“Intuition, I realized, was the certainty with which a skill instantly worked on the basis of rational experience. Without training, intuition does not develop. People only think that intuition is inborn. If intuition unexpectedly reveals itself, however, it is because unconscious training has been amassed somewhere along the way.
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What is Solfege Bingo
Solfege Bingo is a game for young music students. You can play in class to help develop audiation, pitch recognition, and solfege.
The book comes with a series of bingo cards, each of which with three-note Solfege patterns in each square. “Do re mi, fa sol do, etc...” With the book comes a CD that has many different recorded examples of a singer singing these patterns, with space in between each pattern. Students match the three-note patterns they hear with the ones on their card until they get bingo.
The CD features a second set of recorded examples in which a clarinet plays the patterns so that the students must recognize the patterns by ear, not by syllable.
I first learned about this series as a student teacher, where the choir teacher would use them as warm-ups. She would use them as ear training examples to familiarize her ensembles with solfege. On the recorded examples, the space between each pattern is equal to the length of the patterns themselves, so you can use them as a call and response. The recording models the pattern, the choir sings it back.
Transposing the Tracks for Bands and Adding a Drone
A few years ago, I got the idea to transpose these recordings into band keys using GarageBand. I added a clarinet drone on the key center (using one of the software MIDI instruments) to help students hear the relationships of the pitches not only to each other but also to the tonic.
In band, I start the year by implementing these play-along tracks during warm-ups, starting in concert Bb. I first use the vocalist track and have students sing back. Then they play it back, with brass buzzing on mouthpieces. Then with brass on instruments. (The repetition of this has the side effect of reinforcing fingerings.) Eventually, once I feel like they have begun to internalize the pitches, I play them the clarinet version of the recording. The clarinet drone rings through my entire track, which takes the place of my usual Tonal Energy Tuner drone.
It sounds like this when it’s done…
In GarageBand, I dragged in the audio file I wanted to edit, creating an audio track. Then, I created a second software instrument track, selected clarinet as the instrument, and held out the note Bb on my MIDI keyboard for the drone. Double-clicking an audio region reveals a transpose option on the left. Dragging the slider moves the pitch up of the selected region up or down by a semitone.
Classroom Management (Making Two of Me)
I recall a year where I was struggling with engaging one of my band classes during the warm-ups. I needed a way to create some structure and reinforce expectations for the first 10 minutes of class, while making sure that the winds got the tone and ear development I wanted them to have. It is always easy to assume that students are against you when they are talking amongst themselves, wandering the back of the room, and slouching in their seats. I have come to find that, more often than not, my students aren’t against me, they just flat out didn’t understand my expectations for participation, posture, and technique and that they needed my support (even when it seems my expectations should be obvious).
My solution was to duplicate myself. I needed there to be one of me on the podium guiding the rehearsal sequence, and another of me walking the room to adjust students’ expectations of themselves.
I added the Solfege Bingo play-along tracks to slides in my daily agenda presentation, which is always on display at the front of the room through a projector. I make all of my slides in Apple’s Keynote. I found that I could embed an mp3 of one of my tracks into a slide and set the presentation to automatically skip to the next slide after a certain length of time had passed. So I created a sequence of these Solfege Bingo tracks, and a couple of other typical warm-ups I do, and embedded them all in Keynote slides so that the warm-up would happen automatically.
In the upper right corner, click the Transitions button to reveal transitions. From the Start Transition dropdown menu, you can choose to have a slide start automatically after a certain amount of time, using the Delay timer. You might have to tweak this a little bit to get it right, but the result is that these couple of Keynote slides play in a row, automatically, while I walk around the band room and give feedback to students.
This allows me to work the room. While warm-ups were taking place, I can walk in the percussion section and remind them what instrument they play for warm-ups that day (it's on the chart in the back of the room 🤷♂️). I can give postural feedback to my trombones. I can high five the tuba player. I can fit someone for a concert shirt. I can do nearly anything. And this is all while reinforcing audiation, tone development, and proper intonation.
I recommend the Solfege Bingo book. It’s effortless to modulate tracks with software. You can use the pitch-flex feature in GarageBand, as I mentioned above. But you can also use apps like Transcribe!, The Amazing Slow Downer, or Anytune.
Adding a clarinet drone is easy. I added a software instrument track in GarageBand, set it to a clarinet, and played the tonic along to the recording. But you could also use Tonal Energy as a GarageBand instrument.
Conclusion
Given the time I am posting this, it is worth mentioning that I totally intend to use these warmup play-along tracks in my online band classes this fall, which will be taking place in Google Meet. I am using the Loopback app to route the audio of Keynote through to the call, and a soundboard app called Farrago to trigger them. I can run the tracks through Google Meet and everyone plays along while on mute. I am hoping to blog about Farrago soon.
I am also planning to blog about another version of this workflow I have tried in especially needy classrooms, where I go as far as to record myself giving instructions to the band in between transitions, and even program the tracks to rehearse concert music for me while the real ‘me’ works the room. I have run up to 40 minutes of a band rehearsal through pre-recorded instructions and play along tracks before!
Get a copy of Solfege Bingo here.