Music Fundamentals Games with Stefanie Dickinson

Dr. Stefanie Dickinson joins us to share some of the music fundamentals games that she uses in her music theory classroom.

 

Links

Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy

Dr. Stefanie Dickinson’s page at UCA

The Power of Play with Jed Dearybury (Notes from the Staff Episode)

Dalcroze Solfege Games with Greg Ristow (Notes from the Staff Episode)

uTheory.com

 

Show Notes

0:00:21.2 Introductions

 

0:02:27.1 Value of play in teaching and learning

 

0:06:02.4 Key Words - for key signatures

 

0:08:47.0 360 Degrees - for scale degrees

 

0:10:30.4 Balance Beam - for rhythmic values and notation conventions

 

0:13:38.2 Meter Cards - for identifying time signatures

 

0:16:44.8 Notation Bloopers

 

0:20:15.0 Triad Bingo (can be extended to other topics)

 

0:23:01.6 How do you help students who are struggling to get beyond the despair factor?

 

0:25:18.0 Interval Train

 

0:26:57.5 Value of competitive games in teaching fundamentals

 

0:32:43.1 Phone Numbers Game (aural skills, scale degrees/solfege)

 

0:38:32.1 Extending games for other topics

 

0:40:04.6 Wrap-up

Transcript

[music] - These are the notes from the staff where we talk about our point of view, and we share the things we're going to do, `cause the path to mastering theory begins with you.

 

0:00:21.2 Greg Ristow: Welcome to Notes from the Staff, a podcast from the creators of uTheory, where we dive into conversations about music theory, ear training, and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education.

 

0:00:33.4 David Newman: Hi, I'm David Newman, and I teach voice and music theory at James Madison University, and write code and create content for uTheory.

 

0:00:42.9 GR: Hi, I'm Greg Ristow, I conduct the choirs at the Oberlin Conservatory, and I'm the founder of uTheory.

 

0:00:49.0 DN: Thank you listeners for your comments and episode suggestions. We love to read them. Send them our way by email at notes@utheory.com, and remember to like us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

 

0:01:01.6 GR: Our topic for today is music fundamentals games, and joining us to share some of her favorite games is Dr. Stefanie Dickinson. Dr. Dickinson is associate professor of music theory at the University of Central Arkansas. Her primary areas of research include the music of Liszt's late experimental period, issues in analysis and performance, and music theory pedagogy. She has presented her work at regional and national meetings of the Society for Music Theory and College Music Society, the International Conference on Music and Gesture, and others. And her articles can be found in Gamut, College Music Symposium, the Festschrift Liszt 2000, and most recently in the Rutledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy, where she's written about games for teaching music fundamentals, which is what we're going to talk about today. Stefanie, welcome.

 

0:01:49.4 Stefanie Dickinson: Thank you so much. It's a pleasure and honor to be here, and I appreciate the opportunity.

 

0:01:54.4 GR: We're thrilled to have you. So you're teaching at University of Central Arkansas. What all do you teach there? 

 

0:02:00.0 SD: I teach only music theory. I have two sophomore theory and two sophomore aural skills classes in the fall, and then spring I go on to teach some upper level electives. I teach the form class. We have an introduction to linear analysis, and then in the summer I teach music theory pedagogy class.

 

0:02:19.5 GR: Well, I loved your chapter, so I'm so excited to talk about games, and especially music fundamentals games.

 

0:02:27.1 DN: So a theme we've come back to several times on this podcast is the value of play in teaching and learning. Listeners may remember our episode with Jed Dearybury, author of The Playful Classroom, or the episodes where Greg and I talked about Dalcroze solfege games and about music theory songs. So we've talked a lot about this, but before we dive into specific games, I wonder if you could talk about the value of games in teaching and how you came to use them in your own pedagogy.

