How to explain kids why they should go to solfege class at all?

[ccroft]

I wish him/them all the best in April. Tell him from me!

Thanks Rags. I would, but then I'd have to tell him who you are, and that you found out about his marriage in a forum discussing ear-training and how bad a singer he used to be. It's been kept a family secret for too many decades! :-)

[ragman1]

A large part of those lessons was do re mi stuff according to my brother.

Well, let's cut to the chase. You're saying solfege can help people sing. Apparently so. Beyond that I wouldn't know.

And your secrets are safe with me

[emanresu]

I think they have moved away from do re mi and using c d f more (eastern europe). And still calling the class "solfege".
Hm. Dunno. Too confusing.

[Gabor]

If there is a concesus the majority of us hates it, and also we agree that funcional ear training what is important, then why still we force it?

It seems that the (military) conservative pedagogy parental logic pattern sneaks into, and thinking, that is the order of life, etc. Relax instead. Listening music is the start and the most important.

[kris]

I don't agree. There still is something about music theory that makes I seem to start reasoning in circles, have to hold my own hand to re-read the same passage way too often and even when I think I finally understood it I can't seem to commit it to memory. And that while I can still learn easily enough. I can be a sponge when I get interested the way I am now in luthery for instance. Learning (at least the basics) of playing an instrument is also pretty easy for me (I must be in my 4th year taking classes and I'm tackling -easier- pieces by Llobet and Barrios atm).
I think the point here is that I've never been curious how one composes and the few times I've meddled with transcribing scores I had Musescore to assist me with chores like transposing everything up or down so many steps.

(Why is playing not so easy anymore? When was it easier?)

There are some people who seem to play musical instruments and know the theory very well.
I mean in general- musical talent.You don't need good hearing to learn theory.
It depends on what is hidden under the name of theory.

[Litterick]

Does solfège explain why there are no semitones between B and C and E and F? Because that's what the kids want to know.

Guido of Arezzo is not an acceptable answer.

[kris]

Does solfège explain why there are no semitones between B and C and E and F? Because that's what the kids want to know.

Guido of Arezzo is not an acceptable answer.

Sign up for school and they'll explain it to you.
I have no time.

[Litterick]

I was not asking you, or anyone else.

[Christian Miller]

Does solfège explain why there are no semitones between B and C and E and F? Because that's what the kids want to know.

Guido of Arezzo is not an acceptable answer.

Haha

Actually - yeah it totally is. Mi fa, m*th*f*ck*. Stick that up your hexachords.

good Lord I need to get out more.

so, not that anyone asked, but in the old system the distance mi fa was *always* a semitone. Hence Do Re Mi Fa Sol Re Mi Fa for a major scale as whacky as that may seem. According to one of the experts on the old system, Nicholas Baragwananth, this has a number of advantages although I’m at loss to say what they are. The whole thing seems kind of complicated tbh.

This is of interest to probably no-one at all but it does at least explain a couple of famous sayings

Sabbath’s favourite - ‘Mi contra fa, diabolus in musica’ (Mi here being the 7 against Fa 4, so ‘the tritone is a devil of a thing.’

And JS Bach’s saying ‘Mi and Fa is all there is in music.’ (So, ‘It’s in the semitones’)

The new system has a separate syllable for every scale degree. Which is apparently stupid for some reason? The hexachord guys are pretty hardcore tbh.

That has been my Niche Interest post of the day, do with that what you will. Or not.

Here is a video. It made my head hurt.

[Christian Miller]

I was not asking you, or anyone else.

I don’t care. Nothing can save you from the Special Interest Post.

[Christian Miller]

If there is a concesus the majority of us hates it, and also we agree that funcional ear training what is important, then why still we force it?

It seems that the (military) conservative pedagogy parental logic pattern sneaks into, and thinking, that is the order of life, etc. Relax instead. Listening music is the start and the most important.

sure. When you are teaching a class you need to be a little bit like that to an extent. I kind of hate it because the disruptive kids are sometimes the most excited to learn, but with a class you have to have behavioural limits.

Finding something more game with clear rules like that the whole class can do is a fun way of achieving that and Kodaly can be like that. Having a physical element to it is really helpful as well as the fact that the hand signals are so cleverly devised. I got the class sightsinging a few pitches in an hour using the system.

