c. The Essential String Method

Context

The Essential String Method (copyright 1997, Guildhall School of Music and Drama) is developed by Sheila Nelson, a well-known pedagogue with a long list of educational publications for string instruments on her name. The method is published for violin, viola, cello and double bass. Ensemble books are available too, as well as books with the piano accompaniments.

The method consists of four volumes, of which I shall take a closer look at books 1 and 2.

The publishers, Boosey and Hawkes, state on their website:

“The award-winning approach to string teaching that develops musicianship alongside instrumental skills. Developed by the world famous string teacher Sheila Nelson, The Guildhall School of Music & Drama and a team of leading string teachers and awarded Millennium Product Status.”

By looking into the method, it becomes clear that they use Kodály tools to achieve this, but the Kodály-concept is never explicitly mentioned. Remarkable within the context of this study.

The Essential String Method is much more straight forward, and thus user-friendly, than the Colourstrings method, which looks like 'from another planet', when you first see it, because of the use of colours and graphic representations. The Essential String Method is using much more the traditional way to notate music: staves, bar lines, traditional note-symbols, etcetera.

Description of the material

Description of Book 1

The book sets out with a very structured list of contents. On the bottom of the same page there is a line of pictograms showing what to pay attention to while playing the pieces or executing the assignments.

Although the layout of the book is child-friendly and playful, with big notes and pictures, I still experience the layout not as entirely positive: there is a lot of distraction through different fonts, font sizes, boxes, shadings, and overall: too much text.

The big structure uses ‘stages’ as chapters, and adds a title to each stage. In this book there are six stages:

Stage 1 Strings and their names

Stage 2 Using the bow

Stage 3 Left-hand fingers

Stage 4 More left-hand fingers

Stage 5 Getting your fingers working

Stage 6 Moving fingers

The bold titles all have cello-technical subjects, with a strong focus on the left-hand technique. From this information you could get the impression that The Essential String Method is a traditional cello method. The book has three other sections: the most striking are the detachable blue pages. Here the pupil can find references on how to sit properly, instructions on how to hold the bow and other practical information. Then there is a chapter called ‘Activity pages’ consisting of scales, open string tunes, ‘get your fingers working’ and ‘cello explorer’: technical exercises. In the ‘open string songs’ and ‘get your fingers working’ there appears an unconventional way of notation: the fingers and strings are indicated by respectively numbers and letters. The rhythm is symbolised by smaller and bigger letters/numbers, and the addition of the traditional quarter rest symbol. Then there is a section at the back of the book called ‘Notation of solmisation songs’, here you find the staff-notation of the songs that were taught only from solmisation syllables before. On the last page there is also an overview on the rhythm syllables and the solmisation names and handsigns. A special feature is the occurrence of two figures throughout the book: a 'talking bridge' and a happy (or sad) cellist. The bridge gives good advice, and the happy/sad cellist reminds the pupil of his sitting posture and the instrument hold. Another structural characteristic is a checklist at the end of each stage.

Recurring assignments are ‘tap-and-say’ (tapping the pulse while saying the rhythm), ‘finding a rhythm’ (extracting a rhythm from a song), ‘mobile rhythms’ (rhythmical improvisation in duos), and ‘musical questions and answers’ (alternately making up questions and answers). Noteworthy are the tinkering assignments: make your own stave, create rhythm cards, etcetera.

Description of Book 2

This volume was written by the same authors, using exactly the same layout and number of pages as the first book. There are again six stages, but the titles indicate not only technical subjects:

Stage 1 Quick of the mark

Stage 2 Longer and shorter

Stage 3 Louder and faster

Stage 4 Flying bows

Stage 5 Left hand adventures

Stage 6 Ready for a concert

These titles tell us nothing specific about the actual content.

The ‘Activity pages’ reappear in this book, containing scales, ‘Cello explorer’, ‘Songs to sing then play’. There is also the notation of the songs with solmisation letters, and a legend of the solmisation handsigns and rhythm syllables at the back of the book.

The regular recurring assignments are supplemented with ‘count and play’ (play while you count the beats) and ‘catch a rhythm’ (learn a rhythm very thoroughly).

I was fortunate in succeeding to get in touch with a teacher with a long experience with the method. She is a double bass teacher from London. She answered my questions and gave me more insight. She uses the book in individual lessons with beginners and early stages. Some of her pupils have extra Kodály Musicianship lessons, and with the others she backs her lessons up with solmisation as much as possible. The rhythmic exercises and the work on polyphony are effective, and the literacy line leads, according to her experiences, to “good recognition on how a stave works.” She uses the ‘Activity pages’ “…for transposition work, for more able pupils finding a different doh”. The use of the method enhances the inner hearing abilities of her pupils. Concerning beat, metre, for and phrasing she adds some basic Dalcroze exercises.

