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Hi everyone! I'm preparing myself to teach my first beginner's class hopefully in autumn, and am trying to draw up a curricullum and structure/outline for it (as well as for intermediate level).
I never learned Arabic rhythms from my own ex-teacher--I've had to learn a lot of things myself--so I'm not sure when or how to teach them in my own class. I know it's important to learn the rhythms in order to be better at interpreting Arabic music through our dance. I really want to be a good teacher, so I would much appreciate any tips, ideas and comments any of you would like to contribute. Thank you! :)
P/S: I'm an Egyptian/American cab-style dancer.
I never learned Arabic rhythms from my own ex-teacher--I've had to learn a lot of things myself--so I'm not sure when or how to teach them in my own class. I know it's important to learn the rhythms in order to be better at interpreting Arabic music through our dance. I really want to be a good teacher, so I would much appreciate any tips, ideas and comments any of you would like to contribute. Thank you! :)
P/S: I'm an Egyptian/American cab-style dancer.
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Re: Teaching Rhythms - When to do it?
Fri, April 17, 2009 - 6:36 AMHi Siryn! I would get started right away on rhythms. Very basic music theory is an essential foundation for a dancer. It will be easier for beginning bellydancers to understand the music, why they are moving the way they are and zill playing if they have a good foundation of middle eastern rhythms.
There are fun ways to teach rhythms, you can use a dry erase board to write them out, practice saying and clapping along to them, give mini lectures about how they are used or where they are found, lots of stuff. If you have drummer friends too they can be a great asset to you, have them come to class to demonstrate the rhythms in a live setting.
Good luck! xoxoKristnh
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Re: Teaching Rhythms - When to do it?
Fri, April 17, 2009 - 7:12 AMHi Siryn, Absolutely! I think even more important than specific rhythms, is to start our with how to identify a basic 4/4 rhythm and find the downbeat or "1". If you can provide your students with a good basic understanding of rhythm theory, moving on to specific rhythms will be a breeze. Good luck with your class!
Best, ~Zanbaka -
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Re: Teaching Rhythms - When to do it?
Fri, April 17, 2009 - 10:33 AMokay, first off, not everyone agrees with HOW to play finger cymbals, so my response is based on what I teach- first off, during warm up, like Zanbaka suggested, I am secretly teaching how to find a down beat by counting out our warm up moves with the music. hip circle drills sound something like this: and 5 6 7 8, hips right 2, front 4, side 6 back and, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 (okay, that sounds goofy without a demo!)
whenever we practice *anything* we do it with the beat- I know teachers who ignore the music while teaching & it drives me batty! the structure for my class is as follows: warm up, drill/review, new material, new material with zills, review new material, cool down & stretch.
doing the new material with zill does 2 things- it gets them working on zills while moving (I learned zills sitting down after class & it took me MUCH longer to learn to use them while dancing!) and it also takes their mind off of what they were learning and 8 times out of 10 they do it better without thinking about it (assuming, of course, you've just been drilling them & correcting them for the last half hour)
I have my classes broken down into 6 week sessions for my foundation levels, & during each session we work on a different rhythm- saidi (currently most common rhythm coming out of the middle east) beledi/masmoudi seghir (american bands tend to favor this one) I do maksoum & malfouf in the same session (for some reason these 2 are easier to pick up?) and tsiftitelli/chiftitelli. I save some of the other rhythms for my topical advanced classes. Every session I teach how to play to the rhythm (listed above) and how to play to the beat (variations- triplets, 337, singles, doubles, etc) since all of these are in either 4/4 or 8/4, these variations work with all of them to some extent
Now the nifty tricks- everyone learns differently, so I use several tricks to teach a rhythm or variation-
1) break it down- practice playing singles, doubles, triplets, 5's, 7's- any rhythm can be made up from a combination of these segments- so saidi would be 1,3,1,1,3,pause (or 3 or 2 or whatever you want to use as filler for that pick up)
2)neumonics- my favorite is from Saqra for the 337 variation- "gotta dance, gotta dance, gotta chicken in my pants" or her beledi- "I want chicken legs not chicken wings (buddy)" I also like 7 5- old mcdonald had a farm, eieio- but that's for my advanced variations class...
3)I picked this up from Hadia and it is a really, really cool method for writing down rhythms with out wondering if you've got the spacing right- rhythm circles (I will try to post a picture in the tribe files) draw a circle cut into 8 sections. the line up is your down beat- so for saidi, you would have a D on 1, t on 2, k between lines, T on 3, D on 4, D on 5, t on 6, k between, T on 7, pause on 8- Now, tap out a nice steady beat, have your students point to each line with their right hand and say the doum, tek or ka as indicated as they point to each line. all the lines will be what your right hand plays, all the spaces are what your left hand plays. I like it a lot. it is nifty.
