Since I hold a monthly group piano class in my studio, I always love incorporating some kind of game or activity along with performing for each other and learning about music history. At last week’s group class, I dusted off a game that I purchased years ago, but have used sparingly over the years – Tapping Telephones.
I tweaked the rules a bit to make it work for my group of three high school girls. For starters, they each drew one rhythm card from the stack, then I marked the numbers they drew with a little sticky note on the directory. I set the metronome and commenced tapping each rhythm in the order of my choice and they had to listen carefully and tap back their rhythm pattern when I “called” it. At the end of the round, anyone who wanted to could add another card to their collection and be responsible for listening for and responding to two numbers. We continued adding cards in this way until we ran out of time for the activity, and, as you can see, they had acquired quite a few rhythms to keep track of! I asked them what they thought, and they exclaimed, “That was fun!” Even though it was challenging, it was a fun way to focus on listening, maintaining a steady pulse, and accurately tapping rhythm patterns. A win-win-win!
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