Overall, she is quite positive about the method in general, the only thing she probably would change is the “workbook style”. (70)

Experiment

Unfortunately, I was not able to observe the use of The Essential String Method in practice, but I have tried some of the material with one of my own private pupils, Lucía (12 years old, she is playing the cello for six years now). I focussed on the inner hearing and other musicianship skills, because she is more advanced already in her cello playing.

The material was useful in the way it was meant, especially because this particular pupil is familiar with British children’s songs and the English language. I realise that it is not easy applicable for non-English-speakers. In that case, it would be necessary to adapt and adjust the content and change the song repertoire. Because my pupil has learned the Takadimi rhythm system before instead of the Kodály/Chevé system, I decided to change that part for her.

Lucía knew all the songs and had a lot of fun with the assignments. The solmisation was not a problem, and also rhythm syllables were fine. She likes to sing and was eager to memorise, or to perform difficult tasks, like canon-clapping with herself, etcetera.

Lucía wrote a short report about working with this material. From her writing I could make out that she had a nice experience and that it was fun for her to work on musical skills through simple songs. To quote a sentence from the report:

“…this helped me quickly learn the new notes in a fast, fun and engaging way” (Lucía Castro-Boogaart)

Analysis from Kodály perspective

Skills and tools

Singing assignments appear on almost every page. The first songs are do-so songs, congruent with the fifths of the open strings on the cello. The interval of a fifth up is not the easiest to sing. After learning the song on text and solmisation, the child is asked to find the two sounds on his cello, and play the tune as he sings it. Hand signs are given with the songs. The next interval to be learned is so-mi. The child is encouraged to sing on text and solmisation, and try the hand signs too. The next interval is surprisingly the octave do-do’ (from the open D string). Very difficult to sing in tune, but the need to ‘innerly hear’ the octave is essential if you want to use it for finding the proper hand position for correct intonation on the cello (open string with fourth finger on the string above: a solid base for the left hand’s frame). On the cello the pupil can play little scales already, just by lifting a finger at the time (third finger together with the second, first finger pattern), playing a rhythm on every pitch. It is curious that only after playing this technical ‘scale’ the method provides a song with the toneset of fa-mi-re-do. It would have been more from the known to the unknown or from the concrete to the abstract if it would have been turned around: to play the song first and after that derive the scale from it. For children, songs are real life entities, (technical) scales are not.

Then mi-re-do songs are practiced. Special attention for do-re and do-re-mi. The upward fingering is more difficult to execute on the cello, because the fingers are placed from above the string. The chance that the puils ‘misses’ is bigger than while just lifting (after starting off with a ‘tuned’ hand): it is very important to ‘innerly hear’ this difficult interval of the second. The first book ends with the do-pentatonic scale, and do’-ti-la. The method is also inviting the pupil to sing melodic ostinatos and sing in parts with one of the so-mi songs from the beginning.

The first new interval in the second book is the more difficult upward minor third mi-so. By the end of that book the child has sung and played spanning one octave, with in between practicing many so-mi-re-do-songs, some pentatonic songs, and some major pentachord songs.

Beat and rhythm are well represented. On the second page of book 1 the concept of beat is explained. The term ‘pulse’ is used here, but there is a reference to heartbeat, as is commonly used in many Kodály practices. There is no visual representation of the beat, such as heart-shaped figures or footsteps. There is also no walking of the beat, or moving to the beat. The assignments ‘tap-and say’, and ‘count-and-play’ contain beat, but tapped, or spoken. Rhythm is explained by the image of ‘pebbling’ a song: putting down a pebble to every syllable, not yet arranging the ‘pebbles’ according to the beat. After making a set of rhythm cards themselves, the rhythm syllables are introduced. Actually they are not real rhythm cards, because they just count for one beat each, this is actually a form to show the beat, but the rhythm comes from combining the cards. The method uses the traditional Kodály syllables, with the usual British adjustments. The pupil is asked to “decide on the pulse of the music and tap it steadily”. This is quite early in the learning process, and seems a little complicated to me. In the first book, rhythms are made up with ‘ta’ (quarter note), ‘titi’ (two eighth notes) and ‘ma’ (for the quarter rest). In the second book the rhythm building blocks ‘toe’ (half note) and 'teketeke' (four sixteenth notes) are added. Different rhythms are spoken and played on the cello. In the second book the pupil is asked to count out loud along with his playing. Here comes the metre into the picture: the pupil has to count 1 2 1 2 in a 2/4-time signature. Time signatures are explained very short and on a theoretical level. The ‘finding a rhythm’ exercises are dictations, or deriving and notating rhythms from songs (learned on solmisation). The ‘catch the rhythm’ exercise works intensively on one rhythm, combining rhythm and beat, further polyphonic work by canon clapping, and adding melody to the rhythm: a way to deepen the processing of the rhythm and finally ‘owning’ it. ‘Mobile rhythms’-exercise: while keeping a beat with a partner, alternately say improvised rhythms, as it were sending “rhythm messages” to a friend. The description of the task is a little short: there is not mentioned how many beats or what time signature should be chosen. If the teacher states the task in a 'free' way like this, without sufficient preparation, it may end up in chaos. I would suggest to start with clear limitations for the improvisation.

