The youngest children were quick to understand that I considered counting an integral skill to possess in music.
For me, it was a key stacking skill for success in music.
Mind you, I usually taught children starting at age five so many of them could count to ten if not a bit higher.
They were very proud when they could count to the number that I requested and stop.
Of course, I was waving my hands and jumping up and down when they got to that number, smiling from ear to ear and so proud of their counting success.
That was quickly followed by tabula rasa expression with no indication of how I felt. It was was with that ennui-induced face that would then issue another number that was a little bit higher.
The children learned to understand that those numbers would determine how many notes we played, how many sticks we held, how many steps we marched, how many days we were going to have music that week, and how many pluses or minuses they received on the chalkboard. “Ten” was a crucial number: they wanted to make sure their behavior stayed at ten and didn’t drift down to a nine or an eight.
After all, just as it is much easier to fall down a mountain than climb it, it was easier to let things slip down a few digits and more laborious to climb their way back to a “ten”.
The other indispensable element about counting is that it can mark the passage of time.
It takes a child so many seconds to count from one to ten and a few more to count from one to twenty.
As I would have them count to those numbers, I would draw an invisible rainbow with my pointer finger in the air, starting with the first number at one end of the rainbow and the last number on the other.
As we counted to larger numbers, it took longer for my finger to draw the rainbow. This is it key component to performing music, understanding the path of time.
I would often have them replicate my “rainbow move” when they were singing long notes in songs. I was a way for them to project the note to its required duration.
With time (no pun intended), kids learned that counting was a way of measuring elements of the music they made.
Over time (NOT A PUN!), the counting fades and their internal clock takes over. Even the youngest children found they could hear four or eight beats more easily than if they counted them.
James Taylor wrote, “The secret ‘o life is enjoying the passage of time” and making music bore witness to that lyric every time we made music in our music room.
Many a time at the forty-minute mark when I said, “Okay, time to clean up, it’s time to go”, the kids roared in dismay with “But we just got here!”
They learn that the cliché “time flies when you’re having fun” didn’t even begin to describe the joy they had in music or the speed of time.
Time didn’t fly in our music classes and chorus rehearsals: it evaporated!
Once you can adorn the passage of time with a beautiful sound, you know you have created music.
I think Leonard Bernstein’s, Betty Comden’s, and Adolph Green’s song from “Our Town” sums it up best.
Here is Blossom Dearie singing “Some Other Time”.
For me, it was a key stacking skill for success in music.
Mind you, I usually taught children starting at age five so many of them could count to ten if not a bit higher.
They were very proud when they could count to the number that I requested and stop.
Of course, I was waving my hands and jumping up and down when they got to that number, smiling from ear to ear and so proud of their counting success.
That was quickly followed by tabula rasa expression with no indication of how I felt. It was was with that ennui-induced face that would then issue another number that was a little bit higher.
The children learned to understand that those numbers would determine how many notes we played, how many sticks we held, how many steps we marched, how many days we were going to have music that week, and how many pluses or minuses they received on the chalkboard. “Ten” was a crucial number: they wanted to make sure their behavior stayed at ten and didn’t drift down to a nine or an eight.
After all, just as it is much easier to fall down a mountain than climb it, it was easier to let things slip down a few digits and more laborious to climb their way back to a “ten”.
The other indispensable element about counting is that it can mark the passage of time.
It takes a child so many seconds to count from one to ten and a few more to count from one to twenty.
As I would have them count to those numbers, I would draw an invisible rainbow with my pointer finger in the air, starting with the first number at one end of the rainbow and the last number on the other.
As we counted to larger numbers, it took longer for my finger to draw the rainbow. This is it key component to performing music, understanding the path of time.
I would often have them replicate my “rainbow move” when they were singing long notes in songs. I was a way for them to project the note to its required duration.
With time (no pun intended), kids learned that counting was a way of measuring elements of the music they made.
Over time (NOT A PUN!), the counting fades and their internal clock takes over. Even the youngest children found they could hear four or eight beats more easily than if they counted them.
James Taylor wrote, “The secret ‘o life is enjoying the passage of time” and making music bore witness to that lyric every time we made music in our music room.
Many a time at the forty-minute mark when I said, “Okay, time to clean up, it’s time to go”, the kids roared in dismay with “But we just got here!”
They learn that the cliché “time flies when you’re having fun” didn’t even begin to describe the joy they had in music or the speed of time.
Time didn’t fly in our music classes and chorus rehearsals: it evaporated!
Once you can adorn the passage of time with a beautiful sound, you know you have created music.
I think Leonard Bernstein’s, Betty Comden’s, and Adolph Green’s song from “Our Town” sums it up best.
Here is Blossom Dearie singing “Some Other Time”.
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