How to Develop a Musical Vocabulary (Music Education Basics)

Welcome back to Music Education Basics!

Today, we’re talking about what it means to develop language skills in music—namely, the importance of building a vocabulary of tonal and rhythm patterns, something you’ll hear me describe as the building blocks of music.

Tonal patterns are short, 2- to 5-note groups or phrases. Think of them like words: instead of reading and focusing on the individual letters that make up a word, our eye recognizes the group of letters together; we understand the letters within the context of the word. The same is true in music: instead of focusing on individual notes, we want to help our students learn to read groups of notes as meaningful patterns.

The goal is to understand the notes within the context of the music.

Rhythm patterns are the same: short, 2- to 4-beat groups or phrases. It’s important to recognize them as patterns vs. reading individual note values.