“Would you like to read a book?” a mother asks an eight month old. The baby starts kicking or moving enthusiastically in anticipation of the experience. The child may not be able to verbalize an answer to the mother’s question, nor even understand every word of it, but the baby’s associations with “book” literally set the baby in motion for the activity to come. Similarly, rhythm and tonal “preps” that set up the meter, tonality, or both, sets the musical mind in motion for what is to come. They prepare the musical imagination for the “musical narrative” to follow. They make it easier for the musical mind to grasp the musical “story.”
The adult thinking mind may find this practice annoying or unnecessary, but the young child’s musical mind thrives on it. The more you use the prep to set up the meter or tonality for your children, the more your children will grow, the more your own musical mind will understand its purpose, and the more you will appreciate how much the short prep communicates to the musical mind. It is a bit like formatting a disk to receive a particular kind of information. The preps essentially say to the musical mind in sound, “Here comes this meter in this tempo.” “Here comes this tonality, in this key (keyality).” That little bit of assistance aligns the musical mind to receive the musical narrative. It keeps it from having to go through the effort of trying to make sense of what it hears, comparing it to what it knows in sound, and deciding how to categorize it aurally so it can simply take it in and learn from it.
The prep for meter consists of two measures of beats in the meter, with both macro beats and micro beats, followed by a couple of silent beats. The prep establishes the meter, the relationship between macro and micro, and the tempo. The couple of silent beats give the musical mind time to align itself for what is to come. The prep can be done instrumentally, vocally, or both.
The prep for tonality begins on the 5th and proceeds 5-6-5-4-3-2-7-1, followed by a bit of a pause. This pattern guides the musical mind to perceive the relationship between pitches, anchored by the most important tonic and dominant pitches. The arrangement of pitches is most efficient for tonal learning and establishes the tonality, the relationship between pitches, and the key (keyality). The prep can be done instrumentally, vocally, or both.
The prep for the songs includes the prep for tonality, followed by the meter prep on the resting tone. This sets up the tonality and reinforces the resting tone while setting up the meter and tempo. Without the prep, children have to aurally “figure out” each of those elements in order to meaningfully receive the song. The musical mind that has not yet developed a sense of meter and tonality, without experience with the various meters and tonalities, does not have the readiness to do that. Preps for songs can be done instrumentally, vocally, or both.
