Does anyone have a list of different words they use to demonstrate different note patterns and rhythms instead of 1-a-+-a 2-a-+-a etc?

Any thoughts would be welcome - Im trying to widen my current teaching aids.

Thanks.

Nicola

ta = a crochet/quarter note

ti-ti = two quavers/eighth notes

tiki-tiki = four semiquavers/sixteenth notes

ti-tiki = a quaver and two semi-quavers

tiki-ti = two semi-quavers and a quaver

tim-ki = a dotted quaver and a semi-quaver

ti-kim = a semi-quaver and a dotted quaver

Tai-ti (pronounced tie) = dotted crotchet and a quaver

Syn-co-pa = quaver, crotchet, quaver

Tri-o-la = triplets

Ta-a (To-o_ = a minim

Ta-a-a- (Three-e-e) = a dotted minim



Someone trained in Kodaly musicianship will be able to help you a lot more.

Thanks for the Kodaly reference. I am looking for everyday words such as bumble, bee, bumble bee, huckleberry, hipopotamus, and ones that can be used to construct a rhythm song etc.
Of course, I guess I could go through a small dictionary and put them into syllable and rhythm order! Im just seeing what other words teachers use.
Nicola

http://www.abrsm.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=41219&hl= This thread has a few ideas.

I use tea for crotchet,
Cof-fee for two quavers
Pe-li-can for triplet
Bob the buil-der for dotted crotchet, quaver, crotchet, crotchet.

I use

tea for a crotchet

cof-fee for two quavers

pine-apple for quaver and two semiquavers

pepper-mint for two semiquavers and a quaver

and I find this a useful group.

(ed) I forgot to include co-ca-co-la for a group of 4 semiquavers

There is a page at the beginning of Oxford Piano Time 3 which has some similar ideas.

crotchet = cake
two quavers = chocolate
three quavers = hot chocolate

But I find that I do get very hungry after rhythm lessons...

Paracetamol is great for the pain of even 5s

I use hippopotamus but think paracetamol works better.
What can you use for even 7's and 6's?

I don't use words very often as I have created a different way of dealing with rhythm. I have made some card packs that I use for beginners, or for more advanced pupils if they are struggling with a rough passage. The cards start with the whole note, and the rest show fractions of the whole note. Therefore in each pack there is a card for the whole note, two for the half notes, 4 for the quarter notes, and 8 for the quavers. We line these up along a table and use pencils for bar lines. I use both the English and American terms. They love it. We start by clapping out simple rhythms, but soon they are composing their own more complex rhythm patterns. It also makes the problem of describing compound time much easier. I sometimes allow them to take the packs home, to 'play' with! I do use words sometimes to clarify a difficulty, but not very often. 'Supper for two' is a good combination for a triplet followed by a crotchet.

People know this already, but I use rhythm names (similar to the ones PianoNotes describes) and swear by them. They are simple and effective .

I have often had former pupils tell me that at their new school they've been made to use tea/coffee/caterpillar etc. and have all said, 'Why can't we use the proper names?'

I have to agree with Cyrilla on this one - not because I wouldn't necessarily use words because I think they can be useful - but because French is simply not rhythmic enough. It isn't stress timed and syllables in a phrase tend to have equal weight.

Yes, I've had the same. You have to be careful, kids get sick of the feeling things are being 'dumbed down' for them. The same goes for the million and one Abba medleys out there for Junior orchestras, and they come to me and say 'why won't they let us play Mozart?!'

I don't use these extra words much, but if I really need to, I'll find ones that suit the personality of the pupil in question, or better still, get them to come up with some of their own.

I guess most of us use what we find works

I certainly wouldn't bother to change if a pupil was using something that already worked. It tends to be in the early stages I find these things useful - once the idea is assimilated it often isn't needed again, except perhaps as a bit of revision - maybe in sight-reading.

I tend to prefer moving onto the proper names as soon as possible but at work the common words used are:
Cat = crotchet
Monkey = quavers (causes problems when you have one by itself!)
Daaawg = minim
Snaaaaaaaaake = semibreve
Anteater, Elephant, Kangaroo etc etc

These are more often used by the curriculum team rather than the instrument teachers. We found that by using alternative words that all began with T, some children learnt how to tongue without needing too much explanation.

