people on the end of each of the telephone lines as they sing, whoever's closest then wins that round, and then the singers rotate, so whoever was at the end they get to go now to the beginning of the line and everyone just moves down a slot. So that's a fun way.
Speaker 1:You can do this with middle school, you can do this with middle school, you can do this with high school. It's a fun way to get them and, just in, you know, a non-stressful sort of way, just practicing, just simply having fun. You know it's a singing game and they don't even know it, but they're working on matching pitch and they're working on tonal memory. So this is a great exercise, especially for those singers that they're just coming in. They don't have any sort of experience, and so it's like in the middle there they're singing it very quietly to the person next to them and so no one is is hearing them sing, which is often one of the more stressful things, right? They're afraid to have others hear them sing. Well, you're just singing to the person next to you, that's all it is. So interval telephone yeah, for simply just working on matching pitch.
Speaker 1:The second step of this, then, is I want them to get proficient with singing with solfège syllables. Yeah, I just want them getting used to the syllables and we do the hand signs as well, we start to add some of that in, but really just getting used to singing with solfège syllables and sort of you know, how does the solfège scale work? Where are the syllables at in that scale? Working on singing the different intervals with solfège, that sort of thing, yeah. So I'm giving them quite a bit of time. For those singers that are inexperienced, quite a bit of time at this stage of the process.
Speaker 1:One of the activities or games that you can do, I call it syllable stress, and so again, I'm dividing them up into teams. And so team one is composing, and by composing I mean they're simply writing out the syllables of a two bar melody, and I usually give them at the beginning very basic parameters. You know seven counts, that's all it is. You know all quarter notes, and so they have to write out do mi fa, so mi do re, that sort of thing, right? And so the team one writes out the melody with soulfish, and then team two is the team then that has to sing that melody back to them, and then it goes on. So then team two does the composing and then team three is the one that sings it back. Yeah, and you can just do this all at the same time where everybody is doing the composing. And you can just do this all at the same time where everybody is doing the composing, and so team two sings team one's melody, team three sings team's two, and you just go back to back to back to back that way.
Speaker 1:So dividing up into teams, a little collaborative competition is what I like to call it. Yeah, but they're just getting practice in giving some syllables. What does this sound like? Yeah, and being able to execute that part of it. And you can do other things too. Or simply, you know, you sing a pattern to them using soulfish and they have to echo it back to you. Yeah, they're really sort of at that beginning stage Again, just a call and response sort of thing, yeah, but getting them used to the syllables and just the proficiency of it, yeah, helping them to become more and more proficient. So this particular activity, they have to do a little bit of the creating. So they have to have certainly a decent level of understanding with how the syllables in the scale work. And then the next group that sings, they have to sort of know with those syllables. How then do we execute that? How then do we sing that, given those particular syllables and those particular intervals and too, so different parts of the skill set that they're having to cover in this activity. It's one of the many reasons I like this activity called syllable stress.
Speaker 1:Now the third part of this process, the third stage, is I want them to now start to translate, and I really do think of it translating I use that word in rehearsal translate from neutral syllables to soulfish. So they've done soulfish to soulfish. But now can they take neutral syllables, just a plain melody, and then can they translate that into soulfish? Yeah, so this requires a higher level of understanding with the relationship between pitch and soulfish. Yeah, soulfish to soulfish, it can be a little bit of an echoing, a calling response. Yeah, but now when you're given those pitches on the neutral syllable, you have to sort of then in your brain convert that into soul fish. So it requires a deeper level of understanding of the relationships of these different pitches and then how that then turns into soulfish. So, translating from neutral syllables to soulfish.
Speaker 1:So for this stage I've got an activity called crack the code and this essentially, if you think back to your undergraduate time and having to do dictation yeah, this is really a form of dictation where I, as the teacher, am singing a pattern on a neutral syllable and then each group and I've got these like these, nine by 11 dry erase marker boards. Yeah, and so each, each group, has a marker board. So then each group then must write down what the solfège syllables would be, given those neutral syllables and you know I preface it where I sing, you know I set the key for them in their ear. You know, do mi, so mi do, so do. And often I will give them a set of parameters that I'm going to follow. For instance, I'm always going to start on do, I'm going to end on do mi, or so I'm only doing quarter notes. You know that sort of thing. So I give them a little bit of parameters as well, so they kind of have a little bit more information as what they're listening for. But then do, do, do, do, do, do, do. I'm singing on a neutral syllable, and then they have to take that, convert that in their brains to soulfish and then they write out the melody using soulfish syllables.
