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How Effective Is The Kodaly Method For Teaching Young Voices? Flora Mcculloch

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How effective is the Kodaly method in teaching young voices? Flora McCulloch
The Kodaly method is a system used all around the globe to teach the reading, writing and performing music through the medium of the voice. The method has been used for about a century and has proven to be an effective way to learn about the many complexities of reading and performing music. The system has fallen in and out of favor over the years and has recently regained resurge in popularity. (Robert Garfias, 2004)
History
Zoltan Kodaly was born in 1882 in Hungary. As a musical child he learned to play the piano, cello, viola and violin. His parents were musical people and they exposed Zoltan to many genres of music including that of their indigenous of …show more content…

The repetitive nature of the exercises means that the sounds and actions join forces in the subconscious. Only when this has been achieved should the learner bring the skills into their conscious mind and at this time he/she should be able to apply their skills to reading and pitching music.

The Kodaly method is a system that teaches its students to ‘listen-sing-understand-read-write and create’ music. The program of learning is best started at a young age where the many games and exercises developed by Kodaly engage young people and give them the start of a lifelong interest in music. As you can see in the table, universal language sounds have been allocated to each of the note lengths. Young people will first be introduced to the sound long before they are shown the musical notation symbol. In the very early stages one of the excercises undertaken by a teacher and their pupil/s might be;

A pulse is set;
The teacher will say ‘ta ta ti-ti ta’
The students will echo ‘ta ta ti-ti ta’
The teacher will repeat ‘ta ta ti-ti ta’
The students will echo ‘ta ta ti-ti ta’

This would go on for a minute or two, and before you know it the students are almost in a trance like state repeating what the teacher says without really thinking about it.

This process is repeated for different patterns but initially using only ‘ta’ and ‘ti-ta’

A pulse is set;
The teacher will say

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