Why teach with educational songs?

Songs have been used for generations to teach basic knowledge. Some emerged as folk traditions, like The Alphabet Song and Head Shoulders Knees and Toes. There is also a long tradition of songs composed for specific educational contexts, including those for high profile television shows like Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and Read Between the Lions, as well as the animated series “Schoolhouse Rock!” The rock group They Might Be Giants recorded several albums of educational music, and there are numerous artists who make their living producing and performing similar content.

The best known examples of educational music have been created for and used by children, perhaps leading to the idea that this learning modality is childish. However, content for advanced and grown learners is becoming more common, and there are many examples of educational music being used in the university classroom.

Songs can serve to make learning more engaging and fun, but can also

• Serve as a mnemonic to remember specific information
• Reinforce vocabulary
• Expand and utilize conceptual knowledge
• Encourage self motivated learning (through framing and inside jokes)

Why use songs to teach musical concepts?

This seems like an obvious thing to do, but in the realm of music theory, there are few well known examples, and it has rarely been approached in a deliberate way. Still, music theory and aural skills can benefit not only from the normal advantages of educational song, but also from the ability to draw connections between what the listener is hearing musically and what they hear in the lyrics.

As such, they offer these additional possibilities:

• Address musical concepts in context, as they happen
• Provide etudes for specific musical devices, both for audiation and recognition
• Reinforce existing musical frameworks, like functional solfege

What Songs Accomplish These Goals?

First, I respectfully commend to you my 2019 album of music theory songs, The Well Trained Ear: Songs to strengthen aural skills. Most of these songs have been around for years on YouTube, but are now available in polished recordings, with improved arrangements. In the following list, each link will take you to a page on this site, with descriptions and teaching suggestions, as well as links to the different formats available. (This section is a work in progress.)

• The Well Trained Ear: Songs to Strengthen Aural Skills
  1. In The Beginning
  2. Second Inversions
  3. Sol Ti Re Fa Dominant 7 Song
  4. Stack of Minor Thirds
  5. Non-dominant 7ths
  6. The International Chords Song
  7. Secondary Dominants Song
  8. The Chord Spelling Song
  9. Third Away
  10. Silly Solfege Song
  11. Sophie Lay on My Sofa
  12. The Phrygian Song
  13. The Locrian Song
  14. Ms. Mixolydian and Dorian Go Drinking
  15. Intervals In Inversion
  16. Major and Minor Thirds
  17. Ascending Fourths

In addition, here are other songs and collections I know about that could be used pedagogically in the music theory classroom, even though several seem written just to be clever or funny. I will add more as I discover them.

• Sonata Form Song by Jocelyn Swigger (with sheet music!)
• The Music Theory Song, a parody of “The Christmas Song” with lyrics by David Rakowski and friends, and additional lyrics by David Swenson – (PDF)
• How To Walk a Jazz Bass Line by Adam Neely
• Interval Song by Django Bates
• What is an Ostinato? and How to spell Appoggiatura by David Kulma
• Sing Legato – a collection of pedagogical warmups for choir by Kenneth Jennings. The collection contains songs that reinforce intervallic recognition, as well as many related to singing or musicianship concepts like legato and staccato.

How will these songs help my students succeed?

• Many of these songs are catchy earworms that provide interest and motivation to understand their content.
• Songs with descriptive lyrical content become mnemonic devices to remember vocabulary and concepts.
• Some of the songs, like The Chord Spelling Song, The Silly Solfege Song, and Sophie Lay on My Sofa, and others, reinforce, through repetition, a visceral connection to the function of moveable do solfege, and sometimes its role in harmony. (My own students, after learning Sol Ti Re Fa Dominant 7 Song, not only immediately recognize the quality, but in discussion are tempted to sing the arpeggiated chord and follow it with the next lyric in the song.)
• Others point out harmony and broader harmonic functions in context as they occur. Students then come to understand the harmonic functions in a practical way, and have that understanding tied to a memorable iteration. Note, in particular, Second Inversions, The Secondary Dominant Song, The International Chords Song, and Sol Ti Re Fa Dominant 7 Song.
• Some songs can help with challenging audiation tasks, providing etudes that make practice more enjoyable. Stack of Minor Thirds, for example, encourages students to learn to audiate and sing diminished 7 chords.

How can I implement this in my classroom?

Depending on your teaching style, you may find one or more of these options to be useful.

• Play a song at the beginning or end of class, as a special treat. Allow the students to decide for themselves whether they find value in it.
• Use a song to introduce a new concept. Point out the pedagogically relevant parts of the song. This can be done aurally or with sheet music, when available. Some of my songs were written expressly for this purpose. The song, with your expert explanation, becomes the lesson.
• Use songs to flip the classroom, and assign students to analyze them, take dictation, or learn to play and sing them.
• Teach songs to the class by rote or with sheet music, when available, and have them sing the songs together in class.