Speaker 1:So then the next step is having the students then compose. They come up with the two bar melody on a neutral syllable and then it goes okay, team one sings their melody on the neutral syllable, team 2 then has to analyze with Soulfish. Or you can do it where Team 1 sings, all the other teams analyze and if they get it correct, then everybody gets points. You can do it sort of you know buzzer style, where you can incorporate game show buzzers and so then whichever team buzzes in, first they are the team, then that gets the opportunity to answer the question, right, that sort of thing. You can do this a lot of different ways, but I started with me singing the patterns on a neutral syllable and then they have to analyze them, identify, analyze with solfege syllables. So I call that one, crack the code.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's stage one, stage two, stage three, and I should say it's probably very obvious, but just as a reminder, there's lots of instruction going on in between these stages. And again I'm at the high school level. Even at the beginning of the year we work through every single piece we do with Soulfish. Yeah, so even for the ones that don't have any experience with soulfish, we are sight reading through the piece, initially on soulfish. So while we are doing these other exercises, going from sound to sight, they're also getting some practice. As far as you know what is the end goal? Right, and that's kind of cool is that I can do these other activities, but they already see, they understand what the end goal is in mind. And so then, after we do this whole process of sound going from sound to sight, by the end of the year they can see when they go to sight read something, how much more proficient they are. You know how much more quickly they pick it up and how much more accurate they are. So, yes, there is also lots of instruction going on in between these stages as well. Yeah, to connect these. But these are just some examples of some of the rehearsal games and activities that you can incorporate for each of these stages.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we've worked on the matching pitch. We've worked on becoming more proficient with Soulfish, both the analysis part of it and then also the singing part of it. We've worked on translating from a neutral syllable to solfège. Now, then, the next stage here is translating, or beginning to translate, from solfège into notation. Okay, so we're starting to introduce the sight portion here. Now, again, they've already had an introduction to this by the time we get to some of these activities, because we've gone through our concert repertoire, initially doing it on soulfish, yeah, so they've had some introduction. But now I'm doing some separate activities, some separate instruction, just focusing on this stage of the process.
Speaker 1:And again, I use that word translate. Often music is compared to a foreign language, right, and I very much think of it as translating. Now, when I was in high school Spanish and I was reading Spanish text. Well, what am I doing In my brain? I am translating that into English, so I'm understanding the meaning, while at the same time I'm also trying to get the pronunciation right, the emphasis, you know, the text emphasis, the syllable emphasis, correct in the actual Spanish right. It's lots of similarities too, which I just love. So stage four Okay, so an activity where you can now start to practice this translating from soulfish into notation, and again, I just call this jump into notation.
Speaker 1:It's something where, again, I am, at the beginning, sort of driving the game, driving the activity where now I'm singing a two-bar melody, but instead of a neutral syllable, now I'm singing the melody on soulfish and now, instead of having to analyze it on soulfish, I'm already giving them the soulfish. Now they are working on taking that soulfish melody that I sing to them and putting it into notation. So you can do this a couple of different ways. Right, the small dry erase marker boards that I have they're a little too small for this, so one I either give them pieces of paper that have basically staff paper, yeah, or there's a musical staff there where they can write out what they're hearing.
Speaker 1:Or in my classroom we also have some very large white marker boards and they're not on the wall like you would normally see, like the old school chalkboard. Ours are actually. They're big rectangles, but they're on walls wheels, and so we can use both sides of them, which is really cool, and so I can sort of wheel them around. So the nice thing and it's already got the staff lines on there, which is so amazing. Yeah, so I don't have to mess around with markers and all that sort of stuff. So if you don't have anything like that in your classroom, that might be something that you ask for at the end of the year. If you've got some extra money to spend, yeah, right, but that does happen. That's a great, great use of funds.
Speaker 1:We use them all the time and it makes things so easy so easy that the groups can come up to these whiteboards and actually write out these exercises that I sing on the whiteboards. Yeah, they're big enough to where they can all sort of work around one of the boards, and then also the staff. The actual staff is big enough to where they've got enough room to write it all out, and it's also legible enough to the other groups too. Yeah, so I am singing the two bar melody in Soulfish and then, as a group they are taking it and then notating it out and again, I give them some specific parameters. I'm using all quarter notes, some specific parameters. I'm using all quarter notes for identifying dough on the staff for this exercise.
