Teaching Melody

 

At this point your students are understanding the big picture of macro versus micro beat, note subdivisions, and meter, but as we all know there is a lot more to music than that! The addition of a melody, creates a bigger picture of how music works. Blocks are built vertically and horizontally. Isolating just one element at a time can be a very worthwhile practice for students feeling overwhelmed. When students are familiar with playing and singing a range of pitches, Beat Blocks enable students to easily create counter melodies as they made complementary rhythms before. Use solfege blocks to transpose between keys easily or to focus on la-based, do-based, or other tonal centers, or use the note name blocks to identify specific pitches. Students translating their compositions to paper or DAWs can identify the treble or bass clef placements on the backside of the blocks.