 

0:02:52.5 SD: Sure. I think that games are very, very valuable, potentially at every level of instruction, but specifically for fundamentals. And I think it's just due to our competitive natures and our desire to succeed and our desire to win that really heightens our awareness for learning. And games are such a fun environment where we can really push ourselves, but we do not have the risk that we do when we take exams. So I think this resonates with students, and we've all been playing games since we were tiny children. The fact that the games speed up our thought processes really mirrors the way that students will use these fundamentals in the real world. And I found that students, when they first come into a fundamentals class, they think that they just need to be able to master the concept. They don't realize that they actually need to master it and have, in fact, instant recall, because a lot of our students are music education majors. And they're not thinking into their future when they're standing in front of their band sight reading a piece, and they don't realize that they don't have five minutes to count the flats and to look at the next to last one to determine the key signature.

 

0:04:11.6 SD: So games are just a great way to build up that speed and just build up the real world skills that they're going to need. And also, these games particularly came to me when I was trying to think of a different modality for drill and practice, because we know that drill and practice is absolutely essential to mastering fundamentals. And of course we can do drill and practice exercises in class, and then we can give our students written homework. We can send them to an online website or use a computer app, but games are just fun and interactive and competitive. And one thing that I was very enthusiastic about was having my students see how their classmates perform in this situation. So some of the students who would be struggling would be able to see the students who had already mastered the concept, and they might realize, "Hey, my classmate has mastered this, so I can do it too." So I was interested in that aspect.

 

0:05:13.8 GR: I love that. That's great. That's great. Leigh VanHandel's new book, The Rutledge Companion to Music Theory, I've been finding absolutely delightful as I've been working my way through the various chapters. We had the chance to speak recently with Melissa Hoag about her chapter on putting the music in music fundamentals. I absolutely loved your chapter on these music theory games, and I thought it might be fun if you took us and the listeners through some of these games. And maybe for the ones that aren't too visual, David and I could go head to head on a question or two and see who wins. [laughter]

 

0:05:44.4 DN: You just want to show how good you are.

 

0:05:46.9 GR: Don't you? [laughter]

 

0:05:50.6 SD: Well, most of these games are visual based, but I'll see if I can think of a few questions.

 

0:05:55.3 GR: Sounds great. Sounds great.

 

0:05:56.6 SD: That will allow a little competition here on the podcast. [laughter]

 

0:06:00.5 GR: Excellent.

 

0:06:02.4 SD: I tried to think of games for quite a few different aspects of fundamentals, and I'll tell you about my Key Words. Each has a little kitschy kind of title, each game does. And one I'd like to call Key Words, and it just involves identifying key signatures. And there are three rounds for this game. The students are given 15 cards, and each card has a unique key signature. And for the first round, the students are just given a word. So I like to start with a very simple word, maybe like beg, B-E-G, or fad, F-A-D. And the students who are usually working in teams shift through their cards, and then they just place one key signature for each letter. So they might, for example, have F major, A major, D major for fad, F-A-D. Of course, I don't really specify whether they should use A major or A flat major for the A, their choice. Of course, some of our words have two letters, so that then the complimentary key signatures can be used for those. But it's really a simple kind of game.

 

0:07:13.5 SD: And then we go to round two, where I will say a sentence, and only one word in the sentence is actually a word that you can spell with key signatures because obviously we're limited on letters. So I'll give you a few sentences.

 

0:07:29.1 GR: Nice.

 

0:07:30.8 SD: And see if you can tell me which word that you would be able to spell with the cards.

 

0:07:34.0 DN: Okay.

 

0:07:35.2 GR: Okay.

 

0:07:35.6 SD: And so this is just to add another dimension, so it kind of creates a bit of a riddle. All right. My sister just earned her first scout badge.

 

0:07:46.4 GR: Badge.

 

0:07:47.3 DN: There you go.

 

0:07:50.0 SD: Great, great. And then you would have practice with five different major key signatures, or I could specify minor key signatures.

 

0:07:56.1 GR: Oh, so then once they get the word, do they have to write out the key signatures or find their key signature cards for those? 

 

0:08:02.5 SD: Yes, they find the key signature cards and they'll have one card for each letter in the word.

 

0:08:09.3 GR: Got it.

 

0:08:10.3 DN: Yep.

 

0:08:10.4 SD: But we usually play this at a table and they'll line up the cards on a table.

 

0:08:14.7 GR: Nice. Yeah.

