Children immersed in various meters, who then have multiple opportunities over time to interact with macro and micro beats, are on their way to embodying the basic rhythm framework—the aural grid, or matrix through which all rhythm falls into place. The journey to embodiment can be exciting in the classroom, though not immediate, and propelled by lesson planning.  

Macro/Micro Beat Activities serve a variety of purposes. They are presented as interactivity, but they differ from the one-on-one activities of Rhythm Dialogue, Resting Tone Activities, and Tonal Dialogue, which invite vocal interaction. Macro/Micro Beat Activities invite full body interaction with macro and micro beats. The teacher’s role is more that of facilitator and witness of each child’s journey than one of interaction with each child, providing ample immersion and multiple opportunities to interact with macro and micro beats through movement and tonguing, affirming each child’s journey.

Macro/Micro Beat Activities can serve for immersion for children who are at a level of interactivity, as they invite children to fit new rhythm patterns into the aural grid, the matrix each child has developed for that particular meter. They challenge the child to maintain the aural grid for macro and micro beats, while hearing rhythm patterns at a little higher level of complexity. They provide children with a chance to “practice” music, to practice making “sense” out of the somewhat more difficult rhythm they are hearing, fitting it into the meter they know. Macro/Micro Beat Activities further entice children to coordinate their bodies with the aural grid, their “sense” of rhythm.

Creating Macro/Micro Beat Activities begs a little different kind of creativity from the teacher. Whereas Rhythm Dialogue, Resting Tone Activities and Tonal Dialogue can effectively employ microphones, telephones, and whatever else might elicit one-on-one interaction, Macro/Micro Beat Activities are more a group activity, with attractive props that take the attention off of the individual child. The more the children become enthralled with the prop or creative activity, the more they will lose themselves and the more the musical mind will take over the body, coordinating the two, even if for just an instant. Pom Pons, for example, charge the energy of the class as well as the musical energy, with each child becoming lost in his own developing sense of rhythm. You do the chanting and lead the swishing alternation of one arm up and one arm down with macro beats for a couple of verses, switching to two arms simultaneously moving micro beats, leading multiple verses of each, employing tonguing in the process. Children are following your lead, trying to coordinate what they know in sound with their bodies. Meanwhile, you are witnessing the process of each child, where each is on the journey.

Coordinating the body with the musical mind is a challenge that is unique to each child. Like learning to walk or ride a bicycle, children need a lot of practice, and each will do it in his own time. We provide multiple opportunities to practice, and as children develop some security, we challenge them with more complex rhythms and meters, strengthening their ability to literally stand on their own two feet, musically.

Coordinating the body to macro/micro beats has to be done in full body movement. Tapping or clapping macro or micro beats does not develop the desired skill, and actually requires more skill—akin to playing macro and micro beats on an instrument. Only when macro and micro beats are embodied through full body movement can children apply their developing “sense” of rhythm to small motor activity. The energy of full body activity most facilitates the embodiment of macro and micro beats and the relationship between them. Macro/Micro Beat Activities are therefore most often high energy activities within a lesson plan. Macro/micro movement is usually best served from a standing rather than sitting position, unless sitting engages energetic movement of the upper torso, as with Rhythm Pipes. Once the class begins to exhibit some precision with macro and micro beats, small motor activities can be interspersed for variety in “practicing music.”  The more overt, full body the movement you engage children in with Macro/Micro Beat Activities, the more transparent children’s developing sense of rhythm will become.

Children’s journey to embodying macro and micro beats can be long. You may rejoice when you see a group of youngsters beautifully maintaining macro and micro beats with pom pons in an unusual meter, and you may decide to engage with each child one-on-one with pom pons. Remember, however, that precision is part of a process, not the immediate goal, and that young children may demonstrate precision for just a couple of measures, or a couple of days or a couple of weeks, moving in and out of babble throughout. Each small step, however, indicates progress. What a child can do in small measure at any point on the journey assures that more is coming, just as it does when a child learning to walk takes a few unaided steps, or the child learning to ride a bicycle rides a few feet independently.

Do not be fooled, however, by children who might immediately imitate macro/micro movement in Duple meter with precision, with full body or with rhythm sticks. The media saturates Duple meter, such that it may be embedded, but not until the child can also demonstrate precision in macro/micro movement in Triple meter and Unusual Paired meter might we conclude that the child is competent. The more experience the children have with the Unusual Meters, the more they will develop the aural grid for meter, and the more skilled they will become with Duple and Triple meters. Their ability to present macro and micro beats with precision in Duple meter will then come from within.

Teachers sometimes think that beginners tapping beats on their knees or bodies show skill, or at least interest. Beginners are notorious for copying each other, such that you may have an entire class of children tapping beats, initiated by one child, and doing the same for every Rhythm Activity, distracting the group from the meter itself. It becomes an act of the thinking mind that this is what we do when the teacher plays the drum or chants a chant, rather than the musical mind absorbing meter. Non-verbally inviting quiet, engaging children in more appropriate movement, or even starting Unusual Unpaired meter can all help to break the hold of the thinking mind and engage the musical mind.

Macro and micro beats can be seductive for the teacher, with movement to the beat overshadowing the importance of flowing movement. Musicality in flowing movement can also embody macro and micro beats, gently swaying macro beats and gently bouncing micro beats, while outstretched arms and upper torso fully demonstrate flowing movement, with the addition of hands articulating the rhythm of the words in Art Songs and Gem Songs. Such a display of musicality provides a fine model for the children, and the physical manifestation of musical performance.