"Of the three elements of music -- rhythm, melody, and harmony -- rhythm has received the least attention from the theorists, yet it is indisputably the basic element without which there is no musical art." Such is the first sentence of this book on use of the body to express musical rhythm. Elsa Findlay is eminently qualified to write on this subject, having been a student of Emile-Jaques Dalcroze, the master himself, also from her own experience in a variety of teaching situations. These included schools of dance and theater, colleges and universities, and The Cleveland Institute of Music, one of the first to offer a BMus degree with a major in eurhythmics. Each chapter concentrates on a different phase of rhythm: tempo, dynamics, duration, metrical patterns, speech and rhythm patterns, phrase and form, pitch and melody, and creative expression. Activities for each phase are outlined in detail and illustrated by charming drawings and photos. Appendices furnish further suggestions for exercises, games, action songs, and suitable music.
Passion in Tango is smouldering intimacy, sensuality, sadness and melancholy. It is the resonance of feelings and movement - body contact between a man and a woman and has captivated people all over the world. The moving photography in Tango captures the rhythms, beats and sizzling encounters so typical for this internationally popular music. Music CDs: The music captures the atmosphere as it can be found in the clubs and restaurants in Buenos Aires. In addition Astor Piazzolla, presented here "live," leads Tango into the great concert halls.
An activity book, including two CDs of musical accompaniment, from Robert Abramson, a leading authority in the principles and use of the Dalcroze method. Feel It! offers parents, teachers, and other caregivers a wide selection for developing behaviors that lead to cooperation, character, good listening, and body skills.
Despite the richness of the subject and the importance frequently ascribed to the phenomena of rhythm and timing in the arts, the topic as a whole has been neglected. Janet Goodridge writes from a practical movement background and draws on a wide range of sources to illuminate the subject in relation to theatre, drama, dance, ceremony, and ritual.
« Rhythm and movement engage our inner creative resources and connect the body, mind, and emotions. Innate musical talent is not necessary to take advantage of these easy-to-learn techniques. All that is required is a willingness to open to the experience. Practicing these exercises with the included recording, you will discover greater body awareness, improve learning and communication skills, feel greater ease and personal integration, and experience instant success - even as a beginner. With the combined goals of comprehending the true nature of music and understanding the inner self, the authors explore the art of harmonizing expressive physical movements to musical improvisation. »--4e de couverture
"... Provides a thorough framework for examining rhythm ... includes expanded sections on movement, improvisation, and curriculum development ... also incorporates new research on audiation and several new rhythm syllables ... covers topics such as definition of rhythm, audiation, the meaning of tempo, movement, rhythm solfege, notation, usual and unusual meters, improvisation, and many other related subjects"--Jacket.
Combining rhythmic music and movement with cognitive reflection and mindfulness, this comprehensive handbook shows how drumming and other rhythm-based exercises can have a powerful effect in individual, group and family settings. Incorporating the latest research on how rhythmic music impacts the brain, this book features over 100 different exercises spanning five key developmental areas: social and emotional learning; identity and culture; strengths and virtues; health and wellbeing; and families, teams and communities. It offers a safe entry to cognitive reflection through fun, experiential rhythmic exercises and is useful for working in settings such as school, child and adolescent counselling settings, mental health and drug and alcohol interventions, trauma counselling and relational counselling. Important sections on the use of metaphor and analogy show how to reinforce experiential outcomes. The book also contains helpful sections on working with specific populations, key facilitation skills and managing challenging behaviours. Downloadable resources such as evaluation forms, certificates and 52 session cards optimise the process of implementing this approach in practice.
Human speech and music share a number of similarities and differences. One of the closest similarities is their temporal nature as both (i) develop over time, (ii) form sequences of temporal intervals, possibly differing in duration and acoustical marking by different spectral properties, which are perceived as a rhythm, and (iii) generate metrical expectations. Human brains are particularly efficient in perceiving, producing, and processing fine rhythmic information in music and speech. However a number of critical questions remain to be answered: Where does this human sensitivity for rhythm arise? How did rhythm cognition develop in human evolution? How did environmental rhythms affect the evolution of brain rhythms? Which rhythm-specific neural circuits are shared between speech and music, or even with other domains? Evolutionary processes’ long time scales often prevent direct observation: understanding the psychology of rhythm and its evolution requires a close-fitting integration of different perspectives. First, empirical observations of music and speech in the field are contrasted and generate testable hypotheses. Experiments exploring linguistic and musical rhythm are performed across sensory modalities, ages, and animal species to address questions about domain-specificity, development, and an evolutionary path of rhythm. Finally, experimental insights are integrated via synthetic modeling, generating testable predictions about brain oscillations underlying rhythm cognition and its evolution. Our understanding of the cognitive, neurobiological, and evolutionary bases of rhythm is rapidly increasing. However, researchers in different fields often work on parallel, potentially converging strands with little mutual awareness. This research topic builds a bridge across several disciplines, focusing on the cognitive neuroscience of rhythm as an evolutionary process. It includes contributions encompassing, although not limited to: (1) developmental and comparative studies of rhythm (e.g. critical acquisition periods, innateness); (2) evidence of rhythmic behavior in other species, both spontaneous and in controlled experiments; (3) comparisons of rhythm processing in music and speech (e.g. behavioral experiments, systems neuroscience perspectives on music-speech networks); (4) evidence on rhythm processing across modalities and domains; (5) studies on rhythm in interaction and context (social, affective, etc.); (6) mathematical and computational (e.g. connectionist, symbolic) models of “rhythmicity” as an evolved behavior.
