Music Theory

Musicians' Tool Box
30 min class - 12 week session - 2 semesters
Fee: $136
Fall Semester begins September 20
Spring Semester begins January 17
Instructors: Chaim Burstein, Ehud Ettun, Brian Friedland, Lorna Henderson
Student placement in the Musician’s Tool Box curriculum is based on the students grade as of September 1, 2011.

1 - 2 Graders
Tuesday, 4:00 - 4:30
Thursday, 5:15 - 5:45
Saturday, 9:15 - 9:45

3 - 5th Graders
Tuesday, 4:30 - 5:00
Wednesday 5:00 - 5:30

6 - 8th Graders
Wednesday 6:00 - 6:30

Just 30 minutes a week!

One of CCM's goals is to improve our student ’s musical literacy; we want them to better understand music through better listening, reading, writing and composing music. We will do just this with an evidence-based method called Conversational Solfege.

Conversational Solfege is a dynamic and captivating music literacy program that enables students of any age to become independent musical thinkers with the help of a rich variety of folk and classical music.

Central to the Conversational Solfege program is the use of music harvested from our rich and diverse American musical history. This variety of music serves as a common thread that spans and bonds generations. In addition to American Folk music, this class will explore the works of great composers such as Bach, Beethoven and others.

With the Conversational Solfege approach, music literacy starts with great literature and an "ear-before-eye" philosophy that correlates with the National Standards for Music Education. Great songs are broken down into their component parts and then reassembled so that students can bring greater musical understanding to everything they do.

This 12-step teaching approach methodically brings students from a beginning state of readiness to a final state of musical fluency.  They learn by listening to great works that are first familiar, then unfamiliar, developing the skill to hear their own musical thoughts and then transferring these thoughts into notation- in other words, they become the composer!

The ultimate goal is to create fully engaged, independent musicians who can hear, understand, read, write, compose, and improvise. We want our students to speak the language of music!

As students progress through the curriculum, they develop music literacy and the understanding of the elements of the music, bringing a greater appreciation of the music that they are playing and listening to on a regular basis. It is recommended that all private students take along with their private lessons, one musicianship class.

Chaim Burstein and Tal Gamlieli discuss why music theory is integral to a basic understanding of the language of music.

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