Creative music for children; a plan of training based on the natural evolution of music, including the making and playing of instruments, dancing, singing, poetry by Coleman Satis N. (Satis Narrona) 1878-1961

Author:Coleman, Satis N. (Satis Narrona), 1878-1961
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Music, Musical instruments
Publisher: New York, Putnam
Published: 1922-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

19. Transverse Reed Flute

20. Wheat-Straw Clarinet

Correlation of Singing and Playing 113

As they had gradually increased their range of singing tones, so they gradually enlarged the compass of the tunes they played; and from five- and six-note melodies they passed easily to playing songs that involved the complete scale and more. Habits of listening carefully to the intervals in new songs and of recognizing the intervals they sang, made it very easy for the children, after a little experience, to play by ear most of the melodies they sang. In playing, they used numbers for their intervals, as they had in analyzing their songs. In fact it was in playing that I had first tried, years before, the use of numbers. I remembered that as a child I had thought only of the number of the interval when I played by ear naturally, and I could think of no easier means of guiding children to play by ear intelligently. By intelligent "playing by ear I mean a conscious recognition of the interval heard and an instant placement of it on the instrument; and it is my belief that this kind of playing is an end greatly to be desired, based as it must be on a sound musical understanding.

As soon as the children knew the number of the scale interval which each tone of the song represented, and knew the rhythm of the melody, it was easy to transfer that knowledge to any instrument

114 Correlation or Ringing and rlaying

which they knew how to manipulate, if it had the range capacity for it, without any thought of key or letter name. Nothing stood between the song and the instrument; no theory of music, no symbols, not even names of keys—only the relation of sounds to each other. If the child could sing a song and know what he was singing, that was all that was necessary; he could play it. This foundation leads not only to intimacy with the instrument, but in later study to easy and natural transposition from key to key. Each new instrument that the child made or learned to use, served as a new medium through which to express his familiar tunes, and most of the children habitually wanted to play a melody on every instrument they knew how to manipulate.

After the children had acquired a little freedom in playing simple melodies and after several had learned the same tunes, they combined their playing, first on instruments of the same kind, and afterwards on different kinds of instruments tuned together. Their first ensemble efforts were, of course, in unison, and they soon realized the need of having their instruments tuned accurately and in unison. It was interesting to observe how rapidly the children, even those four and five years

Correlation of Singing and Playing 115

of age, developed the ability to tell when a note was out of tune. The daily tuning of the glasses gave them opportunity for much experience in pitch discrimination from the very beginning of their

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