Simpedia

Kerry H., Australia

One thing you can do to break it down into a smaller step, is to have the students play the Rhythm Tracks using only one finger, so that they are not having to think of the FSS (Five Steps of Sound) at the same time as the Rhythm Tracks. This may be all that is needed to help them with that transition, but they definitely must continue ‘voicing’ the Rhythm Tracks as they play.

However, if students are not doing daily practice on the various stages of the Reading Rhythm process, they will not ‘get’ the rhythms. This process does not happen by magic and the students must be doing some daily at home in order to make progress. You have to ask the students if they practiced it. But I’ve found you need to be very specific in the way you ask them if they’ve done it. For example, if you say to them: ‘Did you practise the Reading Rhythm exercises this week?’, they may say ‘yes’, but have only done it once or twice. I ask the students, ‘how many days did you practise the Reading Rhythm exercises this week?’ Their answers can be very revealing.

Also, they do not need to be spending hours on this, but they do need to be spending a few minutes each day doing it. It is important to explain to the students that in this process you will not be able to move forward unless they absolutely master the steps along the way. There is nowhere to go to until then. With songs, you can sometimes move forward and the students can be getting a song more smooth or fluent as you move onto the next song, but with the Reading Process, this is not the case. The responsibility is with the student for the pace that you can go with this, and the students and the parents need to be clear about that. You just keep telling them that.

Having said that, I have also found that sometimes students make it to the stage of playing the Rhythm Tracks onto the keyboard and they just can’t manage it. All it shows is that they haven’t got the earlier stages strongly enough or a part of themselves enough. Maybe I have not managed the process as well as I could and have not noticed that they don’t have it down strongly enough, or perhaps they have just managed to do it with others in the class, or when they are replicating you, but do not have it at a more generative level. If you get to any step and the student can’t seem to do it, it indicates they have been able to ‘fluke’ their way through the previous steps. If this happens, no problem, you just treat it exactly the way you would if someone has moved forward in a piece of music too quickly. For example if they are putting something hands together in a song and you discover that they haven’t got one hand working separately, then they just have to step backwards and go over the hands separately. Likewise with the Reading Rhythm process, you would just step backwards and have them demonstrate the earlier steps to you, to make sure that they are really strong in the previous steps. When you find the spot where they are weak, just go over it and have them stay there, until they can demonstrate that they have it, then move forward through the other steps again.

One thing that I have found to be extremely important, and can often be the ‘missing link’ is that they need to be able to do one ingredient (this applies to them doing it in their feet, and also in their fingers) while ‘feeling’ the pulse of the others. For example, they need to be able to maintain singles, but at the same time, be feeling where the quads will fall or where the doubles will fall. I might have the students marching (seated) and voicing the singles, but then I would voice gently underneath, the quads or the doubles. I might have them say ‘Left’ loudly and then quietly say the remaining pulses as quads, for example ‘Left, (bum, bum, bum)’. This helps to get them to clearly get the relationship between the different ingredients and be able to switch successfully from one to the other.

A fun, but very useful exercise for shared classes is to have half the class doing one ingredient, while the other half is doing another, and then when you say ‘and switch’ they have to change over to the other ingredient without stopping the rhythm. You could also do this in a private lesson with a child, by having the student do one ingredient and the parent doing the other, but it works most successfully when there are larger numbers in the room. (Another advantage of running shared classes!)

Kerry H., Australia

I hope I’m understanding your question correctly, but as I explained earlier, there is nowhere to go, unless they have the previous steps down. With regards to them getting bored, I believe that there are some things in life that are boring, but we just have to do them. For example brushing our teeth each day. You still have to do it if you want to keep your teeth healthy.

It goes along with the Relationship Conversation – a valley in a relationship can be boredom. The student has to learn how to push themselves past the boredom for what it will open up for them as a result. You need to remind them of all the wonderful advantages of being able to read music – of being able to teach themselves other pieces of music that they love and want to learn that are outside the programme, and that it will allow them to be able to progress into the Jazz process further down the track, a very exciting programme – to name just a couple of advantages! This is also an opportunity to put the responsibility back to them – that if they are bored with this, then they need to do more at home, so that you can move them forward to the next steps!