[ragman1]

There's an old story, which I believe is true, about an American teacher working in a very rough school full of ghetto kids and all that. At first he tried to get them interested in 'literature' but of course they weren't. So he went out and bought a load of Mickey Spillane books... and bingo, the class was brought to life.

The moral being, I suppose, that you've got to tailor your pitch to the audience.

[Gabor]

sure. When you are teaching a class you need to be a little bit like that to an extent. I kind of hate it because the disruptive kids are sometimes the most excited to learn, but with a class you have to have behavioural limits.

Finding something more game with clear rules like that the whole class can do is a fun way of achieving that and Kodaly can be like that. Having a physical element to it is really helpful as well as the fact that the hand signals are so cleverly devised. I got the class sightsinging a few pitches in an hour using the system.

Sounds good, but in practice I (and many of us) do not recall it as "fun". In *normal* school class I had one hour per week "singing". four years from age 10 to 14. In the majority of hours there was solfege and solmization exercizes. Still I has nothing to do with solfege except anxiety memories. It is true, the problem may be with me, because the same situation happened with my French, learned in class from age 14-18, and nothing... :-)

[John A.]

There's an old story, which I believe is true, about an American teacher working in a very rough school full of ghetto kids and all that. At first he tried to get them interested in 'literature' but of course they weren't. So he went out and bought a load of Mickey Spillane books... and bingo, the class was brought to life.

The moral being, I suppose, that you've got to tailor your pitch to the audience.

I doubt if any high school teacher in the US could ever have gotten away with teaching Spillane (who writes fairly explicit sex scenes). But it's reasonably common for English teachers to bring in other pop subject matter, especially song lyrics as poetry and comic books. My mother was a middle school teacher in an extremely tough ghetto school in the early 1970s, and she did that.

I had a literature class in college called "Studies in Modern Literature: Popular Fiction" , wherein we read Mickey Spillane and other pulp fiction, sci-fi, and horror novels.
Students called the class "Shit Lit" (alongside "Physics for Poets" and "Rocks for Jocks"). It was taught by an English prof who had a sideline writing mystery novels.

[ragman1]

Hi, John.

Well, it was a long time ago I heard that story. I could scour the net for sources but it doesn't matter that much. The Spillane bit I'm sure about but I suppose it could equally have been a Brit school in the East End or somewhere like that.

Good article, by the way. I'm surprised they gave out those pupils' full addresses (with house number, etc) but it was '72. And your mother, presumably, survived the experience, at least I hope so.

But the real point wasn't the story, it was the truism that for a pitch/lecture/talk to succeed well it should be appropriate to the recipients and not go over their heads or under their behinds or something :-)

[John A.]

Hi, John.

Well, it was a long time ago I heard that story. I could scour the net for sources but it doesn't matter that much. The Spillane bit I'm sure about but I suppose it could equally have been a Brit school in the East End or somewhere like that.

Good article, by the way. I'm surprised they gave out those pupils' full addresses (with house number, etc) but it was '72. And your mother, presumably, survived the experience, at least I hope so.

But the real point wasn't the story, it was the truism that for a pitch/lecture/talk to succeed well it should be appropriate to the recipients and not go over their heads or under their behinds or something :-)

FWIW, I believe the names and address were for the adults involved in that incident, not the students. My mom wound up leaving the school a the end of that academic year and going back to grad school full time. Nothing ever happened to her physically there, but teaching there was a harrowing and traumatic experience for her, and she couldn't have stayed any longer. She did indeed survive, for another 50 years (she died in Dec. 2021).

[ragman1]

'One of the girls, he said, reportedly threatened the other girl, Miriam Serrano of 7 Rivington Street. Miss Serrano returned to school after the lunch period, accompanied by her father, George, and brother, Carlos.'

I think it was the pupils' but no matter. It was an informative article and not much seems to have changed over the years. And so we struggle on...

[John A.]

'One of the girls, he said, reportedly threatened the other girl, Miriam Serrano of 7 Rivington Street. Miss Serrano returned to school after the lunch period, accompanied by her father, George, and brother, Carlos.'


I think it was the pupils' but no matter. It was an informative article and not much seems to have changed over the years. And so we struggle on...