Inner hearing is trained by singing on relative solmisation and the transposing of the simple solmisation songs in different places on the fingerboard. The ‘Hear my rhythm’- and ‘Musical copycats’-exercises are training aural skills as well: the pupil has to clap or play back what he heard, so he must make a mental image of the musical motive.

Polyphonic work is already mentioned in the use of rhythmic and melodic (sung) ostinatos. The ostinato is always added to a well-known song which the pupil can also sing with solmisation syllables. Rhythmic canons and rounds contribute as well to the development of polyphonic skills. The inclusion of duets, and the combination of songs in a quodlibet also provides the exposure to polyphony and harmony.

Analysis in the sense of making aware of phrasing, form, harmonic progression appears on a very unconscious level in the method. Responsorial songs and improvisations with rhythmic or melodic questions and answers (‘mobile rhythms’, ‘musical questions and answers’) might evoke a sense of phrasing and harmonic turns when done properly, modelled and guided by a responsible teacher. From the method, there is not so much guidance, for example through experiencing the opening and ending of a phrase, and linking them to a new situation or composition exercise. I think there would have been more room for this in the method, but the authors probably simply did not choose to include it.

Musical Literacy means the ability to read and write down music, but not on a technical level: (innerly) hear what you read, and write down what you (innerly) hear. The method offers plenty progressive reading assignments, by which the pupil can discover the rules of staff-notation. This sequence starts with notating a known so-mi-song on a one-line stave. This step in ‘understanding of the system’ is not congruent to the application of the five-line stave already used for the cello playing from the very first page. This is different in the Colourstrings method. The next step is notating so-mi-songs on a two-line stave. Both exercises do not involve rhythm, only pitch. It is pointed out to the pupil that so and mi are copycats, if the one sits on a line, the other one does, too. This is continued by explaining where the la is on the stave: as so is on a line, la is in a space. In the second volume there is a song illustrating this in the text, giving the same rule for the triad. The writing exercises can be done by just counting and calculation, but sometimes the text of the assignment mentions to “sing the song and see if you can finish drawing notes to make the tune.” In the second book, rhythm has to be notated in the ‘Find a rhythm’-exercises. In the composition exercises, first the rhythm should be notated, then adding the melody tones by solmisation letters (stick notation). By the end of book 2, the pupil is notating solmisation contours with only note-heads on the five-line stave. Rhythmic and melodic notation is not combined yet.

The tools of relative solmisation and rhythm syllables are inseparable linked to the skills (to a greater or lesser extent), but have to be learned as a skill in its own right first. Again, a book can not do this, so here a responsible teacher who uses this method is necessary.

The tool of physical movement, as applied in up-to-date classroom Kodály teaching, is hardly used at all. There are two moments where the child is moving. The first just for reasons of correct posture automation. The second to distinguish between the low and high ‘do’, by kneeling to the ground while singing low 'do', and stretching out while singing the high 'do'. In my opinion, it is not so easy to perform these movements while singing an octave in tune.

Principles

The first listed Kodály principles of experienced-based and active music-making, and of learning music through music, are partially valid in this method. The learning sequence is based on songs, not on individual technical components, and the song is experienced as a whole, by the actively involved, singing, pupil, before deriving concepts from it eventually. Nevertheless, not everything is approached in a ‘sound to symbol’ way. The open string tunes are traditionally notated on a five-line stave from the first page, to be played on the cello without singing them first. Thus there is a combination here from decoding symbols and reading with comprehension.

The choice of relevant repertoire, which is a sensitive issue in the world of Kodály, is dealt with in the following way: the songs consist of 1) British, well-known, children’s songs, like ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’ or ‘Hot Cross Buns’, 2) composed songs addressing cello technical issues and, in the second book, 3) some folk songs.

Only in the third and the fourth volumes there is a composer or origin mentioned with the song, so there you can see if the song is a Tradional, or composed by one of the authors, or by, for example, Beethoven. Book three and four have the same kind of stock for repertoire, but also including themes by significant classical composers. This is quite well in line with the Kodály ideas about repertoire.

The songs in the first two books are predominantly in the major-scale, the staff-notated songs as well as the songs written in solmisation syllables. In the staff-notated songs there is a giant lead for D major, with more than twenty songs.

There are hardly any minor songs, two or three in both books together. I could not find any modal songs. Personally I consider this as a missed chance, in particular because there are many beautiful minor and modal songs suitable for singing and playing on the cello.

The application of the sequencing method according to the concept of prepare-present-practice can be recognised only now and then in the method. The preparation phase, normally taking relatively long, consists here mainly of singing and handsigning the song, and learning the song before playing it. In order to be more beneficial, this phase could contain more steps. Now the presentation is most of the time just ‘information’. Concerning musical literacy, I can see the most of the PPP-principle: one-line and two-line staves preparing for five-line stave for example. However, there is a more intensive practice phase, really applying the learned skills to new songs through creative assignments.