Danny Miller

MUSE 258
Voice Techniques

Sound Connections Chapter 5: Developing a Sound Vocabulary

Dr. Don P. Ester
2010

This chapter is very important to me as a future educator. It goes

into great detail about building up a vocabulary of patterns and

exercises to use in the classroom. It talks about teaching songs and

patterns by rote instruction with an emphasis on a whole-part-whole

approach. This means that an idea is modeled in whole by the teacher,

and then taught in chunks to the students until it can all be put

together at the end. This chapter also emphasizes the importance of

building a vocabulary of not just major and simple meter exercises, but

also minor and compound meter. It is important to teach all of these

together and not get stuck in the idea that students must master major

and simple meter before moving onto the more complex exercises.

The sequencing is also very important, meaning students must

learn how to perform all of the exercises and echo translate them

before seeing them on paper. Sequencing is something that is highly

emphasized in this text and I think it is key in the field of music

education. This chapter also discusses assessing the students

progress through labeling exercises with the correct syllables. In other

words, echo translation has to be at the foreground of the teachers

assessment in order to make sure every student is ready to start

reading music. I will definitely take the skills Ive learned about in this

chapter and apply it to my own career so that my students can be

successful in the path to becoming musically literate.