January 6

The Beat Goes On

Faculty members returning to school on Wednesday were greeted by this cheerful e-mail note from Mr. Toppa:

January is my Rhythm Month, specifically percussion, and primarily: DRUMS. If you are passing by the music room with visitors during this month, you might mention that this is “Rhythm Month,” and this unit contradicts the philosophy that “children should be seen and not heard.” When everyone is in synchronization, “loud” can be inspiring… and sometimes the whole class comes in “sync.” Each year I choose a special ‘personal’ focus. This year will be 5/4 meter.

The message was too lively to resist. The opportunity to hear an entire class come into sync with a 5/4 percussion meter seemed like the perfect way to start the new year, and Mr. Toppa was only too happy to share some of the science behind percussion instruments. “The drum works just like a bell, except with a flat head,” he explained, tapping out the overtones on a tom tom. “The tones from the rim to the center of the drum and the bell are the same.”

An energetic group of second graders entered the room and took up spaces on the risers. Mr. Toppa introduced the new unit and the specific pattern of the 5/4 meter. First, the children chanted the pattern: “one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two, one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two.” Next, they applied the meter to a song, Harry Belafonte’s “Turn the World Around.” Verse by verse, they practiced the words while Mr. Toppa accompanied them on the piano, emphasizing the meter through the melody.

After they had used their voices to sing the rhythm, Mr. Toppa gave directions for transforming it into a series of beats on the practice drum sets in the room. These wooden devices, designed and built by Mr. Toppa himself, include a foot striker and an angled percussion surface. Using one foot and a drumstick, a child can produce a combination of sounds in increasingly complex patterns. Small groups of children took turns at the instruments, improving their timing and synchronization. Mr. Toppa grinned broadly from behind the piano as four children struck the drums in perfect unison.

To produce music, or any sound, three elements are necessary: a vibrating source, a medium to transmit the vibration, and a receiver to hear or record the sound. It is very likely that percussion instruments were the first musical devices, second only to the human voice. Watching, and listening to, these young children, it is easy to understand why percussion brings out an instinctive response in most of us. Within minutes of hearing and singing a pattern of sounds, they were moving their bodies in anticipation of the beat.

“If we are in tune with our subject matter, it carries over to the students,” Mr. Toppa had commented earlier. There was no doubt about the truth of this statement, especially during quiet listening time at the end of class, when the children reclined on the risers to hear a tremendous example of 5/4 meter: Dave Brubeck’s classic jazz composition, “Take Five.”