Speaker 1:You know, especially if we're just sort of starting out with the notation part of it, I'm not doing anything with key signatures as of yet. Yeah, and I do work on the process of key signatures with my singers so they can work towards being musically independent in that way where if you give them a piece of music, the end goal is that they are able to look at that. They see the key signature, they are able to identify the key which tells them what Do is, and then they can go through their part and identify everything with soulfish. Yeah, that is the goal. So I do work on key signatures.
Speaker 1:But at this point of the process, when we're just working on that, I don't do anything with the key signatures as of yet. I wait till they're more proficient with the analysis part of it. But all I'm doing is I'm just picking a note on the staff and I am assigning that dough. So, for instance, when I draw the treble clef and the time signature on the staff for them, I will take a red marker and I will put a note head on the bottom space, for instance, so they all know that the bottom space is serving as dough, right and so, and also, I usually start on dough as well, yeah, certainly for a while while we're doing activities like this. And so then they know, oh well, there's my first note right there and there's where Do is. So now I can start to identify everything else based off of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so after we've done that for a while and they've gained some proficiency with the actual converting from Soulfish into notation and given anything as far as soulfish, what does that look like in notation? That's then when we start to get into the key signatures, yeah, and figuring out what's the key, and then where does Doe happen? Then, based on that key signature, right and so then I can then add that into the process. Yeah, but the biggest thing is I want to give them practice on whatever they're hearing in solfège. What does then that look like? How does that look when it's put on musical notation, right and so, and you could do it written as well, where you write out the two-bar melody with solfège syllables, and they take it that way. Yeah, but at this point I find I want to get them into the singing more. Yeah, and part of this too is giving them confidence as singers, right, and so maybe at the beginning I, you know, I limit that a little bit, but as we get further and further into this, this becomes. An added benefit as well is that they are becoming more confident singers, right, and so I'm putting them in these groups to do some more creating as well as performing, and so I'll talk a little bit about that here in just a second, using this process to also touch on some of the national music standards. Yeah, if you haven't listened to my previous episode episode 98, about my Choir March Madness listening activity, I talk a lot in that episode about the National Music Standards and particularly the standards that reference responding, and so this process is a great way to get your singers into the creating musical standards as well. So if you want to hit some more of those national music standards, make sure you check out episode 98 on my Choir March Madness listening activity.
Speaker 1:So back to the sound before sight process, and so that was stage four, jumping into notation, where we're translating from soulfish into notation. Now, finally, here we are at the last stage of this process, where we are getting into, then, analyzing notation using soulfish, right, and this is really the end game. If you think about it. The idea is, you know, when they leave us, you know, I think about high school. Yeah, when they leave me from high school, they go on to their college or university or their community choir or their church choir. The goal is for them to be able to look at a piece of music and as they're looking at it, they're able to sing it, but really in their brain they're translating in soulfish, right, just like, again, that foreign language comparison that I was talking about. So they're able to sing it on soulfish and then you can take the sort of the soulfish part out of it and then they're able to sing on whatever text is there, right. So that's the end goal here. That's the end game.
Speaker 1:So here, stage five is analyzing notation using Soulfish. Yeah, and when I say analyzing, also performing as well, right, we want them to. Given any sort of musical notation, how does that then convert into soulfish? Can I analyze it? Yeah, can I label it? Can I identify it? But then can I also then, given that, can I, once I see that, can I sing it using soulfish, yeah, and using soulfish as a tool to be able to sing those different intervals, right, and it's also a great practice tool as well.
Speaker 1:So, different activities, different games that you could use with this stage, one that I like to do called Suppose, we Compose, and again we're getting into the creating national music standards here, where team one is going to compose a two-bar melody on the staff, okay. So again in my classroom they're going up to the marker board and they are composing right on the marker board, yeah, and then the next team must then write in the solfege syllables and then sing the melody on solfege, yeah, so they are doing the identification part of it first and then they are doing the singing part of it, yeah. Now, that's the sort of the first part of this stage, yeah, so. So I'm letting them write those syllables in. Now, the danger here is that when they go to sing it they're just looking at the solfège syllables and not the actual notation, right. But here's the thing they're gonna need some practice still identifying the notation that they see with soulfish, right. So this is sort of the training wheels version, yeah. So once they can do that, where you know they've labeled it with soulfish and then they are singing it the next time we do this activity they go ahead and compose and then when the next group comes around now it's no longer writing it in, now they're just going to sing the melody in notation as they see it on the board. They're going to sing it as a group using solfish, yeah, and that's it. So there's no writing in, no labeling. They're able to sort of skip that step. You know we're taking the training wheels off and they're able to then translate right from the notation that they see into singing soulfish, yeah.
