Asking a question

Is there anyone out there who could tell me how to acquire a Curwen Modulator?

I used one briefly last year, and came away amazed at the results.  I've knocked up a very basic imitation to work with for now.  It's done splendid service for teaching hymn tunes at lightening speed over the last fortnight.  One of my adult choristers recognized the concept and said it was good.  He then said he used to have one of the real charts, but didn't keep it.

With the start of term I'm starting to apply a lot of things that have come out of my self-appraisal over the summer.  Having had twelve months standing in front of a room full of young choristers, not to mention gaining mastery of the basics of teaching from a Kodaly perspective, there was a lot to sift through and think about.  Hence some of the blog silence over the last few weeks.

One thing I am aiming to do this year is integrate solfa with teaching the stave.  Young folk sometimes find it very difficult to assimilate the idea of pitch going up and down.  A modulator helps to make the visual links a bit clearer, and then (and only then) should it be translated onto the stave.  Using it with handsigns introduces a kinesthetic element.

A year ago I would have said this is a very cumbersome way of going about teaching music literacy, but it has a couple of advantages.  Most notably, it helps to define the tonal space -- it's much easier to teach intervals using solfa.  The relationships between pitches are clearer.  If you keep teaching the stave in parallel with working on solfa the leap isn't so difficult to make.  So long as you avoid using solfa as a method of rote learning it can be very beneficial for teaching the stave if you start by asking the choristers to begin by identifying DOH.

Another thing I'm going to aim for is to relax about teaching rhythm.  Perhaps it's a reflection of my own earlier weakness in this area that I have always taught it up front, which means it becomes the primary way of approaching new material.  Getting the rhythm right is vital, but not if it crowds out learning the rest of the score (i.e: pitch...).

And now a resolution for the small band of readers out there.  I'm going to try to put some more choir training activities up here this year.  It probably won't surprise you to know that these are the pages that get the most hits on this blog.  Who knows, it may increase my traffic...