Make Rhythm Count When It Doesn't Make Sense

Show Note Links

Hey, thanks so much for joining me at Key Ideas and for listening to this episode. Can you tell I’m a little bit passionate about rhythm and specifically how to teach rhythm?

There’s a window of rhythmic foundation that many miss as a child for various reasons. And even if the window is accessed, rhythm can still be troublesome to students of all ages.

Below is a video of an adult student who rarely listened to music or moved to music as a child. She’s enthusiastic about learning the piano and wants to build her rhythmic understanding. At her last lesson, I got out all my manipulatives and yet, it came down to the big exercise ball where she finally began to experience a steady beat and understand what that means. And then, how to feel both parts of it.

In this video, you see the student feeling the beat and using functional counting or words to help her feel both parts of the beat.

Special Seasonal Rhythm Resource

There’s one rhythm resource called Connect the Dots that I’m particularly eager to share because I didn’t get a chance to do much with it last year when I released it just before Thanksgiving. Life got in the way.

So…dotted notes: they’re easy to sing, to clap back and play but, when dotted notes show up in repertoire, it can stop players of any level in their tracks.

The goal of Connect the Dots is to demystify dotted note values by isolating them and relating them to familiar tunes.

Holiday tunes or carols are adorned with dotted notes and offer up festive opportunities to boost confidence in understanding and reading dotted notes.

The activities featured in this resource are carefully sequenced. You know your students best so use the suggested activities that suit your students’ needs.

There’s extra resources and ideas to reinforce the concept of dotted notes so that you can spread Connect the Dots activities throughout December private lessons, or include them in holiday group classes and even plan a winter break camp around them.

Learn more about Connect the Dots here.