Improv Exchange #6

Dos Notitas Juntas

Music by Anne-Claire Rey Bellet
Text by Verónica Jiménez Quesada

Two Fast Notes

Music by Anne-Claire Rey Bellet
Adaptation and text by Aaron Butler

These improvisation ideas come from a group class for children aged eight to ten in Costa Rica, from a song by Anne-Claire Rey Bellet

As a student at the Institut Jaques-Dalcroze in Geneva, I worked closely with Anne-Claire Rey Bellet, who belongs to the faculty at this institution. Volume 4 of her twenty-five solfège songs, titled Zélie-Chansons, is valuable material fordeveloping children’s lessons in different areas of Dalcroze pedagogy. 

The song “Two Little Notes Together” gave me the following ideas to teach students to recognize, feel, and develop improvisational skills using the rhythmic group of two sixteenth notes and one eighth note (an anapestic pattern), which gives unity to the song. 

Body Improvisation

The teacher improvises music at the piano using anapestic rhythms {(sse)} and others found in “Two Little Notes Together.” The students listen to the music, they improvise free movements according to what they hear. Then, the rhythmic groups are analyzed and students propose body movements to represent each group. Students can also do this in pairs.

To foster movement through physical space, colored hoops are placed on the floor. Students line up one behind another in front of the line of hoops and start stepping the rhythmic groups through the hoops using what they hear from the teacher’s music, and then they continue a specific pattern the teacher establishes until they hear a change of pattern. 

To refine the movement, the teacher adds tempo, dynamic, and agogic contrasts to work with the triad of time-space-energy. Afterward, students walk through the hoops with a freely improvised rhythmic pattern.

Rhythmic and Melodic Improvisation

After listening and singing “Two Little Notes Together” a few times and analyzing the score with the students, the following ideas work to develop rhythmic improvisation:

1. The entire group sings the first two beats of each measure as in the score, then improvise rhythms for beats 3 and 4 with their hands.
2. Standing in a circle, the students do the previous exercise individually, taking turns .
3. Repeat, adding voice in association to the rhythms, to create new melodies following the harmonic progression of the song while the teacher plays chords at the piano.

Dos Notitas Juntas 
English translation
We are going to practice a new rhythm today,
Notes that go together holding hands.
We are going to practice a new rhythm today,
And also to remember to articulate.