Hope all that helps!
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Re: Teaching Rhythms - When to do it?
Fri, April 17, 2009 - 10:34 AMokay, first off, not everyone agrees with HOW to play finger cymbals, so my response is based on what I teach- first off, during warm up, like Zanbaka suggested, I am secretly teaching how to find a down beat by counting out our warm up moves with the music. hip circle drills sound something like this: and 5 6 7 8, hips right 2, front 4, side 6 back and, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 (okay, that sounds goofy without a demo!)
whenever we practice *anything* we do it with the beat- I know teachers who ignore the music while teaching & it drives me batty! the structure for my class is as follows: warm up, drill/review, new material, new material with zills, review new material, cool down & stretch.
doing the new material with zill does 2 things- it gets them working on zills while moving (I learned zills sitting down after class & it took me MUCH longer to learn to use them while dancing!) and it also takes their mind off of what they were learning and 8 times out of 10 they do it better without thinking about it (assuming, of course, you've just been drilling them & correcting them for the last half hour)
I have my classes broken down into 6 week sessions for my foundation levels, & during each session we work on a different rhythm- saidi (currently most common rhythm coming out of the middle east) beledi/masmoudi seghir (american bands tend to favor this one) I do maksoum & malfouf in the same session (for some reason these 2 are easier to pick up?) and tsiftitelli/chiftitelli. I save some of the other rhythms for my topical advanced classes. Every session I teach how to play to the rhythm (listed above) and how to play to the beat (variations- triplets, 337, singles, doubles, etc) since all of these are in either 4/4 or 8/4, these variations work with all of them to some extent
Now the nifty tricks- everyone learns differently, so I use several tricks to teach a rhythm or variation-
1) break it down- practice playing singles, doubles, triplets, 5's, 7's- any rhythm can be made up from a combination of these segments- so saidi would be 1,3,1,1,3,pause (or 3 or 2 or whatever you want to use as filler for that pick up)
2)neumonics- my favorite is from Saqra for the 337 variation- "gotta dance, gotta dance, gotta chicken in my pants" or her beledi- "I want chicken legs not chicken wings (buddy)" I also like 7 5- old mcdonald had a farm, eieio- but that's for my advanced variations class...
3)I picked this up from Hadia and it is a really, really cool method for writing down rhythms with out wondering if you've got the spacing right- rhythm circles (I will try to post a picture in the tribe files) draw a circle cut into 8 sections. the line up is your down beat- so for saidi, you would have a D on 1, t on 2, k between lines, T on 3, D on 4, D on 5, t on 6, k between, T on 7, pause on 8- Now, tap out a nice steady beat, have your students point to each line with their right hand and say the doum, tek or ka as indicated as they point to each line. all the lines will be what your right hand plays, all the spaces are what your left hand plays. I like it a lot. it is nifty.
Hope all that helps!
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Re: Teaching Rhythms - When to do it?
Fri, April 17, 2009 - 11:45 AMI agree with these ladies, having taught for 7 years now it's really shown itself to be completely true - it all starts with the rhythm so learning them upfront is absolutely important to internalizing the music. To dance without understand of , or feeling for the rhythm is to be at a distinct disadvantage to having a good flow of movement.
I also teach zills from the start because it's one more vehicle to understanding the rhythm. People learn in different ways - some need to analyze the rhythm logically (think about it), some need to memorize by rote (counting it out loud or using pneumonic devices), some need to physically DO (play zills). By incorporating all - you teach effectively to the widest variety of learning styles.
there's other reasons to teach zills up front too. but that's another discussion.
Good luck,
Mahin
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Re: Teaching Rhythms - When to do it?
Fri, April 17, 2009 - 4:38 PMI teach a five week Introduction to Belly Dance class where in the second class the students learn hip lifts to front and side, then add walking between each hip lift (ie. hip lift, step, hip lift, step, etc). In the third class I bring in my drum and teach the Beledi rhythm, and then I play a song with an obvious and steady Beledi and we do the combo of Hip lift, hip lift, step, hip lift, step (doum, doum, tek, doum, tek) the doums are hip lifts and the teks are steps. This way they are moving to the rhythm with movements assigned to match it. I hope this makes sense!
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Re: Teaching Rhythms - When to do it?
Sat, April 18, 2009 - 5:17 AMAwesome Siryn, nice to hear someone's planning & thinking before starting teaching :-)
I agree w/Zanbaka on using a steady 4/4 & changing on "1"; if you use the same warmup or drills from week to week it'll start to sink in automatically; especially if you point out if you're doing sets of 8 or 4 or whatever.
