Conversational Solfege Upper Levels further explores the development of music literacy through analyzing songs and creating a sequence of learning, based on song content and skill development. Strategies include listening, reading, writing, writing lesson plans, and establishing yearly goals and an introduction of how to teach harmonic function in major, minor and modal tonalities as they apply to improvisation and composition. This course is applicable to upper elementary general music, as well as middle school and high school choral, and instrumental teachers.
John Feierabend’s 2018 reissued book Conversational Solfege Level 3 (a.k.a. “Upper Levels” or just “CSUL”), is the same Ear-First Approach to thinking musical thoughts that sets Conversational Solfege apart, and it’s geared towards MS/HS performing ensembles. CSUL picks up the sequence where Level 2 left off, guiding students to think, read and write in most keys, meters, and regions of the staff. CSUL also includes a curriculum to teach musicians a Conversational knowledge of major and minor diatonic harmony, and its application to teaching improvisation and composition with performing ensemble classroom. Building on the conversational skill of “discovering the baseline” to create a harmony, introduced in Lev. 2, this curriculum leads students to use a bass line to inform tonal analysis to reveal the corresponding diatonic chord tones, and the many melodic counter-puntal possibilities that weave harmony together. Come prepared to sing. This course is applicable to upper elementary general music, as well as middle school and high school choral, and instrumental teachers.