Listening
Developing the ear is the most important thing of all... Your pieces must not be in your ten fingers only: you must also be able to hum them... Train your imagination... Do not play a piece without hearing it very clearly in your mind.
- Zoltan Kodály [1]
Every sound method of teaching must be based on the hearing, as much as on the emission, of sounds.
- Emile Jaques-Dalcroze [2]
We live in a society where listening is a devalued skill. Indeed we live in a society where if we truly listened to all the voices that come at us from all quarters we would go mad. We learn to turn our ears off for the sake of our own sanity.
Children learn this lesson at an earlier and earlier age. Placed into the care of well-meaning professionals determined at all costs to stimulate them intellectually, they are talked at all day long, often about things they may have no interest in whatsoever. No wonder they are often so eager to switch off their ears at the first opportunity.
Increasingly our information comes at us visually instead of aurally, on paper, billboards, computer screens, text messages. These are reassuring for a society which has forgotten how to listen, because of course if everything is written down you don’t need to listen to anything when it is told to you because you will always be able to look it up later. A vicious circle is created.
The difference between listening to something and just hearing it is profound, but it is fairly easy to pretend that you are listening to something when you are not. Some schoolchildren are experts at this: they need to be. But when a musician is not listening to himself and to others as he plays, it always shows in the execution: -
First, for most instruments, listening is essential to playing in tune.
Second, for all instruments, quality of sound depends upon listening. Only those students who truly listen to the sound they make will play in such a way that others want to listen to them.
Third, in any ensemble playing, listening is essential to playing well together. Tempo changes, tuning, balance, phrasing, dynamics: cues for all of these come from hearing others play and fitting in.
Fourth, for any musician, it is important to develop an “inner ear”, an ability to hear music in our mind and heart even when it is not being physically played. Using our inner ear transforms our interpretation of notation or other symbols. Without an inner ear, notation is merely a set of mechanical instructions to the fingers or hands; the sounds that we make will be an accidental by-product of the operation of our fingers. With an inner ear, notation can fulfil its true function, which is as an expression in code of real sounds; if we can hear a piece in our inner ear before playing it, then our playing will be a deliberate, conscious and intelligent expression of the sounds we hear inside us.
Most of us brought up in modern society are physically inured to not listen. Overcoming this deep instinct is not easy, and it won’t happen simply by being told. We need to help our students develop an instinctive, deep-level ability to listen. This can be helped by singing.
Singing
Nobody can play well if he does not feel and know where the essence of the melody is, and if he cannot bring it to life with his voice... To teach... an instrument without first... developing singing... is to build upon sand.
- Zoltan Kodály [3]
There is so intimate a connection between the vocal and the aural processes that the development of the one virtually involves the development of the other. The mechanical production of sounds on an instrument does not call for any special effort on the part of the ear... On the other hand, the efforts necessary to ensure the accuracy of vocal sounds conduce to the steady development of aural faculties.
- Emile Jaques-Dalcroze [4]
Singing is the one kind of music making which we cannot do automatically. For when we sing, every aspect of the music must be consciously made by our own bodies; it forces us to listen acutely to ourselves. One can play an instrument on auto-pilot, but not sing. This is why singing is the best way to get students to feel a musical point with clarity, especially anything relating to pitch or melody. Singing is the easiest way to internalise any kind of melody. Singing is the best way to awaken one’s musical instinct.
But getting people to sing can, these days, be a terrible
struggle. In years gone by in this country, live communal singing was an
indispensable part of everyone’s life: people sang as they tilled the fields or
did manual work; they came together to sing in worship; and they sang and
danced together for recreation. Nowadays, however, much of this has gone: our
sedentary work habits are not conducive to any kind of spontaneous singing;
participation in communal acts of worship is less and less common; and even for
recreation we prefer to
But one who is frightened to sing will probably always be a
poor musician. For any music he makes will be forever by-passing his body, and
thereby probably by-passing his ears, his feeling, and his memory. If he can be
encouraged, gently and over time, to use his voice to express himself music
Singing in tune
Try this little experiment: Get someone to play you (or better, sing you) a note. Then match it with your voice. That’s all.
