Journal Entry - Sound Connections
Original Article

January 16, 2007
Dr. Don Ester’s Sound Connections reading is the perfect counter to the Kohut article. The methods he suggests make a lot of sense. If one reads the rest of his book (which is yet to be published), one can see just why these methods make sense. The rhythmic syllables are easy to understand and learn, and they can be applied to nearly any rhythmic scenario. Dr. Ester also touches on the discussion about consistency of methods in a given school system. A student may have 3 or 4 music teachers through his 12 years in a public school system, and each of these teachers may use a different counting system, for example. Regardless of counting systems used, this can be difficult and unproductive for the students. Dr. Ester suggests that this is one of the strengths of Takadimi – it is flexible enough to be useful for all ages and levels of musical complication, so teachers from K-12 could all conceivably use it, providing their students with a sense of continuity.

Particularly if used consistently across the grade levels, Takadimi can be effective because of its cross-discipline value. Dr. Ester writes, “In fact, effective elementary music instruction using the Takadimi syllables can virtually eliminate the need to focus on rhythm reading during the crucial first stages of instrumental instruction, freeing valuable instructional time to focus on playing skills.” As someone who has had a decent amount of experience working with beginners, there are many barriers to playing the instrument – physical things such as embouchure and getting a grasp on the instrument, attention spans, rhythmic knowledge, notational knowledge, pitch familiarity, and patience, just to name a few. If even one of these aspects can be effectively dealt with before the students try to play the instruments, the process will just be that much faster and more streamlined.

“Sound before symbol” is a concept with which I am not familiar, from a firsthand perspective. As a beginner, we were taught about sound as sound, we were taught notation and how to play the notation, thus creating sound. Sure, the sound may have been demonstrated before we played it, but only in that specific time was it demonstrated, and simply as a description of how to play it. Nonetheless, the concept makes a lot of sense to me. I am not sure how completely feasible it is (again, it would ideally require complete integration and consistency from one teacher/school to another), but I like it. In all fairness to the band world, this concept is easiest to realize in a vocal setting, because making sound without notation is easier with one’s voice. It can be very simple to imitate vocally (regardless of how accurately), whereas a beginning trombonist, for example, cannot some imitate a major scale on his first day with his instrument (nor could he even do so from notation). Thus, this concept tends to get ignored in the instrumental world, simply because it requires some creative thinking to be able to truly apply it to an instrumental setting. This is something I hope to be able to do with my future students. I also would like to have them sing regularly, but that is a discussion for an entirely different time.

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