Lesson 4 & 5

In lessons 4 and 5 we continued to work with both scale materials and the Parallage Phrases.  We haven barely used the interval cards so far so I need to think about ways that they could be useful at this stage of learning.

 During our Parallage practice, in lesson 3 I noticed that the girls weren't ready for the up two jump vocally.  They also were not always able to get the correct pitch when moving up or down the scale.  So, I reworked the phrases and added 10 more phrases before the up 2 set so that they could get more practice but still learn new material.  

To help them internalize the pitches going up and down we played Oligon, Apostrophos, and a combo of the two.  First we took turns and then we played as quickly as we could.  This game and its variations are really good at helping students move up and down the scale quickly and naturally.  I noticed in their 5th lesson when we played the combo that they had much more difficulty going down the scale so we will focus on that skill much more next week.

During our Parallage practice, the girls have increasingly wanted to go through the phrases without me chanting with them.  At their last lesson they did most of the phrases by themselves.  I tried doing a quiet ison on Ni and it didn't seem to bother them too much (until the next time when I told them I was going to do it).  I think it is hard to do ison with phrases that have lots of pa's in them because of the dissonance but I would like to try it more in the latter phrases.  At one point they said the correct Parallage syllable but went up instead of down.  This is another indicator that they need more practice coming down the scale.

We also sang the Nightly "Ni" and I talked with them and their mother about the importance of doing it each night.  After chanting the Nightly "Ni" with hand signs we got out the Colorful Scale cards and played a new game.  This game helped them visualize the pitch relationships even more.  They wanted to put vou above dhi, so I explained why it goes below.  They forgot to leave space for pa between vou and ni and so I asked them to figure out why I had a space there in my set of cards.  

The eldest daughter wanted to chant the Evlogetaria music that I had given her before.  This choice of music has its pros and cons.  She chants it each week in matins and it is a very catchy hymn.  On the downside, it is in mode 5 which sounds a lot different than what we have been doing.  She was able to chant the refrains correctly from memory but as soon as she tried chanting from the notation she would go into a different scale.  This points out the need for me to find hymns in tone 8 that are easy enough for her to read.