Introducing Notational
Alongside improvements in the 'elements' type listening that is central to Elemental, our students at GCSE and A-level are faced with the challenge of writing music by ear using staff notation. Today sees the launch of Elemental's sister, Notational, to give students and teachers the huge volume of practice attempts needed to improve this niche skill.
In the last 20 years in the classroom, I've hankered after something that does all the following things:
- provides large numbers of practice attempts for both class and homework
- picking up the components of good listening (e.g. hearing repeated notes or listening out for the tonic)
- with some exercises in the format of the exam
- with accompaniment
- in the middle of a 30 second extract
I've never found anything that quite did everything I wanted it to and so now we are launching Notational to fill that gap.
Notational is based on two parallel sets of practice attempts:
- a worksheet of exercises, probably for the classroom, that is pen/paper based (like the exam) but with clips provided. There are nine exercises per worksheet, developing students' ear for rhythmic patterns, shape, intervals and dictation across rhythm, pitch and melody.
- online practice, similar to Elemental, that can be set for homework and thereby give students a second period of practice time each week over the two years of the course. These include questions on shape, repeated notes, reference notes, working backwards, rhythmic value(s) and devices, interval(s) and identifying melodic/rhythmic patterns.
My take on dictation (and similarly sight-singing) is that they improve a bit like running. If you want to run faster, you need to run regularly. Ten minutes, once a week won't be enough to move the dial. At least twice a week, alongside regular music-making, the dial has a chance of beginning to shift and, increment by increment, create the improvements students need.
Notational now lives in the sidebar of Elemental. You can find easy to access classwork and simple to set homework ready to be used alongside Elemental in the next academic year. To get started with Elemental sign up for an account at https://elementalmusic.app