 

0:08:16.2 SD: Yeah. But one of the catches is each team only has one attempt, you have to be sure that you're accurate. So another sentence might be, do you drink decaf coffee? 

 

0:08:23.9 DN: Decaf.

 

0:08:26.5 GR: Oh, good for you.

 

0:08:30.4 SD: Great. Yeah. And that would give you practice with another five key signatures.

 

0:08:36.8 DN: Coffee comes close.

 

0:08:36.9 GR: Yeah. I was trying coffee. [laughter]

 

0:08:37.8 SD: It does. I'll give you one more so we can break the tie. My friend's favorite movie is Dead Poets Society.

 

0:08:46.4 GR: Dead.

 

0:08:46.5 DN: Dead.

 

0:08:47.0 SD: Oh, that's a draw. [laughter] I think it's time to go on to another game. [laughter] So there's one that I call 360 degrees and the emphasis here is scale degrees. So I'll have students divided into teams and you can have, I suppose, two to four teams just depending on the board space available in your class. And this is a good way to get students out of their desks and I'll have each team line up. I'll have one person go to the board at a time, but before they go to the board, I'll call out three pieces of information; a clef, a key, and a scale degree. A clef, a key, and a scale degree. And then I'll let students think about that for a minute. And then I'll say go. And the first person on each team closer to the board will run to the board and write the clef, the key, and then the scale degree of that specific key. So unfortunately we can't play that one on the air.

 

[laughter]

 

0:09:58.2 GR: Yeah, it doesn't work too well aurally. So in other words, you would say something like bass clef G major 6.

 

0:10:05.3 SD: Exactly.

 

0:10:05.4 GR: And so someone would draw the bass clef, draw one sharp, and would write the note E on that staff.

 

0:10:13.1 SD: And so, of course, treble and bass clefs are relatively easy. You could throw in some C clefs. [chuckle] That would be a lot of fun, I'll tell it to them.

 

0:10:23.5 GR: Yeah, writing key signatures in C clefs can be fun too because they have a different shape depending on the C clef.

 

0:10:30.4 SD: Absolutely, absolutely. And this is also practice, of course, for writing key signatures and having the correct placement and the correct order. Another component of that game. One of my favorites I call Balance Beam. So I'll have one student from each team go to the board and write on a horizontal plane numbers 1-14. Actually, it could be any number that work, but the game that I like to start with has 14 different rhythmic values. And then I'll call out a rhythmic value for each number and my students will write that rhythmic value, no beams. So, for example, let's say numbers 1-3 each have eighth notes. Number 4 is a quarter note. Number 5 is an eighth note. Number 6 is a dotted quarter. 7, 8, 9 are all eighth notes. 10 is a quarter note. 11-14 are eighth notes. So they're just looking at what might seem to be just a random assignment of note values.

 

0:11:40.2 GR: And at this point not beamed at all...

 

0:11:43.4 SD: Not beamed at all.

 

0:11:45.0 GR: Just individual notes.

 

0:11:46.6 SD: No, because that's part of the competition. So I have five rounds. I really can get a lot, a lot of competition out of this one visual. So round one, I asked the teams to beam the rhythm in 6/8 and of course include bar lines. So, and again, I give each team only one chance. So they have to really think it through and check themselves. So for round two, I have the teams beam the same notes correctly in 3/4 and, of course, check on the bars. Round three, I asked the teams to beam the same rhythmic pattern in 9/8. And, of course, this time they have to move the bar lines. And then round four, I asked the students in 9/8 to replace each rhythmic note value with a rest value. And then for the last round, I asked them to do rhythmic transposition. So I'll have them change the rest values from 9/8 to 9/4.

 

0:12:50.8 GR: Change all of the values from 9/8 to 9/4.

 

0:12:52.9 SD: Right.

 

0:12:53.7 GR: Got it.

 

0:12:55.3 SD: Exactly. But I specifically work with rest values at first because I think it might be a little tougher than the actual note values. Although that's certainly a possibility.

 

0:13:03.3 GR: Yeah. That's great. And I can see all sorts of ways you could extend this as well, depending on which notes you changed to rests, it might be that in some meters you would normally combine those rests to form a longer value. Whereas in other meters, you'd want to keep them separate to reflect the metric structure.

