Song Creation

Becky Sorenson, Opera for All Teaching Artist

I taught both at Disney II and subbed at McAuliffe during song creation, and it was interesting to get to see two different takes on how to tackle this challenge. At Disney, we had the luxury of students who have a great music teacher who has taught them to sing using solfege, however at McAuliffe, the students don't have any regular music education in their school.

At Disney, Justin took the approach of calling on students, asking them for a short collection of solfege syllables to fit a bit of text. We gathered about 4 ideas per bit of text, and then played and sang them for the class. Next, we had the students put their heads down and vote on which melody they liked best. I made sure to get suggestions from everyone in the class, even those that don't usually speak up! We made sure they had post-it notes on which to write down their ideas, so they had time to think. I also explained that often steps and small skips are more memorable melodies than huge jumps across the scale. This approach worked very well!

Kaitlin took a different approach at McAuliffe, splitting the students into groups and giving them cut out numbers in lieu of solfege syllables. the students then arranged the numbers into 4 beat patterns and after working in groups, shared them with the class. Again, we talked about the elements that make a memorable melody that is easy to sing, and guided the students toward what makes musical sense to their ears. The result were melodies that are VERY memorable (even as a sub, I can still sing all of their songs)!