Feierabend

Dr. John

What is First Steps in Music and Conversational Solfege?

Dr. John Feierabend is an American music educator who created First Steps in Music and Conversational Solfege.

The First Steps in Music curriculum is designed to prepare children to become musical in three ways:

Tuneful – to have tunes in their heads and learn to coordinate their voices to sing those tunes.
Beatful – to feel the pulse of music and how that pulse is grouped in either 2s or 3s.
Artful – to be moved by music in the many ways music can elicit a feelingful response.

Following are the 8 musical workout activities.

Pitch Exploration (Vocal Warm-ups)
Fragment Singing
Echo Songs
Call and Response Songs
Simple Songs
Arioso (Child created tunes)
Songtales
Movement Exploration (Movement Warm-ups)
Movement for Form and Expression
Movement with the Beat

Once students have developed the skills from First Steps of becoming tuneful, beatful, and artful we move into Conversational Solfege which is usually in the middle of second grade. Conversational Solfege is developing students skills in musical literacy through a 12 step process.

The following descriptions of the twelve stages of Conversational Solfege allows for the “music” to be first learned and aurally understood before bonding to the “notation.”

Stage 1: Readiness

Rote

Songs and rhymes are learned by rote; they contain rhythm and/or tonal content which will be studied later. Rhythm and solfege syllables are not used at this stage.

Stage 2: Conversational Solfege

Rote

Rhythm syllables and/or tonal syllables are introduced. Patterns are spoken or sung by the teacher with the rhythm or tonal syllables and students repeat, by rote, those patterns with the syllables. During this stage students bond the sounds of rhythm and tonal patterns with aural labels.

Stage 3: Conversational Solfege

Decode – Familiar

This stage serves as an evaluation to see if students have bonded rhythm and/or tonal patterns with the correct syllables. The teacher speaks or sings familiar patterns, songs and rhymes with neutral syllables or texts. The students repeat the patterns, songs and rhymes using rhythm or tonal syllables. Patterns used at this stage have previously been presented with syllables during the Conversational Solfege-Rote stage. Songs and rhymes used at this stage should have previously been presented by rote during the Readiness stage. This stage only requires students to aurally recognize and decode previously learned musical examples.

Stage 4: Conversational Solfege

Decode – Unfamiliar

This stage serves as an evaluation to see if students have bonded rhythm and/or tonal patterns with the correct syllables well enough to use the correct syllables when decoding unfamiliar patterns, songs and rhymes. The teacher speaks or sings an unfamiliar pattern with neutral syllables as well as unfamiliar songs and rhymes with texts;the students repeat the patterns, songs and rhymes with rhythm or tonal syllables. Patterns, songs and rhymes used at this stage have not been previously learned. This stage requires the students to generalize from what they know to make sense out of something new.

Stage 5: Conversational Solfege

Create

This stage develops the ability to think and bring musical meaning to original musical thoughts. Students create original rhythm or tonal patterns or melodies using rhythm or tonal syllables. Reading notation should not be introduced until students have achieved success at this stage. During this stage students begin developing improvisation skills which will enable them to later compose during the Writing-Create stage.

Stage 6: Reading

Rote

During this stage students are introduced to notation symbols. The teacher reads notated patterns for the students. The students repeat the pattern while looking at the notation. This is much like the introduction of a set of vocabulary words in the elementary grades. While looking at the new words the teacher speaks each word and the children repeat.

Stage 7: Reading

Decode – Familiar

This stage serves as an evaluation to see if students have bonded the notation for rhythm and/or tonal patterns with the correct syllables. The teacher asks the students to think through notated patterns, songs and rhymes with rhythm or tonal syllables and then speak or sing them aloud using the rhythm or tonal syllables. Patterns, songs and rhymes used at this stage should have been presented previously. This stage requires students to visually recall the sounds and syllable names of previously introduced material. In learning general reading skills this is similar to students being able to read vocabulary words the teacher previously presented.

Stage 8: Reading

Decode – Unfamiliar

This stage serves as an evaluation to see if students have bonded the notation for rhythm and/or tonal patterns with the correct syllables and can generalize that knowledge to unfamiliar patterns, songs and rhymes. The teacher asks the students to think through unfamiliar notated patterns, songs and rhymes with rhythm or tonal syllables and then speak or sing them aloud using the rhythm or tonal syllables. Patterns, songs and rhymes used at this stage have not been presented previously. This requires visual decoding skills and inference thinking. This stage represents true sight-reading skills and is similar to students being able to recognize their new vocabulary words in the context of a new story.

Stage 9: Writing

Rote

During this stage students practice writing notation. Students should copy existing patterns, songs and rhymes and be instructed in proper manuscript techniques. This is similar to early elementary children practicing penmanship as they learn to write letters, numbers and words.

Stage 10: Writing

Decode – Familiar

During this stage students engage both conversational decoding skills and writing decoding skills. The teacher speaks, sings or plays familiar patterns or phrases from a song or rhyme with neutral syllables or the text. Students think each pattern with rhythm or tonal syllables (Conversational – Decoding) and then write the notation for the pattern (Writing-Decode). This stage requires aural and visual decoding but not inference thinking. This stage is similar to students taking a spelling test based on the latest list of vocabulary words.

Stage 11: Writing

Decode – Unfamiliar

During this stage students engage both conversational decoding skills and writing decoding skills. The teacher speaks, sings or plays unfamiliar patterns or phrases from a song or rhyme with neutral syllables or the text. Students think the pattern with rhythm or tonal syllables (Conversational – Decoding) and then write the pattern (Writing-Decode). This stage requires aural and visual decoding as well as inference thinking. If you can sing it with syllables you can write it. The syllables tell you what to write. This stage is commonly understood as “taking dictation.” In language development this stage would be the equivalent to children determining the spelling and writing of an unfamiliar word by “sounding it out.”

Stage 12: Writing

Create

This skill requires students to conversationally Create through inner hearing and then Writing-Decode by transferring their musical thoughts into notation. Musical improvisations can now become compositions.

For more information:

https://www.feierabendmusic.org/about/