Now think through some of the processes you had to go through to perform this apparently simple task. You had, first, to hear the pitch and listen to it. You then had to make a decision (conscious or sub-conscious) as to how you would copy it. (This might have involved making a choice as to which octave to sing it in.) You then had to try it. You then had to notice whether you were accurate or not: this involved listening, and making a careful judgment. Probably, whether you realise it or not, you then had to adjust your voice. And, since your voice is unlikely to stay on pitch automatically, you probably had to repeat the process over and over, perhaps continuously, as you sang that one note.
What a complicated business it is singing in tune! And how difficult it must be for little children who are just starting out on their musical journey. If singing is such a complex process for a young child, how do we make it easier? Here are some suggestions:
First, it is important that
children sing quietly. They are sm
Second, sometimes we may need to banish
extraneous complex sounds so the child has a chance of concentrating carefully
on the task at hand. Therefore, it is often a good idea to sing unaccompanied,
i.e. without accompaniments, instruments, backing-tracks etc. The common
practice of giving a group of pre-schoolers a variety of instruments to play
while singing can be a disaster. It makes it harder to hear the tune, and
therefore harder to sing it accurately. And the task of playing the instruments
can be so absorbing for little children that they forget to sing at
Third, it can help children if
sometimes we make the pitch content of the song simple enough that they have a
better chance of imitating it correctly. It is often a good idea to choose
songs with relatively few notes in them, so that they do not have to be constantly
making difficult judgements about pitch, and having to continu
It is a good idea if these notes are related to each other in more easily singable intervals. Wide leaps can be hard to pitch. Steps of a tone or a minor third may be easier. Very narrow intervals, such as semitones, might perhaps be more difficult to distinguish that slightly wider ones.
Young children’s vocal chords are
short, which means that their voices often have a relatively narrow range. Many
three-year olds cannot accurately stretch much beyond a third; five-year olds,
c. a fifth. If we try to stretch their voices beyond what they are reasonably
capable of, then
It is important also to expect them to sing neither too high not too low for their capabilities. If they try to sing too high, they simply won’t reach, and will again sing out of tune. If they sing too low, they may well reach it, but only in their chest voice; continuously singing there will mean that their head voice doesn’t develop, and they may never develop a full vocal range. The first sixth from middle C upwards is a good place to aim to start.
This means that as music teachers we will need to be very clear in our own minds about the pitch and interval content of the songs we choose. A superb tool for this is relative solfa.
Solfa, and Kodály
Much of what I have to say about
singing (both above and below) develops from the insights of Zoltan Kodály
(1882-1967), the great Hungarian composer and musical pedagogue. If you have
the opportunity to learn about the Kodály concept of music education, or to
attend any Kodály courses, I strongly recommend that you do so. Kodály was a
man who took good ideas and put them together, adapting them to the needs of
his situation and time: that alone makes him a great example to follow. He
developed a system of naming rhythmic values, which he based upon that of the
Galin/Paris/Chevé school in
I find relative solfa a marvellous tool for music education, for two main reasons: First, it helps me as a music teacher to analyse exactly what intervals a song contains, so as to judge whether or not it may be suitable for children to sing at whatever level of development they have reached. Second, it allows the children, in due course (once they progress to a sufficient intellectual understanding of music), to analyse the pitch content of songs, so as to recognise and name tunes according to how they sound, and thus learn to read and write them.
The best way for you to learn about relative solfa is to attend a Kodály course, because it is a system which makes most sense in practice, rather than just in theory. However, here are the bare bones of how it works.
Kodály named each degree of the scale. The major scale goes: do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do. The natural minor of course starts on la: la, ti, do, re, mi, fa, so, la. Most importantly, however, relative solfa is relative. In other words, it names each degree of the scale only in reference to other degrees of the scale. It does not designate fixed pitches (i.e. letter-names such as C, D, E etc.). Therefore, it is often called a “movable do” system, because do (or any other note for that matter) can be placed at any fixed pitch – enabling the system to work in any key.
The importance of this cannot be stressed too much. The genius of the system is that by naming relative pitches rather than fixed pitches, any pair of notes sung identifies a particular interval (rather than a pair of letter-names), which, for those who have learnt the system, has an instantly-recognisable aural identity. If children sing a song using the two notes so and mi, and learn to designate these notes as such, then they will be able to recognise, and therefore reproduce, the minor third interval denoted by this pair of notes, in any key and in any context. This gives them an instant opening into their “inner ear”: they will have begun the journey into being able to recognise, name and reproduce the melodies they hear (in any key), whether vocally or in writing. This is simply not possible in a fixed-pitch system, where the so-mi interval will have a different designation depending upon what key it is presented in, and what letter-names it uses. The relative solfa system is of course perfectly suited to teaching unaccompanied singing, because it enables both students and teacher to vocally transpose songs into any key, without worrying about whether one is matching the tonality of any instrumental accompaniment.