Apologies to the non French speakers and maybe you already know this Aquarelle but the French note names for the shorter notes do work reasonably well (with a slight variant for "double croche"). Try:
quatre-double, triolet, deux croches, noire.
Blanche works if you remember that you don't replay the note on the second syllable but just let it go past.

My dyslexic daughter found the kodaly "ti" "ta" etc. impossibly difficult.

I'm sorry to hear this, kerioboe. I have taught many dyslexic students of all ages and they have all found rhythm names really helpful - mostly because of their consistency and ease of syllable pronunciation.

Of course we all use 'what works' for us. Sorry - I just have a real 'thing' about tea/coffee/caterpillar etc. - makes me cringe. Apologies to all those who use them!

The only trouble with these rhythm words/syllables is that, round here, if somebody says ta-ta, it means they are off to the pub or somewhere!

Yes, I've tried some of these because a few of my children had already met them. And you are right. They do work - though you have to say them in a slightly more rhythmic way than they would occur in normal speech. In practice I use mostly the "taa ta-t??" thing but the note names do help beginners to make the link between the names of the note values and the rhythms they represent in combination.

I suspect what maggie-may says about using anything that works is about the best solution.

Of course the rhythm names I use are adaptations of the orginal Galin/Paris/Cheve French time names, so I guess French students would be familiar with these?

I have found suprisingly few who are. I thought, when I started teaching here, that they would all know them but in fact, what I teach on the whole as" taa t? taa" they had learnt as "deux croches noire." The solf?ge teacher in our Association never uses French time names. In fact, I seem to be the only teacher in the group who does - and I'm the only Brit!

I have seen analogies and word games for rhythms used by other teachers, but I wonder why they are needed.

We just count the note values themselves, such as One, Two, Three, Four, for Four/four time.

If there is are four quavers, we go One and Two and.

For a minum, we just count One Two. For a semibreve - just play and hold one two three four.

For a quaver and two semiquaver group - I just tap or clap the rhythm to the pupil, and ask them to clap it back. Once they get it, it sticks! No need for word games.

From what I have seen children that use words instead of hearing the actual rhythms take longer to really catch on.

Repetition and mimickry - it seems to work for us!

Once they can hear the rhythm itself in their head, then they are ready to learn to play real music in its complexity.

Yes, we count the note values (sometimes) in the early stages.

One-and-two-and etc for quavers does not work for everyone in my experience.

The syllables individually are easy enough to pronounce but one effect of my daughter's dyselxia is that she has problems with polysyballic words and can't read/say the syllables in the right order. As soon as you have several kodaly syllables together you have, in effect, a polysyballic word so they would come out back the front.

Her teacher last year was dyslexic herself and she finally enabled my daughter to develop a steady pulse and better rhythm by using the French rhythm names triolet/double croche etc. which I mentioned earlier.

This is my usual approach, but there are times when I find I need to think harder to get the idea across to small children. I have my own daft 'dum dum dumpty dum' etc repertoire, and some words as well that fit in certain contexts - most have been mentioned here - but I'd like to try to consolidate all this a bit better in my own head.

Cyrilla - is there a website we can look at that lists all the Kodaly syllables? I don't what other people's experiences are, but I have had more problems in this area recently than I did ten years ago. I'm not taking on younger children now, but the younger children that I do have seem less naturally rhythmic than they did in the past...I wonder why this is? Less skipping games and that sort of thing? Or do you think it's just coincidence?

I think fewer and fewer parents are playing rhythm games with, and singing to, their young babies/toddlers....... I met a mum on my way to nursery the other day who said to me (as part of a conversation) "I don't do singing"........ I found it very sad, as I've always sung to junior - even if it's just his favourite theme tunes!!!! And I've tried to do rhythm and bouncing/swaying/moving games with him too from a young age.......I won't way he's as naturally rhythmic or tuneful as one or two of his peers, but then again, it's difficult for that age to sing Fireman Sam in tune!!!!

