Fingering the notes while singing can provide a kinesthetic anchor for brass and woodwind players.   This isn't exactly the same thing as Kodaly hand signs, but it does help.  I watched a group of trombone players who were tired from many hours of rehearsal work on a section of jazz band music by singing and working their slides.  The singing was really impressive...  

 

In fact, count singing while fingering might be an ideal method for doing this in band class and is worth some thought.  

 

I applaud the fact that you two are working together.  I was fortunate to attend a high school where the choir and band director were close friends and worked together to the benefit of many students.  These individuals are now both retired and are both still good friends.

If you could get the elementary music teachers involved as well you could develop a K-12 music curriculum that would bring students into your band and choir that were much better prepared musically.  But perhaps you have arleady done this. 

 

I hope there are more good ideas from the rest of the list wisdom. 

You might want to do some research on Edwin Gordon's Music Learning Theory.  He believes that audiation, hearing the music in your mind, can help musicians with things like phrasing, intonation, and other aspects of musicality.  If you can find the article from the Music Educators Journal - Teaching Audiation in Instrumental Classes, by Bruce Dalby © 1999 - that would be a good place to start. 

I'm a firm believer in solfège for choral/vocal sight-reading skills, but I'm not sure a pure Kodály approach would be the most effective way to go.  A lot would depend on what musical experiences they've had prior to picking up their instruments.  Is the goal to make them better musicians or better technical players?  The difference between an instrumentalist and a singer is that, for instrumentalists, the music reading is directly connected to the fingers.  Vocalists have a different physical connection to reading because their body is their instrument.  Brass, and to some extent, string players, initially need the stronger aural skills because one fingering doesn't just equal one note.  I agree with Robert about developing the curriculum to prepare students in the younger grades for participation in band and choir.  Ideally, they should come into 5th grade with basic music literacy as well as a strong aural vocabulary.  If every 5th grader could read basic notation on the piano and/or recorder, and aurally recognize and sing appropriate intervals and melodies, then the job of the band director is musicality.  But even for me, as a high school choir director, I find myself reviewing "FACE" and "Every Good Boy Does Fine," so I know the ideal situation does not always exist.  

I teach a introduction instrument class to high school students.  I often use audiation and singing to help with intonation.  Even though it's an intro course, I like to discuss ensemble play to stress the importance of proper tuning and intonation.  Sometimes it's a simple as: "Listen to this person play the note and tell me if it sounds right.  Is it sharp or flat? (high or low?) What should he/she do to fix it?"

Hope this helps.  Contact me off-site if you'd like the article.

Kristin

Jason, congratulations on the collaboration!

 

Rhythm syllable suggestion:

 

There's a system,commonly thought to be from Gordon,  which was actually created by a band director, which he got from a french system, I believe - can't remember the specific details of the history. There's more to it, but basically, the word "doo" is always on the beat, "de" is always the off beat or and of the beat... "doo de" for duple and "doo da di" for triple. It operates based on the function of the beat and not just the"say ta when you see a quarter note, ti for an eighth... no matter where it is" method.So students learn rhythm rather than notation. It'd work well for instrumental articulation and it produces good vowels naturally!

 

Putting it with repertoire:

 

I'd bet it'd be faster to teach rhythm syllables (or numbers, whatever) and get the kids to apply it to their part successfully than solfege. For each skill however, teach them as a group either on exercises based on their repertoire - use different lines from different sections, but have the whole group sing or say the syllables. It solidifies the sections part, the skill for the whole group, and might broaden their understanding of the ensemble. Then, as they can, have them apply the skill to new repertoire (or exercises based on the repertoire) - basically working the skill(s) until they own it. This might take longer, but the skills will be set, leaving much room for musicality (and they'll start moving faster as well.)

 

Hope this helps

I strongly second the nothion of using Edwin Gordon's materials. My band director is a big proponent of Grdon, and I incoporate a lot of Gordon into teaching sight reading to my choir. I believe that there are band method books written by Gordon - try an Google search and i bet you'll find them.

 

Mary Jane Phillips 

Sorry - I was typing and talking on the phone at the same time. It should say "the notion" and Gordon should be spelled correctly and all my "I's" should be capitalized. That's what I get for multi-tasking! :-)

 

Mary Jane

Hello Jason,

I teach quite a bit of beginning band and have my students solfege the tunes in their method book before playing. Like some of the other postings, I would recommend a sound-before-sight approach that reflects Gordon's Music Learning Theory pedagogy.

The key is that the solfege must be AUTOMATIC so that the ears and the voice automatically hear the relationship between resting tone and the other pitches.

To begin, try teaching three-note tonal patterns away from the method book. I begin with patterns of the tonic triad and then move to stepwise patterns within the first five notes of the scale. In this way, students will be able to both sing and play the patterns. Next add dominant patterns and later subdominant patterns.

Start with learning by rote:

1. T sings patterns on a neutral syllable such as bum and S echo-sing.

2. T sings patterns on solfege and S echo-sing on solfege. Later add the hand signs. Learn a maximum of 3 new hand signs in one lesson.

3. T sings on solfege and S echo-play patterns on instruments.

Move to associating sound with syllable and playing by ear:

4. T sings on neutral and S echo with solfege.

5. T sings on neutral and S echo-play by ear on their instruments.

6. T signs while students sing. (This step can come as Step #4, if you prefer.)

Now add the reading component:

7. Here I usually have students read pattern worksheets that I type out. However, you can also notate the scale on the board and conduct simple reading drills from the white board. Again, use just a few pitches at a time (do-sol) and later add la and ti.

8. Play a familiar song from the teacher's hand signs. Hot Cross Buns and Au Claire de La Lune are good 3-note songs for starting.

9. On solfege, sing familiar songs from the method book. These would be songs the students have already learned to play on their instruments. Begin with Hot Cross Buns and then find some songs you did not do in Step #8 above, perhaps Merrily We Roll Along.

10. Now, on solfege, sing unfamiliar songs from the method book. Begin with mi-re-do songs and then move to sol-fa-mi-re-do songs. Later add the other pitches of the scale to make the full octave.

All of this happens in Bb concert before moving on to other keys.

It sounds like a lot of steps, but I've found that when I skip steps, the solfege is not automatic and my students do not develop independent skills in singing. When I teach them in this sequence, and when I choose suitable, sequenced repertoire from the method book, then they are successful. (Speaking of method book repertoire, you'll want to hand-select and sequence carefully the songs for singing.)

And just a few minutes each day will go a long way.

I hope this helps a little bit, and please feel free to contact me if you have questions or ideas. Whatever you do, any singing is generally helpful, so you have all of my good wishes!

Hello Jason,

Your instruemental colleague is well advised to include solfege in instrumental teaching.

During my 35 years of instrumental teaching I constantly wrote exercises for my elementary and intermediate school students.What evolved was a series of solfege exercises which fit the constraints and needs of students to develope musically on all of the wind instruments.

The essential exercises I found to work best are those found in two books called Elementary and Intermediate Technique for Band. They are intended as supplememntary material to be used alongside of any basic instrumental text.

The Intermediate book is made up of 55 exercises in twelve keys all playable by young students. Really it is solfege adapted to a band enviornment and I call it that on the web site.hofmeistermusic.net.I know of no other materials like it for band. What I do know is that if the material is sensibly consistently used it will help to produce young musicains who can play in tune with decent technique.