 

0:13:23.8 SD: Right, and that's certainly a very important point, yes. And in addition to teaching beaming, we can also teach the proper combination of rests. Absolutely. Then I go on to Meter Cards. Each team receives two sets of cards, and on one card, there is a rhythmic value that's the equivalent of one beat. So for example, in 4/4, this could be a single quarter note. It could be two eighths. It could be an eighth and two sixteenths. It could be a dotted eighth and a single sixteenth. It's just the value of a single beat. And then I have another stack of cards with the numbers two, three, and four. Now, of course, these refer to meters or beats per measure. Usually I just start with the more common two, three, four, though you could certainly add others. And then the students basically have to figure out what the meter is when I combine one card with a rhythmic pattern with another card with a number.

 

0:14:30.4 GR: Can you give us an example of that? 

 

0:14:33.3 SD: So perhaps we can do a little competition here.

 

0:14:35.8 DN: Yeah, I'm still trying to envision this.

 

0:14:38.3 SD: Okay, so I would like for you to tell me the meter or the time signature for your first card, which is a quarter and an eighth, the equivalent of a beat.

 

0:14:52.0 DN: Gotcha.

 

0:14:53.5 SD: And then the other card, which tells you that there are four of these per measure.

 

0:14:57.5 DN: So 12/8.

 

0:14:58.4 GR: So 12/8.

 

0:15:00.5 SD: Exactly, exactly.

 

0:15:00.6 GR: Four compound beats, yeah.

 

0:15:02.2 SD: Now, of course, simple meters are pretty easy to do, but then when I choose a compound meter, then there's a extra step of students having to think about how the time signature reflects not the beats per measure, but the divisions per measure.

 

0:15:24.5 DN: Great. Okay. Yeah, the part that I hadn't grokked at first was that there would be compound meter beats. Yeah, and it always seems like it's a difficult thing to explain in fundamentals why a compound meter is what it is.

 

0:15:42.8 SD: It really is. It's always a challenge. And I think it sometimes helps for students to see a single beat isolated on a card as opposed to just looking at example thinking that the divisions are the equivalent of beats.

 

0:15:58.2 GR: Yeah. And I think also it's nice, right, because so often we say in 6/8, 9/8, 12/8, the dotted quarter gets the beat. But of course, all sorts of other things can form a beat. And so, I like that idea of getting them to think about the rhythm words as being beats within those compound meters. And, of course, you could make some really hard ones. You could do a dotted 16th, 32nd, 16th, right, at which point we're in, and the number three, at which point we're in 9/16 time, where you can get some really crazy ones in there. Yeah.

 

0:16:36.6 SD: Right, right. And usually that's the process. You start with the easier ones and then work your way to the ones that are more challenging. I think perhaps my favorite is the Notation Bloopers Game. [laughter] And this is just to reinforce conventional notation, which I think a lot of our students are just not aware of. They take conventional notation for granted. So I'll give my students a slip of paper that has just a short melody on it, and I'll ask them to identify the mistake. And it's just really fun to come up with these mistakes. They might be as subtle as a bass clef with the dots in the wrong place. So instead of surrounding the F line, they might surround the D line. And usually that takes a while for students to identify that. And this is a fun game to play with teams because you've got the interaction of the team members as they look for the mistake. Another favorite of mine, see if you can identify this mistake. So picture this, I've got a bass clef with dots in the proper position, right? And then next you see 4/4. After that you see two flats; B flat, E flat. And then for simplicity's sake, let's say that you see four quarter notes, a bar line, and a whole note. What's the mistake? 

 

0:18:19.6 GR: I'm cheating a bit because I've seen it in your book, and I have to say I had to read the answer. [laughter] And then I was like, oh, of course. [chuckle]

 

0:18:30.0 SD: So a bass clef, time signature of 4/4, two flats, B flat, E flat, followed by four quarter notes, a bar, and a whole note, with a, let's say, a double bar.

 

0:18:42.5 DN: You've transposed the time signature and the key signature.

