Solfege

I'm the meanest teacher part II.  Click here for part I.

I am a firm believer in the power of solfege.  However, I've yet to convert some of my students.  Too many of them see it just as something they need to know for choir auditions.  And since they're not good at it, they don't want to practice it.  I get that.  I know that it's scary to make mistakes in front of your teacher.  I know it's scary to be seen as anything less than perfect.

I also know that sight-reading and aural skills improve with practice.  In fact, I'm proof of that.  I had a very basic introduction to solfege in high school, but never had enough practice and reinforcement to get comfortable with it.  In college, I switched into the music major program late.  Because of all my piano background, they let me skip the first semester of theory and aural skills, which saved me a year of college, but left me feeling uncertain about the whole sight-reading thing.  In grad school, I took the remedial course and it finally clicked in.  Now that I've been teaching it for 15 years, I'm feeling pretty good about my sight-reading skills.  But you can't tell that to a kid that wants to be good right now or else he doesn't want to do it.

This year, to tackle the solfege fear, I've once again revised my curriculum, incorporating more learning modes.  We spend a lot of time working the visual and aural concepts, but this year I decided we needed to do more for kinesthetic learners, so all of my kids are learning some basic interval pattern exercises with solfege hand signs.  Yes, it does add another level of difficulty and complexity, but I'm also seeing an improvement in their accuracy.  By the time this year's freshmen graduate, I expect that it is going to make a big difference in their sight reading.

But, solfege is not just about sight-reading.  It is about learning to hear patterns, and that pattern recognition helps us learn faster, even if all our songs are learned solely through aural means.  I have a blind student that doesn't want to learn any solfege because in her brain, solfege is only about sight-reading which obviously she can't do.  This is one of those times when I'm putting my foot down.  I think she will pick up on the sounds of the patterns.  I think she will grow from this experience.  Yes it will be hard, but it is also exactly what she needs.