Another brilliant aspect of Kodály’s concept is that he gave each of these solfa notes its own hand-sign:[5]
These hand-signs enable a bridge between the aural and the physical. They help students to concretise the notes they are singing, and they enable teachers to make physical gestures which elicit particular aural, and therefore vocal responses from their students. They are, in effect, a transportable and instantly flexible system of temporary notation, and have massive scope for use in the teaching of singing, dictation and notation.
“Musical mother tongues”
Kodály lived at a time when, for both musical and political
reasons, the collection and re-invigoration of Hungarian folk-song repertoire
was very important. And it was natural that the pedagogical system which Kodály’s
followers put together and systematised would make full use of Hungarian folksong.
However, as Kodály’s concept began to spread outside
This is a massive challenge. It is by no means clear what
the “musical mother tongue” of the
The Kodály concept starts from the valuable principle of teaching young children songs which are limited in range, and stepwise in motion. It is held to be especially valuable to start with so-mi and mi-re-do, and then to build up a pentatonic scale before introducing more difficult intervals. It is essentially a melodic, modal concept of song, which works well with certain types of Hungarian folksong. Also appropriate to Hungarian folksong is the practice of teaching rhythm in a 2/4 context, with crotchets and quavers being the first note-values introduced at the conscious level, and little or no use of upbeats (anacrusis).
In
Therefore, it is far harder to teach young children to sing in tune at a young age using English nursery-rhymes than with Hungarian folksong. And things like melodic leaps are far harder to teach consciously by the Hungarian melodically-conceived methods, because the solfa relationships are more complex. Similarly, 6/8, and upbeats, are harder than 2/4 to teach consciously by a method based on rhythm names such as ta and ti.
The temptation is to ignore these things, and to entirely avoid songs which include such challenges, i.e. to pretend that we are Hungarians. Some Kodály enthusiasts in this country even go as far as to propound the myth that English nursery rhymes are not true English folk music at all, and that their melodies should not be sung with young children. However, I suggest that this is not at all faithful to the Kodály concept of “musical mother tongue.” We need to grasp the nettle and work out ways to expand and adapt the Kodály vision to apply to English folk-songs & nursery rhymes. And there are ways to do this.
As English nursery rhymes are often harmonically conceived, our training of children must have a basis in three-chord functional harmony (tonic, dominant, subdominant). Therefore, teaching harmony must feature strongly in our early-years teaching. This should not, initially, be conscious as these are complex matters not suitable to be taught at a conscious level to very young children. But it needs to be there, so that when children eventually are old enough to consciously get their heads around tonic chords, dominant sevenths, perfect cadences etc., they have had the sub-conscious foundation in harmony to fully understand, read and notate their own folk-song material. (We will discuss more in later chapters how to teach harmony in this way.)
As English nursery rhymes include much 6/8 and anacrusis, our training of children must include this. This also should not, initially, be at a conscious level. But it needs to be there, so that when children are old enough to consciously understand compound time and the rhythms associated with it., they have had the sub-conscious foundation to fully understand these things. (The best way to do this at the sub-conscious level is through movement – and we will discuss this more later.)
This does not mean that we abandon Kodály. Nor does it mean that we should abandon the melodic, pentatonic, stepwise methods associated with that concept. But we need to have both visions, because both are part of our music. True fidelity to the idea of “musical mother tongue” demands that we do not ignore English folksongs & nursery rhymes, but that we recognise and make use of them for their many benefits.
[1]
The
Selected Writings of Zoltan Kodály
(Boosey & Hawkes,
[2]
Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, Rhythm Music & Education (Dalcroze Soc., London, 1980), p. 27
[3]
The
Selected Writings of Zoltan Kodály
(Boosey & Hawkes,
[4] Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, Rhythm Music & Education (Dalcroze Soc., London, 1980), p. 21
[5] these illustrations taken from Erzsébet
Szőnyi, Kodály’s Principles in Practice (Boosey & Hawkes, London,
1973), p.21
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© 2025 Nikhil Dally
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