 

0:18:47.8 SD: Exactly. [chuckle]

 

0:18:48.0 GR: Excellent, David.

 

0:18:51.3 SD: Exactly.

 

0:18:51.4 DN: I had to look... I had to visualize it. [chuckle]

 

0:18:54.6 SD: Mm-hmm. It's a lot of fun. And you could do other things like using wrong stem direction, incorrect beaming. And another one of my favorites is a mistake that my students make very often, which they'll have a melody with an upbeat, but then in the last measure, they'll have note values for the complete value of the measure. So they've forgotten to compensate for the upbeat. That usually takes a minute too.

 

0:19:23.0 DN: Although I... Yeah. I get to some of these things and I think, well, I've seen professional scores that feature this or feature... And, of course, I do a lot of early music, so I've seen the F clef on different lines.

 

0:19:40.3 GR: Everywhere. True.

 

0:19:41.1 DN: But I've seen the G clef on different lines.

 

0:19:44.5 SD: That's a great point. That's a great point. And that's a good conversation to have with students, that this, what we call conventional notation is not universal. I just had a discussion today with my sophomore students about using a Dorian key signature in a Bach chorale. So the key of G minor was notated with just one flat.

 

0:20:07.2 DN: And Bach does this...

 

0:20:08.0 GR: All the time.

 

0:20:08.5 DN: All the time.

 

0:20:11.1 SD: Right, right. So many Baroque composers. And then another game we play is Triad Bingo. So I just made these bingo cards. Let's see. With intervals, I usually do B-I-N-G-O. For triads, sometimes bing or just sometimes bingo, but... And instead of a traditional bingo card layout, you would just have single chords, just a row of single chords under each letter. And then I'll call out a letter and then a chord quality, and the students will have to find that chord quality. Usually, we just circle them. And, honestly, I only make one version of the card for each class. So everyone's looking at the same card, because it's just chaos running around looking at different cards and reconfiguring your brain.

 

0:21:06.9 DN: Oh, yeah.

 

0:21:09.9 GR: Okay. So it has been a while since I've played bingo. So just to be sure I'm picturing this correctly. So at the top are these five columns, B-I-N-G-O, and then underneath them you said qualities or letters or both? 

 

0:21:30.1 SD: Qualities.

 

0:21:30.2 GR: Okay.

 

0:21:30.3 SD: Qualities. So, for example, under... Let's say, under B, I might have an F major triad. Maybe a D minor triad. A C augmented triad. And then a B diminished triad.

 

0:21:43.9 GR: Got it. And so you would call something like B augmented, and...

 

0:21:47.9 SD: Exactly. Exactly.

 

0:21:49.8 GR: And then they would put a chip on the one augmented card in that row.

 

0:21:53.0 SD: Correct. Yes.

 

0:21:55.4 GR: Okay.

 

0:21:57.1 DN: And so if you're all using the same card then, there's a definitive point at which someone should have won.

 

0:22:04.4 SD: Yes.

 

[laughter]

 

0:22:06.8 DN: I'm wondering if I could do this with aural skills, except that I fear I would get premature victories.

 

[laughter]

 

0:22:15.0 SD: Oh, you do. You do.

 

[laughter]

 

0:22:16.7 GR: I'm sure. Yeah.

 

0:22:18.4 SD: But once you declare a premature victory, you are out of the game.

 

[chuckle]

 

0:22:23.9 GR: And you could easily turn that game... Is that what you were saying, David, that you could turn that game to an aural skills game by calling column B and then playing a diminished chord? 

 

0:22:33.5 SD: Absolutely.

 

0:22:34.5 DN: Yeah.

 

0:22:35.2 GR: Uh-huh. Yeah.

 

0:22:37.9 SD: I use the same format on intervals, on triads, on seventh chords. There's so much you can do with it. And also, you could add that aural component to the triads and seventh chords.

 

0:22:46.8 GR: Mm-hmm. Nice.

 

0:22:49.5 SD: Yes. But you really need to state up front that premature declarations of victory...

 

0:22:55.8 GR: Eliminate you from...

 

0:22:57.7 SD: Will result in elimination from the game.

