Why Takadimi?
The first email said Hi Victoria, I'm a beginning Music teacher and I am keen to know your reasons for using takadimi syllables. :-)
Someone mentioned takadimi and I have been looking at it but I am not totally convinced yet especially for elementary kids over the Tiri system. However wanted to ask you why you are a convert.
In this episode….
00:00 - Takadimi
03:47 - Elemental Questions
04:32 - Why Takadimi? TL;DR
10:20 - Beat-based system vs notation-based
11:36 - What is sound before symbol?
14:43 - What do we want to emphasize?
16:40 - History of rhythm syllables in Western music education
17:02 - French Time Names
19:09 - Branches of off of French Time Names
21:22 - Kodaly syllables
22:07 - North American Kodaly syllables
24:12 - Gordon
25:22 - Takadimi
27:31 - Arguments for and against beat-based systems
28:41 - “We want to prioritize sound to symbol”
29:56 - “Too many names makes everything confusing”
32:39 - “We use moveable do, so it only makes sense to use ____”
35:23 - What works best for the ensemble?
36:43 - Wrapping up, moving forward
Elemental Questions:
What is the role of the symbol in a sound before symbol approach?
What do we want to emphasize?
What communication system works best for the ensemble?
TAKADIMI:
Oriented around the beat, beat function, and musical audiation
Not dependent on how music is notated in standardized Western notation
Beat-Based or Symbol-Based
If we use syllables oriented around the beat and the beat subdivision and where sounds live in relation to the steady pulse of music, we call those syllables beat-based.
If we use syllables oriented around how long sounds last and the symbol we use to notate them visually, regardless of where the beat is or what the metric organization is, we call those symbol-based. You’ll also hear people refer to them as length-based, or syllable-based, symbol-specific, notation-oriented, etc.
What is Sound Before Symbol?
In a sound-before-symbol approach, we want students to hear musical sounds and interact with them and experience them in their bodies as the primary way of knowing music.
The label and the notation stem from these experiences. The label and the notation are secondary.
What is the role of the symbol in a sound before symbol approach?
“the system used must be based on how music is audiated—how it sounds—not how it is notated.” (Dalby, 2015)
“because sound comes before sight, both the rhythm and the tonal syllables must be sound-based rather than notation based.” (Don Ester in Palki, 2010)
This is a view that the whole point of a rhythm syllable system in sound before symbol is that the syllables are oriented around the sound, not oriented around the notation - the symbol - of the sound.
What do we want to emphasize?
The system we choose will be dependent on what we want to emphasize, and by necessity, de-emphasize
So I want to prioritize a rhythmic grid of the beat and the beat subdivision.
Rhythm Syllables in Western Music Education
Let’s back up and talk about where these syllables come from in the first place.
French-Time Names:
Mathematician Pierre Galin
Later extended by Aimé Paris, Aime’s sister Nanine, and her husband, and a physician named Emile Chevé, published them in 1844 (Palkii, 2010).
This was symbol-based.
Noir - black
Croche - eighth notes
Blanche - white
double croche - simiquaver
Branches off French Time Names
Now we have some branches off of the French Time Names developed by Galin. It went through several iterations before it arrived at what we call the Kodaly Syllables.
John Curwen adapted the French Time Names for use in Great Britain.
Luther Mason adapted Galin’s syllables for use in The United States and Japan, as did Lowell Mason.
Simplified French Names system
Ta
Ta-te
Ta-fe-te-fe
Kodaly Syllables
Kodaly teachers in Hungary later adapted Galin’s syllables more. We often refer to this as the Hungarian rhythm syllables, or Kodaly rhythm syllables.
Ta
Ti-ti
Tiri tiri
When this was brought to North America, a Kodaly instructor named Pierre Perron adapted them again to make the sounds more percussive.
Ta
Ti-Ti
Tikatika
Gordon
Developed by James Froseth and Albert Blaser in the 1970s (Palki, 2010; Grunow, 2021)
Based on audiation
Du
Du-de
Du-ta-de-ta
Takadimi
Richard Hoffman, William Pelto, and John W. White were the people who systematized this
Specific collection of vocables, “takadimi” have been used by South Indian classical musicians for a long long long time, but in a different counting system
Criticism of Beat-Based Systems in Favor of Notation-Based Systems… Criticism of Notation-Based Systems in Favor of Beat-Based Systems
Most of us are starting from the same place - we have the same core values around this.
And that becomes apparent the more journal articles I read. I’m seeing recycled arguments used for both approaches - notation-based and beat-based.
First Argument: “We Want to Prioritize Sound to Symbol”
Someone who uses notation-based syllables would say “we want to prioritize the sound, and then move from sound to symbol. So I’ll give you the sound, and you write the symbol. Or you hear the duration (the sound) and you write the symbol. There you go. Sound to symbol.”
