Articulation Ideas

Sorry it's been such a while since we've had an update, folks!  I wanted to share some ideas I have been trying out with my 5th graders to help them understand various types of articulation.

I got the idea from a teacher's inservice we just had a few weeks ago.  A speaker was presenting on student motivation and on increasing teacher effectiveness.  Well, I always go into those inservices aware that most of it might not apply to teaching music, but I try to take everything they say and see if it can relate to teaching band.  Fortunately, this time, it actually worked!

The speaker would say words relating to his presentation and use motions to go along with those words. Then he had us repeat the words and motions back to him to help us remember and understand the words. I thought this might work great for teaching music vocabulary.

So one day I decided to try it with articulations with my 5th grade bands.  We started off with just a few basic ones at first: accent, slur, and staccato.   For accent, I said "ACCENT" (with an emphasis) and used a punching motion to get them to realize it gets more "umph," more emphasis.  They say it and repeat it back to me.   Then I said "staccato!" very short and made a quick flipping of the wrist motion (as I would in conducting staccato).  Then they said it and repeated the motion back as well.  For slur, I simply said "slluuuuuur" and made a rainbow type motion to demonstrate what a slur looks like in the music and to demonstrate how smooth and connected a slur makes the music sound.    Then they repeated it back.  After I would name and motion each articulation, I would tell them the definition as well.  "Staccato!  Short and detached."    "ACCENT!  With EMPHASIS!"    "Slurrrrr.  Tongue only the first note and not the rest.  Smooth."

After a week or so, we ran into some new articulations in one of our concert songs, "Imperium" by Michael Sweeney (great piece for beginning band).   We ran into tenuto and marcato.  I simply went with my own instinct and decide to show tenuto by putting my hands close together and then moving them outward and away from each other as if lengthening something.  This hopefully gives them the impression of filling up or lengthening something a little bit to get them to realize tenuto means giving the note full value.  For marcato, I simply made the gesture of what it looks like on paper.  An upside down peace sign.  (They really like this one).   We give the "upside down peace sign" or marcato gesture very quickly and with emphasis so they realize it's another type of accent.

They LOVED it!  They really like to respond and repeat what I say and do. After a number of days of repeating the name and gesture, I would just do the motion and ask them "what's this?" and they would immediately respond with the correct word and sometimes the definition, too.

(I should also add, however, that I model for them the SOUND of the articulation as well when I am first introducing a new type of articulation.  This is an important part of teaching them how to play it.  It's not all about recognition of the articulation symbol or the definition - they need to be able to hear how it should sound and do it on their own instruments as well.)

Here are some great benefits of teaching articulation this way:

• Kinesthetic learners can benefit from the gestures and hands on activity.
• Students are saying the articulation aloud so they learn how to speak in Italian musical terms
• The gestures relate to my conducting gestures so when I am conducting a song and they watch me make a certain "articulation gesture," they instantly recognize which one it is and hopefully respond correctly on their instruments with that articulation.
• Saying & repeating the gestures and names is easy enough that every kid can feel successful in the activity.
• It takes only seconds to teach an articulation without a long definition.  It takes only seconds to reinforce each day.
• The kids think it's fun!
• Some of the gestures model what the symbol looks like on paper too (slur, marcato, tenuto) so maybe they can recognize the meaning of the symbol on paper more quickly.

I have seen a lot of success in this so far.  I will be interested to see if they have become aware enough of all of the articulation symbols and their meanings to start applying them without my reminders.  But even if they're not quite aware of it all yet or able to do it without me- it is so easy to reinforce an articulation by stopping the band and silently making the gesture.  They get it and they play it that way and we move on.   

Let me know if you've found any success with this method or with your own ways of teaching articulation!