 

[laughter]

 

0:23:01.6 DN: I love the fact that you mentioned that, of course, it lets some of the students see that other students are doing well, that they understand it, and, therefore, that it is understandable. I have seen some students react to this with despair that their colleagues just know these things and they don't. And I wonder how you handle the despair factor.

 

0:23:37.2 SD: [laughter] The despair factor is definitely present, whether it's written theory or aural skills, definitely. It's uncanny. I had this talk today with my students. In my sophomore aural skills, we do an error detection exercise every day in class, and I have some students who are just not passing them. And so, we had to have a little chat about everybody has their weaknesses, and there's some things that you can do now very well, but you were not able to do them at some point before. So none of my students were born reading treble and bass clef. They had to learn those. And I think it's important to tell students, as I'm sure you all know, that sometimes people are more comfortable with the written side of theory. Sometimes they're more comfortable with the aural side of theory. And they're all important. And it's just a matter of developing skills. And sometimes you even have to ask for help. And, of course, we as functioning adults in the real world, we call people for help all the time. We have physicians and mental health professionals and electricians and plumbers and people with professions that we just cannot live without them.

 

0:24:58.4 SD: So it's really difficult sometimes for my students to ask for help. They think they should just naturally be good at a skill, but that's why we do skill building. And it's just so valuable to know your weaknesses, to know where to focus your time and your effort. I have one more I'd like to share with you. I call it interval train. And this actually is not original. I think we did something like this when I was an undergrad a long time ago. [chuckle] And this is also a game that could have an aural component, but I'll focus on the written, the visual right now. So I'll have each team at the board, at a board, and I'll give them the starting note. And then I'll tell them the name of an interval and a direction. So let's say ascending minor second, and then they'll write the next note, and then I'll just go through a series of 5-12 intervals. And whoever gets to the correct final note first is the winner.

 

0:26:08.6 GR: I love it.

 

0:26:10.8 DN: It's a very modus novus...

 

[laughter]

 

0:26:15.4 SD: Yes, it is. And then, of course, you can sing... You could try to sing the melody that you created. And, of course, you could play those aural skills by playing the intervals. That'd be a great way for them to reinforce the written with the aural, which is always important, of course.

 

0:26:35.1 GR: And you could make it a name the tune then as well by... If you pick... Give the intervals for some tune, say...

 

0:26:42.5 SD: Absolutely.

 

0:26:44.0 GR: F sharp, perfect unison, ascending minor second, ascending major second, descending major second, and we're off to Ode to Joy.

 

[laughter]

 

0:26:51.7 SD: Great. It's great. Great addition.

 

0:26:57.5 DN: I wonder... And I... It's really cool to me how you've... Sort of all of these games leverage a competitive spirit to especially get out that, as you said, that immediate recall that... And I know... One of my colleagues instituted time tests on all of her fundamentals classes and Theory 1, and they would just have time tests every day. And the students kinda hated them, but at least it... Time test does not leave you time to count up the letters and figure out... Of course we know you can do that. That's not the issue. The issue is that you'd be able to see it and immediately recognize it. And so, you've leveraged this competitive spirit. I wonder, and maybe this is... I just wonder if you have games that are less competitive. Are there collaborative games? Do we have ways of... Or is that less useful? [chuckle]

 

0:28:11.1 SD: I'm sure there's a place for that. Certainly. There's some times when you, as a professional musician, you want to take time. You want to enjoy the discovery maybe of analyzing a piece, and when taking time is appropriate. But with these games, as you mentioned, my primary concern is that students just go beyond understanding, that they actually have an opportunity to, essentially, prepare for the real world where you don't have time to think about what the F sharp major scale looks like. [chuckle]

 

0:28:54.6 DN: And I've had some students, I think, who don't always understand that right away. I definitely had a conversation with one the other day who said, "Well, when you make me do it so fast, I can't... When I do the homework, I have plenty of time. So I don't understand why I didn't do well on this test." "Well, you... It's 'cause the homework... You're obviously doing it very slowly. But you can't do it slowly." [chuckle]

 

0:29:21.9 SD: Right. Well, I'll reveal a secret here. It seems like sometimes the students think that the primary purpose is to win the game. And I usually offer some kind of interesting reward. It might be if we have a games day, then the team who wins has their lowest homework replaced by an A. So that's something that everybody, everybody is interested in. So they think that the primary objective is to get that homework grade replaced. So that's really what they're focused on. And they're gonna just try to get through each of these exercises as quickly as possible and pull their resources together, when actually my primary goal is for them to build up their speed and recall.