Someone who uses beat-based syllables would say, “We want to prioritize the sound, and then move from sound to symbol. Which means we can’t fundamentally, at the core of the system, base the sound off of the symbol. It needs to be sound-based, not symbol-based. So I give you you a sound, you give me the function. Then we notate it based on whatever notation system we’re using, not the other way around. There you go. Sound to symbol.”
Next argument: “Too many names makes everything confusing!”
Jonathan Rappaport, whom many of you may know if you run in Kodaly circles, used the analogy of the same table in different people’s houses. In the takadimi system, why can we notate ta in so many different ways? Why can we notate ta with a quarter note and an eighth note and a half note and a sixteenth note, depending on the context? The one syllable, ta, can have different lengths of sound, and thus, many different symbols of western notation. If I have a table in my house and then we move the table to your house why would we call it something else? It shouldn’t matter where the table is located, it’s still a table. In Kodaly syllables, if we say ta it is always notated with a quarter note, no matter where the quarter note is located. If we say ti, it is always notated with an eighth note, no matter where it is located. Rappaport is making the case that this makes more sense because it is consistent. If i give you tikatika ti-tika tika-ti ta, you know exactly how to write it down in standardized Western notation because the syllables themselves are exclusively oriented around standardized Western notation. Too many names for the same thing - standardized Western notation - gets confusing and it doesn’t make sense.
Don Ester wrote an article about beat-based syllables and takadimi in particular. And he wondered…. In Kodaly syllables, why can we call the downbeat so many different things? In 6/8 or cut time or common time, the downbeat is always experienced as the downbeat. So why do we call the downbeat - which is the same function everywhere, no matter the notation - by so many different names? The down beat could be too or ta or ti or ti - and all the while it’s the same thing. Too many names for the same thing - beat functions and rhythm relationships - gets confusing and it doesn’t make sense.
Third argument: “We use moveable do. Therefore it only makes sense to use ______”
If we were to sing mi re do in the key of C, mi re do are the absolute pitches EDC. If we were to transpose to the key of G and sing mi re do, the functional pitch relationship is still the same - mi re do. We don’t change solfege when the key changes because even though they’re placed somewhere else, functionally, the relationships creating the melody are the same.
Rappaport uses this argument to illustrate how it doesn’t make sense to change syllables when sounds move around in relation to a beat if the standardized Western notation of the sound stays the same. It’s still mi re do, just in a different location so just keep the name.
Dalby uses this same argument to illustrate that it doesn’t make sense to change rhythm syllables because the function of the downbeat is still the same, regardless of how you notate it. Peggy Bennett said a similar thing - Why are we willing to teach children a rhythm syllable system that relies on seeing the note and naming the note value, when all or most of us choose to use moveable do rather than fixed do because we believe in emphasizing tonal relationships rather than pitch names? It’s still mi re do, just in a different location so just keep the name.
Do you see how the question is not which one is better, but the question is, what is this better for?
What works for the ensemble?
Is the ensemble made up of students we teach? Or is the ensemble the students our colleagues teach as well?
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References & Further Reading:
Bennett, P. D. (2016). Questioning the unmusical ways we teach children music. In Oxford University Press eBooks (pp. 286–307). https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199328093.003.0014
Bowyer, J. (2015). More than solfège and hand signs. Music Educators Journal, 102(2), 69–76. https://doi.org/10.1177/0027432115611232
Bullen, G. W. (1877). The Galin-Paris-Cheve method of teaching considered as a basis of musical education. Proceedings of the Musical Association, 4, 68–93. http://www.jstor.org/stable/765284
Cha, J.-W. (2015). The Takadimi system reconsidered: Its psychological foundations and some proposals for improvement. Psychology of Music, 43(4), 563–577. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735614528063
Dalby, B. (2015). Teaching movable du: Guidelines for developing Enrhythmic reading skills. Music Educators Journal, 101(3), 91–99. https://doi.org/10.1177/0027432114565008
Houlahan, M., & Tacka, P. (2017). Sound relationships: An approach to teaching rhythm according to the Kodály Concept using Takadimi rhythm syllables. Kodaly Envoy, 43(3), 6–13.
Palkki, J. (2010. Rhythm syllable pedagogy- A historical journey to Takadimi via the Kodály method," Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, 24(5).
Rainbow, B. (2001). Galin-Paris-Chevé method. Grove Music Online. https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000010531.
Rappaport, J. C. (2016). Traditional Kodaly rhythm syllables: Taking a new look. Kodaly Envoy, 42(3), 4–9.
Sletto, T. (2011). A comparison of rhythm syllables and a recommendation. Kodaly Envoy, 37(3), 4–8.
