en:didaktik:methoden:echozupfen

Echo Picking

In echo picking (also known as call and response game), the leader plays a sequence of tones that the practitioners should replay without the help of a score. The advantages of this notation-free music are:

  • No need to provide scores.
  • Nobody feels overwhelmed by reading music.
  • The group learns to listen more carefully.
  • The aspects important to the piece practiced can be better highlighted.

The following playful variants have proven useful:

Create two teams and provide alternating turns with teams playing for points. At the end of game, students can challenge the teacher with something they pick. This is an optional bonus round, of course. …
Students break into pairs and take turns creating a four or five note phrase and having their partner play it back. Keep score! Teacher can circulate to make sure things are going well (e.g. not using overly long phrases) and can also partner with a student if there are uneven numbers, although a group of three can work also. …
Two or more teams are created to compete. Teacher picks a note on their ukulele. Everyone picks with you, challenge each team — same time or alternating — to find the note and then an octave above. This gets them listening to octaves and hearing the same quality just higher or lower.

Suzanne Doane1)

Echo-pick short rhythmic figures using only the tonic note … Then have volunteers improvise rhythm solos using only the tonic note while you and the rest of the students lightly single-note picking the chords.

James Hill2)

1. Play with simple down strum rhythms on one chord
2. Children take it in turns to improvise their own strums and the rest of the group repeat what they played …
3. Play using up and down strums …
4. Vary the dynamic of strums used …
5. Using one chord, strum a steady rhythm 4/4 in time and ask the children to join in. After the rhythm has settled and everyone is playing together, count 4, after which everyone stops playing. Then strum one bar of a rhythm which the children repeat. Everyone then returns to the original strum.
6. As step 5, but call out a child's name and they then improvise the call for everyone else to repeat.

Tim Lewis3)


1)
Ukulele Games!. In: Ukulele Yes!, 2.5.2019
2)
Alabama Bound. In: Ukulele Yes!, 1.12.2008
3)
Lewis, Tim: School Ukulele Orchestra: Teacher. Suffolk: Kevin Mayhew. 2008, 26