I found these but I don't know if they are the Kodaly names

http://www.classicsforkids.com/teachers/training/rchart.asp

The best way to teach rhythm is have young people to regulary listen to a wide variety of classical music - sung or played.

Although I would never sing in public I sang to both of mine and played singing games with them but this hasn't stopped the eldest having rhythm problems linked to her dyslexia (although maybe they would have been worse had I not done these sorts of things with her).

Interesting point about skipping. Skipping is still popular in French school playgrounds but the eldest, despite spending hours trying, never managed to co-ordinate the jump with the rope.

I used to use se-mi-qua-ver for 1 e + a ------- i expect there are many variations!.

I seem to remember Ta-fe-te-fi for semiquavers from my school days. Also gina lollobrigida for 7-time.

I fact, my most rhythmic pupils are the ones who are more into rock music!

Yes of course, rock music too! Rock music probably has the most pronounced regular beat of all western music...you are quite right!

I'm trying to work out a strategy at the minute for a child who is hard of hearing. Rather than counting OR using words and syllables I have found so far that what works best is trying to plug into the fact that rhythm is FELT more than than it is HEARD. This child is slow to answer, always turns round to lip-read as well as hear, and is a disaster at duets because he/she waits to hear, and then consolidate, before hitting the next note. I don't know whether the sound is a little delayed in going in through the hearing aid, or what exactly causes this delayed response, but I have found that tapping his/her shoulder with the correct rhythm is much better than anything verbal. I've only been doing this for a while and can't offer any long term analysis of results , but I'm also trying tapping different shoulders for, say, crotchets as opposed to quavers. I'm quite sure there are those who would question the political correctness of this approach, since it involves touching, but I'm tentatively optimistic about progress - albeit slow.

This was the way that I was taught and I'm afraid most certainly didn't work for me. I used to wonder why my teacher had written '1+2+...' all over my book.

Dulciana has made the point that rhythm isn't HEARD but FELT (as is pulse). All the 'explaining' in the world won't help if you can't feel pulse and rhythm. I do agree to some extent about repetition and mimicry - because this IS how human beings learn - but the '1+2+' doesn't, in my experience, necessarily help - you need a mixture of understanding through physical movement and cognitive understanding.




See above!!






Yes, these seem to be Kodaly rhythm names - although of course there are lots of variations. Dulciana, you'll see that near the beginning of this thread PianoNotes has listed the ones that she learned on a recent course, which seem similar to the ones on the site ExpressYourself found. I use tikatika instead of tikitiki and there are some others that I use alternatives for - but the principle is the same. Consistency of use is the key!!




Yes - that's the original French time name for four semiquavers. Kodaly adapted it to tiritiri, which is used by many Kodaly teachers (although, as I said above, quite a few of us use tikatika).

One I've seen while on school experience seems to work quite well in the classroom although I'm not sure if I like the idea of a speed setting for rhythm teaching!

4 Semis - Make it Snap-py
2 Quavers - Run-ning
1 Crotchet - Walk
1 Minim - Slow-Down
1 Semibreve - S-T-O-P

I've seen it used quite effectively where the children are given bingo cards with rhythms written in notation and the teacher reads out a list (e.g. "Walk, walk, running, walk") and the children have to see if they have the notation for that and cover it up to try to get a bingo - they seem to be able to make the connections!

For septuplets my rather un-PC flute teacher used "homosexuality", google also suggests "individuality" and perhaps a quite useful one I just found in a word list, "supermathematical". Worst problem with this I found was a concert band piece with some horrid bits of quintuplets followed by septuplets where we ended up with homosexual hippopotamuses...

I was taught "Gina Lollobrigida" (sp??) for 7/8 time.

My daughter's suzuki violin teacher taught them in group lessons: -

Crotchet = Blue
Quaver = Yellow
Quaver and two semiquavers = Gooseberry
Two semiquavers and a quaver = Berrygoose
Triplet of quavers = Pineapple
Triplet of semiquavers = Celery

We were very hungry by the end of the lessons.