Speaker 1:And again, this is what I start at the very beginning of the year we start this process, all of our concert repertoire. This is what we're doing. So it's sort of come full circle, yeah, where they are getting to that point. And again the end game is, you know, someday, when they get to, you know, be all grown-up singers in their choir somewhere that are they translating into soulfish? Yeah, but they're just going ahead and singing whatever text is there, and I use the comparison.
Speaker 1:I sing as a part of this choir here, that's in the area. It's a lot of local choir directors and there's also some people that you know sang in college and things like that, and it's a very limited rehearsal process. You know, for any given concert we might do four Sundays for three hours each time, and that's it right. That's it. So when we get that new set of music thankfully we all have enough experience to where we're all kind of literally and figuratively on the same page we're not going through it in rehearsal on Soulfish, we're simply taking it and we're simply reading it on whatever the text is there.
Speaker 1:But as I tell my singers the first time I get, that I might not sing it, sing through it on soulfish, and you know I might go through and find a really challenging spots. You know three or four measures here or there and maybe I go through it there. But now I am just singing through the piece on text but in my brain I am looking at the notes on the staff and my brain is translating into soulfish. So I am, as I'm singing that text, how I'm able to then, you know, sing those particular notes, those particular intervals, is because I'm seeing all of that in Soulfish. Yeah, it's like the matrix. I'm seeing all of the code fly before my eyes, that sort of thing, and I give them that example, like, oh, that's really cool. It's like yeah, it's super cool, it's super fun being able to sing in an ensemble like that.
Speaker 1:It's like but these are all people where they have years and years of experience and they've invested in this process. Right, and that's where the real kicker is right, we have to get our singers to invest into this process, but the more they invest not only do, the more they get out of it, like anything else, but it's so much more rewarding because you are able to pick up music more quickly, which means you get to do more challenging music, which the vast majority of the time, is going to be music that's more interesting and more fun. Yeah, you know, music doesn't have to be complicated to be enjoyable, but oftentimes it sure helps, right, and so, getting them to invest in this process, it's going to have so many benefits in their musical lives and it's going to improve their experience in your ensembles, right, because we know, in the end, this is what really improves the end product, right, we're able to get there more quickly. End product right. We're able to get there more quickly, which means we are able to then spend more time on more of the musical elements. We're able to spend more time on vocal technique, you know, on blend and all of these other things right, if we are able to get through the music literacy part more quickly. And it makes them more independent musicians.
Speaker 1:And every single year I have someone you know first thing in the fall that had just graduated, that emails me and says Mr Walker, to be perfectly honest, I really hated it when we did SoulFish and choir. But they said but I just went into the audition for the top choir at my college or my university and I got in as a freshman and the director was so impressed with how well I read music and how well I did with the sight reading. Like, there you go. It all makes it worthwhile because it opens up all of these different opportunities to you that you might not necessarily have had those opportunities.
Speaker 1:So, my friends, getting our singers to invest in this process, yeah, going from sound to sight and again, here are the stages Matching pitch, get proficient with singing with soulfish, just getting used to that, the soulfish scale. Then we go from neutral syllable to soulfish. Then we start going from solfège to notation, and that is then when we get really the closest to sort of our end game. Our end goal is then taking that notation and being able to translate that, convert that into solfège, and that allows us to use solfège as a wonderful practice tool to learn our part, to sing different intervals, to do all sorts of different things. Well, I hope today's episode has given you some guidance as far as if you've got some beginners in music literacy and how we get them to where we want them to be. It all starts with sound before sight and I hope this gives you some ideas as far as some activities that you can build into your rehearsal process.
Speaker 1:And if you're looking for more ideas like this, this is one of the wonderful topics that we discuss inside of the Choir Director Corner community membership.
Speaker 1:And again, the question that sort of precipitated this whole podcast episode came from one of our members. So if you are interested in diving into topics just like music literacy, go on over to choirdirectorcornercom, forward slash membership and check it out. Well, thanks so much for listening to this episode. My friends, if you enjoyed the episode, if you've been a longtime fan of the podcast, if you would go over to wherever you are listening to this podcast episode, whether it be Spotify or Apple Music. If you would be so kind as to give us a five-star rating and review, that would be fantastic, because that helps other choir directors just like you to find the podcast, and it helps me in my goal to help as many choir directors as possible. Well, thanks again for listening and until next time, keep being awesome. Are you looking for resources that will save you time and frustration? Want to dive deeper into topics related to your teaching? Then check out the Choir Director Corner community membership over at choirdirectorcornercom. Forward slash membership.