I'm doing sol feige, and I know nothing about it, umm, except it's a musical, umm, thingy and I think it includes the do, re, mi, fa, sol, ti, do.
The system qualities of this concept are yet to be realised.
There are many complimentary concepts which inform this topic such as:
- Intervals
- The major scale
- Accidentals
- Key signatures
- Diatonic harmomy
- Modes
The chromatic scale has every note which is all 12 notes. Each note is the same distance apart just like the windows on this plane.
Imagine that these windows are musical notes in the chromatic scale.
A semitone is from one note to the next. A whole tone is two semitones.
The major scale has only 8 notes.
It has the combination of whole tone, whole tone, semitone, whole tone, whole tone, whole tone, semitone.
This grid shows the letter names of all 12 notes in all 12 keys.
As this plane flies up and down you can see which notes belong to the scale.
Many of the major scales seem complicated because of the sharps involved and yet they all sound the same.
Sol feige makes this easier by using the sounds 'Do re mi fa so la ti do' in any key.
This student was ready to drop this topic when she attended her first session during week 2. I suspected this was because she couldn't visualise the imagery she might need.
This Grade 5 girl is a competent pianist and singer so I has assumed that she understood the concept. My journal recorded that "it may prove to be one of those cases where the extent and sophistication of the system qualities of the concept are yet to be realised."
When I started my animation I had no idea what I was doing, like how I was going to get there or anything.
Brendan helped me a lot with stuff so that was good
When I did the windows on the plane it a lot made more sense. So yeah, I just thought they were really clever.
With the grid it made me understand a lot more ‘cause I didn’t realise there was alphabetical (order) at all. So I learnt a lot during…um, making that grid.
The plane idea was really…great and how we linked to it with all the different notes and the do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do because of the plane flying up and down.
During the 4th session I suggested that she construct a table with key signatures as the rows and the letter names of each note as the columns. I reflected at the time that 'It seems appropriate for me to make such suggestions but I will refrain from generating any imagery. I am interested in how each student constructs their representations at every stage of the process.'
I did end up generating some imagery for each of the students because they explanatory animations had to be completed over a week before the end of term so we could conduct the debriefing session.
| Uses correct terminology | With assistance | Simplified terminology | Some correct terminology | Actual terminology |
Identifies relevant variables |
Not apparent | With assistance | Basic understanding | Deep understanding |
| Identifies relationships between variables | Not apparent | With assistance | Basic understanding | Deep understanding |
| Self assessment. Does the student think that they understand their topic? | No | Not really | Basic understanding | Yes |
| Uses correct terminology | With assistance | Simplified terminology | Some correct terminology | Actual terminology | ||||||
Identifies relevant variables |
Not apparent | With assistance | Basic understanding | Deep understanding |
||||||
| Identifies relationships between variables | Not apparent | With assistance | Basic understanding | Deep understanding | ||||||
| Self assessment scale (1-10). Does the student think that they understand their topic? | 1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
Focussing on 'identifying relevant variables' can often lead to overlooking what doesn't change or what is constant (i.e. the musical intervals). This was the main idea behind the windows where she showed that the intervals are the same in every key.
The other breakthrough was in week 6 when I realised that her understanding of musical letter names was flawed as evidenced by her first attempts at a grid:
Her self assessment was actually 8.9 but I rounded this up to 9.