Personally I've always about 9-12 months before starting cymbals; then they know how to dance a little & adding cymbals isn't overwhelming. But, I now teach both Oriental & Tribal (group improv) and it's WAY easier to teach cymbals with the Tribal than it ever was when I was only teaching Oriental.
For Oriental I do have a choreography that focuses on 3 of the most popular Arabic dance rhythms (an idea I got from the late great Ghawazee troupe of PA) so they get them drilled into their heads over & over :-) And after they learn the dance they can add cymbals to it.
I just try to work in identifying rhythms whenever it's pertinent, like when we're starting a new piece, or the rhythm changes in the song, or there's something in the choreography that accentuates the rhythm, things like that. I also include the time signature, rhythm & tempo when I give out written chor. notes.
But, I also host free drumming sessions once a month if anyone wants extra work on it (in a fun way).
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Re: Teaching Rhythms - When to do it?
Sat, April 18, 2009 - 7:31 AMI would use your understanding of music to inform your instruction and indirectly use rhythms and music theory, but would not teach this specifically until they have a good foundation of movement. Students learn rather sequentially and if you stack too much information before they have the basics down, they will not spend the time required to get good technique. I think that is why there are so many students out there layering before they can even do basic movements and clanging zils together with no sense of rhythm. They think, "Oh, I have to do this!" so they try and do it badly. I'd take it one step at a time and let them master A before going to B.
Just my opinion,
Taaj
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Re: Teaching Rhythms - When to do it?
Sat, April 18, 2009 - 2:31 PMSome beginner students are put off by zills because they don't like all of the "noise" but I think it is great to introduce the concept of listening for rhythms at the get go...Even for dancers who don't have any intention of actually performing with zills- training with them helps you *become* the music, not only physically but emotionally and that improves our dancing. There is no better way to hear for rhythm patterns than to practice creating them yourself.
If you aren't going to provide zills & not everyone has them it is still useful to just use their hands (they can fake it) with the others who are really doing it- you can still learn the feel (but it is harder to know who is cheating)
But even just to isolate rhythms- play a game with one rhythm on repeat (or if you have access to a live drummer- all the better) teach a couple combinations that really illustrate what that rhythm looks like well- then encourage them to invent a combo for that rhythm.
If you introduce one rhythm in isolation at the end of each class- at the end of the month you can use some songs that incorporate the 3-4 you worked with (Solace has some great cds that list the rhythms used in each song) and put that on, see if the girls can recognize the rhythms they worked with and use the combos you gave them or the ones they made up appropriately is kinda fun. -
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Re: Teaching Rhythms - When to do it?
Mon, April 20, 2009 - 1:12 PMWow, thank you for all the responses, ladies! I will take note and absorb all the advice given here. Feel free to add to the discussion. :)
I want to be a good teacher from the start, so that's why I'm trying to prepare myself to give my future students a good, comprehensive course.
In Malaysia, where I come from, I guess it isn't so popular to teach rhythms, although they're so important... I've heard from several teachers--who have tried to teach rhythms in their classes--that most students aren't interested. I'm in Sweden now, and I think it might be a bit different here. In any case, I'm going to introduce them to rhythms so they would be at least exposed to their sounds and names. I haven't found a tabla player yet (have yet to explore the bellydance community here in my town... if it exists!), but I'll look around. ;)
I had to teach myself how to play the zills... and I think I probably got the tip from one of the tribes here that one should always move while learning zills... very valuable advice, because after I got the zill rhythms into my hands I could dance with them too! :)
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Re: Teaching Rhythms - When to do it?
Wed, April 22, 2009 - 1:05 PMI do teach your basic triplets (which is really not a true triplet in musicians terms but we call it that), 3-3-7, alternates and such right away. My students get zills on their fingers about week 4 -- I get their posture down in the first month then they start zills with movement. I do it that way because many get frustrated with zills and if they have been dancing -- in my personal opinion and what i hear - they feel like they 'took a huge step back'.....so rather than making it a step back and having to relearn, I just get them into that right away and over the fear. I also make the lessons fun....I have tons of silly drills that keep them laughing and comfortable so that it is fun while getting comfortable rather than this horrible task.
I actually also teach rhythms to the girls right away too. It helps to understand the music - many beats are different than what we in the US use. 6/8 and 9/8 and 10/8 --- those can be really confusing so helps to know they are out there if they hear something with a weird count.
I teach a zill series using the rhythms and drummers. It really helps them understand the music and music theory rather than just memorizing patterns. My husband has a band that I work with....so I work them towards being able to be a part of the music --- not just play patterns and dance but really participate in the music. I love seeing my girls get there bc then they are truely having fun and understanding what they are doing. The personality shows and they do not look or sound like programed robots on stage. I am teaching one of the zill rhythm and improv series here in denver in the fall.
Phoenix (www.phoenix-dancing.com)
