Syllabus

Foundations of a Musical Mind is a 6-week course designed to give you a new set of mental models which empower you to have an instinctive understanding of musical elements such as pitches and rhythms. This course is a Kodály-based method drawing on visual, auditory and kinesthetic (movement) approaches to help you truly internalise how music works on a fundamental level. The course is designed for musicians of all experience levels, to give them a powerful new foundation for musical understanding and activities.

Module 1

In this module you’ll be introduced to four songs which will then be used to introduce fundamental concepts in beat and rhythm.

You’ll discover common rhythm patterns along with their “nicknames”, a simplified notation, and traditional “score” notation for each.

You will also begin to improvise your own musical ideas using everything you’ve discovered and explored.

Module 2

In this module we’ll build on the rhythmic framework introduced in Module 1 and introduce pitch to create melodies.

You’ll learn a simple way to describe the pitch movement of a melody and begin to identify the actual note pitches being used, by ear.

You will also make the connection to traditional staff notation so that you can read/sing and write melody notes directly on the staff!

Module 3

In this module, we’ll extend the rhythmic framework introduced in Module 1 to handle shorter and longer note durations relative to our beat blanks.

You’ll learn a simple stepping stone to help you go from syllables to stick notation, including for these new note durations.

As well as the spoken “nicknames” for the rhythm durations you’ll learn the traditional names and notation to represent them.

Module 4

In this module, we’ll build on the rhythmic and melodic framework learned so far to introduce two new notes.

We’ll explore the idea of “skips” and “steps” a bit more and you’ll have the chance to practice dictation, improvisation and composition using all the melody notes we’ve learned.

Module 5

In this module, we’ll start exploring more advanced rhythm patterns which don’t evenly divide the beat, instead mixing long and short durations across one or two beat blanks.

You’ll learn three new important rhythm patterns, including how to notate them and speak them out loud, and you’ll get practice using them in sight-reading, dictation, and improvising.

Module 6

In our final module of the course, we’ll be exploring songs which use note pitches beyond the pentatone.

You’ll have a chance to practice stick and staff notation using all the rhythm and pitch frameworks developed so far, as well as improvisation and composition practice using the three new note pitches introduced in this module.