Dalcroze Games You Can Teach Gregory Ristow Oberlin Conservatory

http://www.musicalmind.org/nyssma NYSSMA – Aug. 2015

#1: Stop & Start Beat, Co-ordination of Starting-Stopping, Self-Control

Tap the beat – when the music stops, you stop!

Play or sing a single line melody – at phrase endings, add lots of rests!

Variations: • Instead of singing or playing a pitched instrument, use a hand drum to play for this! • Use other non-locomotor movements, and make up different music to fit them. (Orff

instruments can be a lot of fun for improvising these!) • Use locomotor movements (walking, skipping, tip-toeing, sneaking, etc…) once the children

have gotten good at stopping & starting quickly in response to the music with non-locomotor movements. (Especially with a large class, if you start this game with locomotor movements, the classroom can devolve into chaos. It’s important to first build the idea of starting & stopping motion with music in a way that doesn’t involve the possibility of a student who misses a cue running into another who’s stopped, etc…)

#2: Broken Record Beat, Co-ordination of Starting-Stopping, Pitch

Walk with the melody – when the melody gets stuck on one note, freeze. Play or sing a single line melody – that randomly gets “stuck”:

Variations: • When frozen, sing the solfege of the stuck note as soon as you know it! • Walk backwards instead of freezing.

Quick Reaction Games

Gregory Ristow • Dalcroze Games You Can Teach

#3: Uh-oh! Phrase, Co-ordination of Starting-Stopping

In a circle, gallop (chassé) to the right with the music. “Uh-oh” means go the other way. Play or sing:

This, or improvise your own lilting skipping music vocally or at an instrument.

Variations: • Layer additional quick-reaction cues (e.g. “oops” means freeze for four beats.) • With younger students, use walking or tip-toeing in a circle first, since there will be less

crashing. Or: use passing bean bags around a circle instead. As they gain skills with “Stop and Start” skipping/galloping, move into this game.

#4: Clap the Accent Dynamics, Meter, Predictive Listening

Pat the beat, when you hear an accent, clap! This game is about setting up a predictable pattern, and changing it just after the moment that students have mastered it, and before they grow bored with it. You can make this game about accenting different beats within the same meter, or instead consistently accent downbeats and change the meter.

Use a drum improvised rhythm, or a free atonal improv like this:

Gregory Ristow • Dalcroze Games You Can Teach

Follow Games

or

#5: Bouncing-Ball Tempo & Meter Follow Beat, Meter, Time-Space-Energy, Phrase

Bounce and catch the ball with the beat of the music. Young child variant: Pat (clap, snap, tap, wink, shrug, etc…) with the beat of the music.

Possible Music to Play:

(Bounce on downbeat, catch on beat two.)

What to sing:

Meter Variation: • Find a way to bounce & pass the ball in 3/4, 4/4, etc… so the ball only touches the ground on the

downbeat. The teacher should (at first) call out meter changes (“3/4!”), and then leave it to the students to recognize as quickly as possible when a meter change has happened. This adds an element of quick-reaction to this classic follow game.

• Or: Try this in a circle with multiple balls, bouncing on downbeats, passing on other beats.

#6: Roll & Catch the Ball with the Music Time-Space-Energy, Attention

What to play:

What to sing:

Bonus Follow: Students conduct & follow tempo changes to a performance of Strauss’s Blue Danube

Gregory Ristow • Dalcroze Games You Can Teach

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Canon Games

#7: Doop canon Rhythms in common time, aural memory

Do what I do, four beats later. What to do: Quarter = “doop” (tap finger on nose)

Eighths = “chick-ah” (tug on earlobes) Half = “Oooh” (pushing one hand then the other to the side) Whole = “Bong” (great big clap with lots of follow through!)

Or, make up your own, have the students make up their own, etc…

Variations: • I’ll just do the gestures, you just do the sound! • I’ll just do the sounds, you just do the gesture! • Start using multiple note values within a measure (eg: doop doop chick-ah chick-ah). • Play this at the piano, using similar sounds. • Play this at the piano, improvising a melody limited to these rhythms! (Hard!) • Come up with a variant for 6/8, featuring triple-eighth-notes, dotted-quarters, quarter-eighth

(skipping rhythm), eighth-quarter (“Scottish snap”), and dotted half.

#8: Group Movement Canon Creative movement, spatial awareness

To any music in a constant time signature, have students in small groups. One makes a statuesque pose on the downbeat. The rest make the same pose on the next downbeat, as the leader takes up a different pose. Switch the music you are using, and switch leaders, so that each student gets the chance to be a leader. Variation: Instead of a statuesque pose, the leader makes a smooth gesture over the length of the measure, which is then echoed a measure later by the other students.