The Rhythm in Toot and Hoot Flute Method

The Toot & Hoot's flute beginners books are created having in mind the younger beginners, therefore the goal is that the first approach of the flute students towards music is mostly through experience like movement, feeling, rapping, singing and playing. 

In these flute beginners books, the theoretical explanation of the notes (names and counts, including time signature and other theoretical concepts) are introduced later (book 3), after the student already feels very comfortable with the physical sensations of rhythm.

In this way, theory connects to something that is already familiar. It's similar to speaking mother tongue, where when the child is learning to read or write, they are naming something already familiar, and not the other way around. 

This is the reason why we don't have time signatures written in the tunes, and we don't discuss note values in their theoretical meaning in the first two flute books, but only create experience of the meter and note values through the movement and rapping.  

The book starts with duple meters because of their familiarity in most music we hear today. Later on (book 2), triple meter is introduced.

For each meter, there are introductory tunes called "Duple Meter Moves and Feels in Two" and "Triple Meter Moves and Feels in Three". The teacher plays these tunes, allowing for the student to move to the rhythm. They can move in whatever suitable way for them: clapping, tapping, dancing, waving etc. These are great as a warm-up and should be used at beginning of each lesson to boost the feeling of the meter that they will be playing in later.  

At the very start of the first flute beginners book, the rhythm is introduced through blocks paired with unique syllables. This is suitable for pre-readers or children who are just starting to learn music. Few pages with short rhythmic tunes for the headjoint follow, along with lyrics for each song, carefully suited to the note values to bring even more fun to the rapping. In this way by the time the flute student needs to play the tune on the headjoint (or later on whole flute) they already know the rhythm of it very well.

The next step is where the note symbols are introduced and associated with the blocks and syllables. After this, the blocks will slowly disappear, and the students will continue using only the notes with their syllables. There are a few pages that follow with short notated rhythmic tunes for the headjoint to support this step.

At the start of their learning, the students are encouraged to use these syllables for each note symbol, without their actual names (quarter note, eight note etc), or their counts. When rapping they can use either these syllables or the lyrics written for each song. This is exactly the reason why we have lyrics for each song, to make the rapping even more fun. 

Whenever a student needs to revise rhythm or headjoint work, these short rhythms are perfect to come back to.

Click here to download for free printable blocks that match to this method, and enjoy playing games with them.

Click here if you'd like to read more about the four active steps we do in Toot & Hoot when we learn new tunes