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As a private music teacher I think it is so important to find the right book for each student. I really don't think there is one ultimate route of material that each student should do and it's important for me to know what the student likes to play, what they want to learn and to also asses what level there are at. There are a bunch of awesome books and I'm going to start profiling method books that I find successful. This post is going to talk about the book "A Young Singer's Journey" and how it is the perfect gateway to the Kodaly Method! Let's get started. I am an absolute proponent of the Kodaly method. I have been studying Kodaly pedagogy myself for the last year and I've been putting it into practice in my lessons and it is thrilling! Kodaly is a method created by Hungarian music educator Zoltan Kodaly. He was passionate about standardizing a method of music education that would create confident, skillful and passionate musicians. Reading some of his initial work is quite inspiring. Since this method was introduced on a national level, it has allowed the majority of Hungarians the ability to participate in music and contributes to a national appreciation of professional music.
That being said, to me Kodaly is about hearing.... about hearing the music you are making, hearing the music you are about to make or most interestingly, hearing the music you could potentially make!!!!!! I have struggled myself with ear training for my years. In fact I almost failed second year Ear Training. I did manage to pick myself up by the boot straps and now I find this method engaging not only for my students but for me as well. While I was taking the course 'Music Education for Children' at the University of Toronto, Dr. Daley reccommended the book "A Young Singer's Journey" that she used with her choir students and found it succesful. You can order a copy of it here . I have started introducing this book with my students and I absolutely love it. I almost can't contain how happy I am with this book. It includes theory pages, a CD with someone that will sing and dictate the book to the student as well as sight singing excercises. One of my students has been having a hard time understanding the placement of notes from the staff to the piano. I've been thinking it might be because she isn't relating the place of the note on the staff to the exact location on the piano- there are too many C's to choose from. When I introduced this book, and we started the sight singing excercises, we translated the sight singing syllables "do-re-mi's" to the piano and IT WORKED! It was like a lightbulb went off in her head and I could see that moment so clearly. It definitely gave her a confidence boost and it allowed me to better undertsand her thinking process. Asking her to find middle C was always such a challenge, but asking her to find Do is no big deal. I highly reccommend this book, it comes in all different levels. It's important to acknoweldege when a student is ready to begin this series because I think it is best used in succession: starting with the first book will really lay the ground work and so forth.
If there's anyone out there that enjoys other Kodaly method books let me know!