 

0:30:13.8 DN: It's nice to think about motivation in this sense too, because I do find it frustrating sometimes that our students come to us increasingly motivated by grades and less motivated by the desire to learn. It feels like that's happening anyway. And, of course, this doesn't necessarily encourage motivation to learn, but it does provide motivation that is not grade-based, necessarily.

 

0:30:49.3 SD: Motivation to win can also...

 

0:30:50.1 DN: Motivation to win.

 

0:30:50.8 SD: Double as motivation to learn when you don't realize you're learning. And I agree with you that sometimes it seems like their motivation is more about getting the grade that they want, which is kind of sad. And I think sometimes it's just our place to remind students to think about why it is that they're studying music. Why do you want this music degree? Do you really want to get an A, or do you actually wanna learn the material? And not to say that in a harsh way, but just to be the voice of reason, the person who reminds them that this amazing thing that we study, that we all love, music, is a wonderful and complex area. And I often make the analogy with my students between their relationship to music and, say, their relationship to maybe a significant other. When you first meet someone and fall in love, of course there's that period when you want to know everything you possibly can learn about them in a brief period of time, because you really cherish that person. And if they love music, then they really need to have an attitude of wanting to learn as much as they possibly can. They might not like everything, but just like you don't like everything about another person, don't like everything about a friend. But it's just checking their perspective, I think, is part of teaching, especially music majors.

 

0:32:33.9 GR: Great. I thought it might be fun, reading your games, I thought, we should share more games just with each other 'cause I think...

 

0:32:43.1 SD: I would love to hear some of your games.

 

0:32:43.1 GR: Yeah. I was thinking, too, just as as students, the younger we are, the more learning tends to have games in it. And as we go through the grades and into college, there tend to be fewer and fewer games. But, boy, the second I hear, "Let's play a game," I'm there. [chuckle] So, anyway, a game I thought would be fun to share, I do this game with a lot of my students, but especially with any time I'm teaching aural skills. And I usually teach using scale degrees, and... But you can do it with solfège just as well. And so the basic idea is if you map the numbers one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and zero onto a scale, you can get like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and then you can have nine as a high two, and you can have zero as a low seven. And of course, you could do the same thing in solfège. And so then... I love this game because it involves students' cell phones. And how many times in class do we find ourselves thinking, Oh, I wish that student weren't on their cell phone or saying, Hey, would you put away that cell phone? And how rarely do we get to say in class, All right, everyone, take out your cell phone? 

 

0:34:06.7 SD: Oh, that's a thrill right there. That's a thrill for a student.

 

0:34:09.8 GR: So I ask students to take out their cell phone, and they convert their telephone number to scale degrees using this system. And then I ask for volunteers to sing their number...

 

0:34:27.7 SD: Oh, wow.

 

0:34:28.5 GR: Not on the numbers or solfège, but on a neutral syllable, la, la, la, etc. And the first person to successfully make their cell phone ring wins the round.

 

[laughter]

 

0:34:47.5 SD: Oh, that's fantastic. Oh, wow.

 

0:34:53.1 GR: And we practice... Before we do this, I say, now, it's very possible you're going to dial a wrong number. And if someone picks up, you're not allowed to just hang up on them. You have to say, "Oh, I'm so sorry, I misheard a number," before you hang up.

 

[laughter]

 

0:35:15.2 SD: Wow, that's fantastic. I love that game.

 

0:35:18.6 GR: Yeah. I have way too much fun with it.

 

0:35:22.1 DN: It has great potential for embarrassment.

 

[laughter]

 

0:35:23.7 SD: It does, it does. And that's the way I've memorized my credit card numbers, by converting them to scale degrees.