They printed the names of minors who were injured, but not the names of minors who were arrested, which is typical (juvenile criminal records are supposed to be shielded under NY law). If you're speaking specifically of violent crime, a huge amount has changed since then here. This sort of violence in schools is now very uncommon. Crime here in general is nothing like what it was in those days (recent publicity about spikes in crime notwithstanding). Things I experienced routinely as a kid/teenager (even as someone relatively prosperous living a relatively sheltered life) are completely outside my teenaged son's reality.

[RJVB]

This sort of violence in schools is now very uncommon.

Yeah, I read that even 7 year olds (or was it 6?) now carry guns so they don't have to get their hands dirty (as a kid, can't remember how old, I did indeed think for some time that using a gun wasn't violence ... you just pull a trigger and the target drops with even having to get too close). ...

[ragman1]

Apart from the fact that violence in the world generally has unquestionably increased a great deal since my younger days, I was talking very specifically. Certain areas in any city, town or country are always dangerous but there are also general trends.

There's no question that in certain parts of the UK knife crime amongst young people has proliferated, almost become commonplace. Before it was just teddy boys, motor bike gangs, mods and rockers, punch-ups, and all that. It's changed, now it's drugs, knives, guns and the odd teen-on-teen murder. No question about it. I can give you a whole lot of links but I won't.

[John A.]

Apart from the fact that violence in the world generally has unquestionably increased a great deal since my younger days, I was talking very specifically. Certain areas in any city, town or country are always dangerous but there are also general trends.

There's no question that in certain parts of the UK knife crime amongst young people has proliferated, almost become commonplace. Before it was just teddy boys, motor bike gangs, mods and rockers, punch-ups, and all that. It's changed, now it's drugs, knives, guns and the odd teen-on-teen murder. No question about it. I can give you a whole lot of links but I won't.

I don't want got too much further down this particular rabbit hole, but the US as a whole is a lot less violent than when I was young (when it was much more violent than the UK). It rose sharply between roughly the early 1960s and early 1990s, then dropped even more sharply. NYC specifically was the leading indicator in both directions, with crime dropping in the 2000s to the lowest levels per capita since crime statistics began being kept. Most of my contemporaries have hair-raising stories. None of my son's contemporaries do.

I gather the UK is on a different trajectory, but I haven't followed that closely enough to say anything. As far as the world more broadly is concerned, that's a complicated subject. In general, development/modernization has led to large reductions in violence, but not evenly and not on all time scales, and "progress" gets undone in lots of places by things like wars and devolution of societies into failed states.

[Christian Miller]

I don't want got too much further down this particular rabbit hole, but the US as a whole is a lot less violent than when I was young (when it was much more violent than the UK). It rose sharply between roughly the early 1960s and early 1990s, then dropped even more sharply. NYC specifically was the leading indicator in both directions, with crime dropping in the 2000s to the lowest levels per capita since crime statistics began being kept. Most of my contemporaries have hair-raising stories. None of my son's contemporaries do.

I gather the UK is on a different trajectory,

I gather this is a narrative in US media!

I don’t have the most up to date trends but at least according to the sources I could find quickly the UK remains considerably less violent than the US, with much lower homicide and violent crime rates in general

.UK Crime Rate Vs. US: A Shocking Revelation - MichNews

I believe there was an uptick in crime the last couple of years, but still much safer than the US

I gather NYC is relatively safe these days though with maybe a recent uptick? Can’t imagine what it was like in the 70s. London was more violent back then too, but nothing like iirc… John Carpenter didn’t make Escape from London haha

Most people I know have been mugged at some point tbf. There are problems with gang violence and knife crime.

[Litterick]

I don’t care. Nothing can save you from the Special Interest Post.

It is not about me. How would you explain BC and EF to children?

[Liarspoker]

And JS Bach’s saying ‘Mi and Fa is all there is in music.’ (So, ‘It’s in the semitones’)

Agreed, the flavour of the modes, and so all music, lies in their semitones.

[Liarspoker]

It is not about me. How would you explain BC and EF to children?

Through the major scale formula and musical examples. The ones who are interested will get it but not every kid wants to learn theory. They just want to bang on their guitar.