Little children may march to the beat of their own drummers, but we bring them to macro and micro beats through exposure to various meters, movement, rhythm dialogue, and interaction with macro and micro beats. Activities designed to highlight macro and micro beats provide for little children to “play” with macro and micro beats, giving them “hands-on” experience with the intangible.
Rhythm is made up of macro beats—the big beats, micro beats—the smaller beats, (divisions of macro beats), and melodic rhythm—rhythm patterns. Macro and micro beats provide the framework for all rhythm—the aural grid, or matrix through which all rhythm falls into place. It is not counting or mathematical relationships that give rise to rhythm, but the relationship between macro and micro beats in sound, and the relationship of any rhythm pattern to macro and micro beats.
Macro/Micro Beat Activities provide tangible experience with the aural laws of rhythm. They reinforce the audiation of macro and micro beats, stimulate awareness of macro and micro beats in the context of rhythm, and encourage delivery of macro and micro beats. Macro/Micro Beat Activities provide for students to “practice” keeping macro and micro beats in the forefront of audiation in the context of various meters. The contrast between meters strengthens the perception of macro and micro beats and their role in defining meter.
“Tonguing” macro and micro beats helps the body to line up with the musical mind’s awareness of macro and micro beats, to more precisely deliver macros and micros in movement. The young child may or may not yet be able to “tongue” at all, but your “tonguing” of macro and micro beats serves to highlight macros and micros in audiation, like an aural flashlight that points out what a child knows in sound.
Little children can “practice” macro and micro beats in any number of delightful activities that contrast movement with macros and movement with micros. Your movement changing from several bars of macro beats to several bars of micro beats becomes a model for the young child, both internally and externally, whatever the child’s level of physical engagement. With a lot of practice of macro beats and micro beats in various meters, the young child will align macro and micro beats in audiation with movement, becoming the “embodiment” of rhythmicity.
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