 

0:35:30.4 DN: Oh, this is how we've memorized... Greg and I have both memorized Pi this way.

 

[vocalization]

 

0:35:41.6 SD: Awesome. That's fantastic.

 

0:35:44.1 DN: We've got different rhythms 'cause...

 

0:35:45.9 GR: We do. And I actually... I wrote a fugue on Pi. Maybe I got... Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Musical nerdiness.

 

0:35:51.6 SD: When there's that element of humiliation, then it really heightens your hearing.

 

[laughter]

 

0:35:58.0 GR: Right? Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Another version of this I like to do is... It's harder to do now because it's hard to find the yellow pages, but I'll hand out a different page, I'll cut out pages from the yellow pages, and I'll hand each student their own page from the yellow pages. And they're to pick a company listed on the yellow pages and to write a jingle with the company's phone number. And depending on the level of the class, they might also... They might set it to a rhythm and meter or they might also add harmony and accompaniment and create a... Kind of create a thing about it. And the best jingles are ones that don't say the name of the company, but that they give you some hint about what the company does. And then the students like... And I'll usually give that as a homework assignment, then the next class, students will perform their jingles for the other students, and they'll try and figure out what the company might be.

 

0:37:00.8 SD: How fun.

 

0:37:03.2 GR: Anyway. So some of my... Couple of my favorite games.

 

0:37:06.1 SD: That's very creative. That's very creative.

 

0:37:09.4 DN: I haven't really done competitive games in my classroom. I'm feeling embarrassed that I haven't. But I've done, I guess, collaborative things where we have a challenge, and I'll let people form groups and work with their group to pass the challenge, like executing a good four against three or five against four or four against five. And the... That's proved useful, especially if you have somewhat diverse groups of students go off together, because then the ones who can do it will... They'll get peer learning. But I guess that doesn't really count as a game. [chuckle] Unless you let them come back and have a competition.

 

0:38:11.0 SD: Well, it's a fun activity outside of lecture time or structured time. Those are always fun.

 

0:38:19.2 GR: Yeah. These are really great, Stefanie. Thank you so much for sharing them with us.

 

0:38:23.9 SD: Thank you so much for having me. It was lovely meeting you both. And I enjoyed hearing your ideas too. I'll have to put some of those to use. I enjoyed that.

 

0:38:32.1 GR: Yeah. I can't I can't wait to use some of these as well. And I think we... David and I, when we did our episode on Dalcroze Solfège games, we were talking how any game there... Any game is like a seed that can be developed into so many other versions of that game, depending on...

 

0:38:50.9 SD: Absolutely.

 

0:38:51.6 GR: What you're working on. I could see these being extended, say, to Roman numerals, for instance, or to various other things, so...

 

0:39:00.8 SD: Definitely, definitely adaptable.

 

0:39:03.6 GR: Yeah, yeah. Right. And a question for you. I know you mentioned in your chapter in the Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy that you tend to do a games day, like it'll just be like we used to have field day in school where we just play games outside. Is it like that kind of a feeling? 

 

0:39:21.7 SD: Sometimes, I'll have a fundamentalympics.

 

[laughter]

 

0:39:30.4 SD: And I find that those are good for review, your test time. Also, if I'm away at a conference, it's a great lesson plan for a substitute to come in and do. But also, of course, the games are modular. So it's always good to review a previous topic each class, so by just having a quick game, that be a wonderful way to reinforce a topic that you've already covered but your students are still working on that mastery.

 

0:40:03.9 DN: Great. Fantastic.

 

0:40:04.6 GR: Yeah. Awesome. Oh, this is... Yeah, I'm just really delighted that you've shared these with us and that we'll share them with a broader audience, and, yeah, hopefully, we'll have a whole bunch of Key Word and Notation Blooper and Triad Bingo contestants out there in the world.

 

0:40:25.3 SD: That will be great. And I'm so glad that that you find these helpful, and I hope... Certainly hope that your listeners will too.

 

0:40:32.2 GR: Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Stefanie.

 

0:40:33.8 DN: Thanks so much.

 

0:40:34.6 SD: Thank you.

 

[music]

 

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