New Premises for this Exercise

Creating Intent

1. Every Note Has a Purpose (Intent) —The Soft Kitty Conundrum. We have discovered that there is a disconnect between scale studies, solfege, and playing or singing the notes on a written page. We need to teach students to be aware of what scale degree they are performing at all times. The scale studies we use are helpful, but they do not place the scale or any of its notes in a context other than, perhaps, whether it is major, minor, or modal. Thus, we recommend that you lead the students in playing or singing songs by scale tone (numbers or solfege). This creates a greater understanding of the notes they are playing and the purpose of those notes. Lead the students in singing Soft Kitty or some other simple tune without telling them you are doing so by simply indicating which scale tone you wish them to play. Once they understand that they are playing/singing a tune, move to playing/singing that tune by rote with “intent.” An idea to help create emotion would be to ask the ensemble to perform the tune representing a variety of emotion such as happy, sad, seething, violently angry, like, love, etc.

Creating Emotion

1. Combining and unifying all the above philosophy, psychology, and pedagogy will create a foundation for being able to express the emotional intent of any work. It boils down to the notion of “value and transfer.” If the musician is intrinsically motivated to pursue creating and unifying the emotional intent of every note, then the performance has the chance to be stunning, beautiful, powerful, and even life-changing. We hope that creating emotion through your performance is not only your intent, but the value and transfer of this notion also becomes that of your students as well.