Composing with the Tone Bars, Part 2

One day, Kevin came to me with a melody he'd composed using the Music Grid Paper, but he wasn't satisfied with it. I wondered what was missing, because he had beautiful decorations in the margins, his numbers were written clearly, and he put a lot of effort into his note choices. Still, he wasn't satisfied. I thought maybe he found melody writing too easy, so I offered him an extra challenge: I asked him if he'd like to add rhythms to his melody. He lit up.

Starting from the beginning of the school year in our gatherings I had already been leading the children through little games using the rhythms ta (one sound per beat), and ti-ti (two sounds per beat). In around September, as a group we sang and danced to songs that contained ta and ti-ti in their melodies. Once I'd defined ta and ti-ti for the children, we clapped them, read them from popsicle sticks on the floor, used them in performances, and practiced with them using small rhythm cards and other manipulatives. All of this work was happening parallel to the children's composing at the tone bars.

So, once I showed Kevin how to write ta and ti-ti as sticks without note heads (ta is written as just a short vertical line, and ti-ti with two vertical lines joined at the top by a bar), it was easy and natural for Kevin to just draw the rhythms above the numbers in his melody. Like this:

Now Kevin could add rhythm to his melodies! Well, you can imagine that Kevin went off and disappeared into his music, composing melody after melody. 

The piece pictured above was written by two girls who saw what Kevin was doing and asked him for a lesson. They wrote this piece in the melodic minor scale and called it "Scary Song".

It's amazing how infectious even the most simple musical concepts can be.

Children composing melodies on Music Grid Paper using the tone bars.

Visit the shop if you'd like to download the lessons on ta and ti-ti and on stick notation.