This is probably a stupid question but the current Kodaly Syllables are they new, like
Ta
Ti - Ti
Tiki-Tiki

Didn't it used to be
Ta
Te - Te
Tere- Tere...something along those lines, just this is what my new teacher has just started using with me having had such difficulty in the past reading rhythm and i was looking online for the full list but could only find the ones with K's in them and not the one she has told me.

Sorry if this was a stupid question, was just looking for a print out chart so I could put it all to practise when sighreading.

PSL

I've got a Kodaly rhythm name sheet which I must have got from a workshop I went to a few years ago:

crotchet - ta
minim - ta-a
dotted minim - ta-a-a
semibreve - ta-a-a-a

quavers - te-te
4 semiquavers - ti-ri-ti-ri

dotted crotchet - ta-e
dotted crotchet, quaver - ta-e te
dotted quaver, semiquaver - tem-ri

quaver + 2 semis - te ti-ri
2 semis + quaver - ti-ri te
quaver crotchet quaver - ti-ri te or syn-co-pa

Hi PSL!

The original French time names were ta, ta-te, tafetifi...Kodaly simplified them to ta, ti-ti, tiritiri etc. When I started learning Kodaly I was told, 'You can't, for obvious reasons, use 'ti-ti' in this country' so for some years I used te-te and teretere...but those are much harder and less 'musical' to say, so I went back to ti-ti (which, incidentally, I have NEVER had a problem with - only if you pronounce it 'titty' !!).

Then about 10 or so years ago I came across tikatika for semiquavers in a book by a North American Kod?ly expert - preferred it to tiritiri because it is easier to pronounce, flows better and also makes the rhythms very precise.

So - as with many things, rhythm names are in a constant state of evolution, and there are certainly all the above variables in use by Kodaly teachers currently.

Hope that helps!

There are various approaches and it is useful to know and try more than one approach - different things work for different students.

One point I'd like to make though is that sometimes, even if a child remembers the right word, whether it be 'tikatika', 'jogging', 'pineapple' or whatever system is being used, it is possible for the student to say the words in the wrong rhythm. As teachers, I'm sure we work hard to find words and phrases that have the stress on the correct syllable but often, the student is not quite as sensitive: they pronounce things very unnaturally if they get an idea in their head about what the rhythm should sound like.

I think it is important for any student to have a lot of aural experience of new rhythms being introduced, before the written symbol is introduced. This may involve improvising, singing or even making up their own words or sentences to fit the relevant rhythm. Then, the notation should come next (IMHO).

Also, I think quite often students are not taught how to play half time or double time. A really good game I've learnt through my Dalcroze training is to ask a student to play a continuous stream of regular crotchets (on piano, I ask the student to maintain a five fingered position and not to move). Then, on a given cue (I usually tap the left shoulder) the student has to play half time (so, minims). A tap on the right shoulder represents a move to double time (back to croctchets again, and then to quavers or even on to semiquavers if the student is coping well with the other rhythms). The aim is for the student to remember the original crotchet pulse.

So, notation-wise, often if a student recognises that a note is half, double or even three or four times more or less than another, they can work relatively, rather than thinking of each note as an isolated 'event'. Of course, this is only one way of looking at it, and I teach allsorts of other things to help a student develop their rhythmic skills. But, I really do think it is important that the student has a 'database' as it were of sounds in their head, and then for these sounds to be related to the printed music.

That reminds me of a dancer that used to dance to music by feeling the vibrations on the flour, she was apparently completely deaf, if i remember correctly, she was a ballerina. So feeling the rhythm sounds good to me.

Twinkle is absolutely right in what she says - the aural and physical experience HAS to come first - or, as she says, students can say the rhythm wrongly if they are just taught 'this is pineapple' or 'tikatika' or whatever.

And rhythm is soooo related to pulse, that again if the student's sense of pulse is weak, or they don't understand the connection between pulse and rhythm, then we are building on sand.

I also agree about what she says about, if you use words for rhythms, sometimes trying to shoehorn a word to fit a rhythm, rather than the other way round. For example, if you say, 'I'd like a cup of coffee, please' or, 'That's a lovely pineapple!', are the words 'coffee' and 'pineapple' REALLY two quavers or a quaver followed by two semiquavers? (This is another reason why I prefer rhythm names, which have no ambivalences).

