Skip to main content

Tempo: Change

Goal: To hear and perform getting faster and getting slower. The teacher and students use the prompt “change.”

Out of Tempo

Using words.

Beginning

  1. Teacher chooses a multi-syllable unfamiliar word: “indefatigable,” for example.
  2. Teacher prompts, “Speak the syllables of this word from slowly to faster.”
  3. Students do so.

Intermediate

  1. Teacher chooses a multi-syllable unfamiliar word: “indefatigable,” for example (six syllables).
  2. Teacher prompts, “Speak the syllables of this word from quickly to slower.”
  3. Students do so.

Advanced

Teacher chooses an entire sentence.

  1. Teacher prompts, “When I say change, switch speaking the word from slower to faster, faster to slow.”
  2. A student speaks the sentence.
  3. Teacher prompts, “Change.”
  4. Students alter the tempo.

In Tempo

Speaking, singing. Could be done playing, but the syllables of a word would become rhythms at an instrument.

Teacher sets up a tempo, time signature, tonality, and word/lyric/sentence.

Beginning

  1. Teacher sets up a tempo that starts slowly and gets faster.
  2. Students repeat.

Intermediate

  1. Teacher sets up a tempo that starts quickly and gets slower.
  2. Students repeat.

Advanced

  1. Teacher sets up a tempo that fluctuates slow to fast, fast to slow.
  2. Students repeat.