Challenge Your Music Literacy with Conversational Solfege Quiz

Developing Music Literacy with Conversational Solfege

• True music literacy involves understanding the meaning of musical symbols and being able to interpret them without an instrument.

• The ability to identify letter names or instrumental fingerings does not ensure an understanding of musical meaning.

• True music literacy enables instrumentalists to express music through their instrument rather than using the instrument to hear the music.

• Readiness skills must be in place before starting a music literacy program, including comfortable and accurate singing and moving skills, as well as expressive sensitivity.

• Conversational Solfege is a literature-based curriculum that merges true music literacy skills with the conviction that the finest quality music should be used in the process.

• Conversational Solfege is influenced by Kodaly philosophy and the Whole Language Approach, focusing on a literature-driven curriculum that prioritizes excellent musical materials.

• The curriculum presents musical materials from the simple to the complex, from the familiar to the unfamiliar, and from the most common to the least common elements.

• The curriculum analyzes the song content from a country's indigenous music and the music of artists to reflect rhythmic and melodic characteristics of that society.

• The development of ear comprehension precedes reading, writing, or grammatical structure education in language and can be applied to the development of music literacy.

• Building a strong foundation before embarking on a music literacy program enhances ultimate reading skills.

• The ability to hear what is seen and see what is heard is the hallmark of true music literacy.

• Conversational Solfege emphasizes the importance of expressive sensitivity, which must be assimilated from good musical models and quality literature that embodies expressiveness.Developing Music Literacy Skills with Conversational Solfege

• Conversational Solfege is a music education method that emphasizes learning through the ears before reading and writing music.

• The method uses rhythm syllables and solfege syllables to develop conversational skills with rhythm and tonal patterns.

• Conversational Solfege borrows from language models to develop music literacy skills through a 12-stage process.

• The 12 stages gradually build upon each other to develop understanding and creating music through the musical manipulation of sounds.

• Stage 1 begins with readiness songs and rhymes learned by rote without the use of rhythm or solfege syllables.

• Stage 2 introduces rhythm and/or tonal syllables to patterns spoken or sung by the teacher.

• Stage 3 and 4 evaluate the student's ability to recognize and decode previously learned musical examples, both familiar and unfamiliar.

• Stage 5 develops the ability to think and bring musical meaning to original musical thoughts, creating original rhythm or tonal patterns or melodies using rhythm or tonal syllables.

• Stage 6 introduces notation symbols and the teacher reads notated patterns for the students.

• Stage 7 and 8 evaluate the student's ability to recall the sounds and syllable names of previously introduced material, both familiar and unfamiliar.

• Stage 9 and 10 focus on writing notation, copying existing patterns, songs, and rhymes, and engaging conversational and writing decoding skills.

• Stage 11 and 12 require students to conversationally create through inner hearing and then writing-decode by transferring their musical thoughts into notation.