And, yes, I love the Dalcroze 'twice as fast/slow' ideas - it really helps with pulse and the connection with rhythm.

Teaching pulse and rhythm is a vast subject in itself...

Thanks for that Twinkle... think I will try that one out this week... great idea...

This is the syllables my teacher has been using with me. Should I stick to this or use the new Kodaly words with "tiki" in it.
Just I have some enquires from people to teach and their daughters both go to NYCOS so I would like to learn current kodaly rhythms in my own practise so I can use it with them which they will already know.
So is the current kodaly syllables that they use at NYCOS the ones with "k"'s in them? (If that makes sense).

Thank you Cyrilla - It did help what you said, helped clear why I was confused. I would LOVE to take a course in Kodaly - I think it would be fantastic. Not sure if you can attend though if you are not a teacher?

Thanks PSL

... trying to shoehorn a word to fit a rhythm, rather than the other way round. For example, if you say, 'I'd like a cup of coffee, please' or, 'That's a lovely pineapple!', are the words 'coffee' and 'pineapple' REALLY two quavers or a quaver followed by two semiquavers? (This is another reason why I prefer rhythm names, which have no ambivalences

I do agree that some words can be ambiguous in their rhythm - the main reason I changed over from run-ning (which so easily comes out with an uneven pattern) to jog-ging years ago.

Of course any word (even the 'correct' ? ones) can be said rhythmically or unrhythmically, and it is vital to try to avoid ambiguity. I think the context, (we aren't using these words conversationally here) and the way the teaching is presented in lessons, whatever 'way' is used, are also elements that make a difference.

I often find that after an initial planned teaching piece, using a small group of 'rhythm words', they are indeed assimilated and rarely need to be returned to. In my book, this has to be one way that works.

Yes, pulse is absolutely vital, and if this is unsteady, nothing else will really work. And yes we do lots of aural / listening / identifying work to focus on pulse and rhythm.

I think this is really the fundamental point here. Once pupils get the idea about pulse the rest follows really quite easily, whatever method we use. I think this is where I may have struggled when I first started teaching; I couldn't understand why all young children didn't 'get' the idea that a crotchet equals two quavers - or rather that they DID get the idea but still couldn't make it sound right. And then I cottoned on to the fact that what I thought was inherent in everybody is actually not! I do actually think everybody can do this, but not everybody seems to be aware from the outset that music actually has to have a pulse at all!

Hello PSL .

It really is totally up to you which 'version' of the rhythm names that you use. As I said, they're constantly developing and changing - I have a feeling that the 'tika' ones are probably currently used more than the 'tiri' ones - but I honestly can't tell you which ones NYCoS use - or even if there is a consensus on what is used by their teachers.

I can only suggest that you ask the children that you might be teaching what they are familiar with and use those! If you like I can ask my friend and colleague Lucinda Geoghegan, who is heavily involved with NYCoS.

Woo! I'd be delighted if you came on a Kodaly course! And, no, certainly you don't need to be a teacher. The majority of our students ARE teachers, but by no means all - there are choral singers, instrumentalists..basically anyone who is interested in improving their own musicianship, and/or teaching it to others. If you look at www.britishkodalyacademy.org you will see info about our courses.

Maggiemay - ah, we'll just have to agree to differ here . Of course rhythm names can be said incorrectly too - but it's far less likely, in my experience. I personally just love using something that ONLY means rhythm (of course I'm aware you're not using the words 'conversationally' here). And of course you are right that it is the WAY that something is taught that is so important (and I don't think I ever said that rhythm names were the only 'correct' way???).

Dulciana - I spend my life teaching pulse and rhythm! In my experience, you never ever stop learning or developing a sense of pulse. You are so right that knowing intellectually that 'two quavers equals one crotchet' is of very little use to a student. Pulse HAS to be felt and understood through the body before notation is introduced - one reason why I think Dalcroze is soooo fab.

My take on tika vs tiri is that tiri is easier for Hungarians to say, and tika is easier for native English speakers to say.