Conversational Solfege Levels 1 & 2 | FAME Certification
Date
February 7-March 14, 2025
Online
Course Code
8035A
Credits
2
Tuition
$350
Course Description
Prerequisite for the 2 credit MECA, is registration for the workshop through The Feierabend Association for Music Education (FAME).
Through carefully sequenced activities, Conversational Solfege™ addresses the National Standards, while enabling students to joyfully assimilate the skills and content necessary to become musically literate, including the acquisition of listening, rhythmic and melodic reading, dictation, composition, and improvisation in an intuitive manner. Applications of Conversational Solfege™ are ideally suited to: elementary general music curricula; choral organizations at all levels; Orff Schulwerk; Kodály; Dalcroze; Gordon Music Learning Theory; high school and college sight singing and ear training; class piano; Suzuki; as well as recorder, band, and orchestral instrumental instruction. The Feierabend Curriculum examines a pedagogical method that develops music literacy. Based on models used to teach conversational foreign languages, this course develops an understanding of music through the use of rhythm and tonal syllables at a “conversational” level that gradually evolves into reading, writing, improvisation, and composition skills. This is a literature-driven curriculum. The sequencing of musical elements grows out of those tonal and rhythmic elements that exist in folk song literature. Each rhythm or tonal element is explored in patterns, songs, and themes from classical literature. Applications of conversational solfege range from elementary general and choral music courses to collegiate level choral, sight-singing, and ear-training courses. Participants who successfully complete this course will receive an official certificate of completion for Conversational Solfege Level 1 & 2 from the Feierabend Association for Music Education (FAME).
Instructor
David Rankine has been teaching music in schools, community organizations, and historic sites for more than 20 years. A certified Teacher Trainer in First Steps in Music and Conversational Solfege with the Feierabend Association for Music Education, David has presented online and throughout Canada and the United States including at the Ontario Music Educators Association Conferences, Music Conference Alberta, the Royal Conservatory of Music, Music-Ed Amplified Podcast, and the 2022 National Association for Music Education National Conference in Washington D.C.
David is the former Artistic Director of the Gananoque Choral Society and was the Drum Major and Company Captain of the Fort Henry Guard where he received the Colonel Truman Crawford Cup, USMC, for Excellence in Music. A recipient of several scholarships from the Royal Canadian College of Organists, David has both Piano and Organ certifications from the Royal Conservatory of Music, is a Church Organist and Music Director, as well as the former Organist for the Kingston Frontenacs OHL Hockey Franchise.
In addition to his classroom work, he has received numerous grants and donations under the umbrella of ‘Building Community Through Music” Surmounting his belief that to build community, one must go into the community. These proceeds have enabled more than 800 K-6 students to annually take part in and host Folk Festivals, May Day Festivals, and Family Folk Dances. During the COVID Epidemic, GIA Music published 8 Episodes of ‘Mr. Rankine’s Music Cabin,’ all based on the First Steps in Music and Conversational Solfege curricula to help create a more Tuneful, Beatful, and Artful society.
A finalist in the 2023 CBC Canadian Music Class Challenge, David lives in a forest just north of Kingston, Ontario, Canada, with his wife and two children, Eva and George.