Endorsed by leading music educators

How do we teach music musically? What are the means to an ever-deepening musicianship for students that, while playful, are also foundational for their lifelong love of music? How can students fully embody the music they make so that it becomes thoroughly integrated into their systems, entering through the physical movement of their responses to music and flowing into cognitive, social, and emotional facets of who they are? What really does it mean to feel the music? 

For definitive answers to these and other key questions relevant to ensuring that students receive the quality music education they deserve, teachers will do well to give their attention to Make It Music, an important work thoughtfully crafted to infuse hum-drum lessons with innovative, inventive, and inspiring activities for students of every age and experience. Co-authors Anthony Molinaro and Stephen Neely, coming from decades of professional work as active musicians and educators, remind us that a Dalcroze-grounded “feeling first” approach to music can propel our students down a pathway through multisensory musical adventures to the intrinsic rewards of a rock-solid holistic musical education. They call for a mindset that shifts from a single focus on performance to opportunities for students to engage in inner hearing, ear training, improvisation, and the activation of the body. 

Through a companion set of four color-coded decks of cards, teachers can draw a series of creative classroom encounters that feature games and playful tasks to apply as brief musical episodes, in combinations that make for longer lessons, and across multiple lessons. There are, in fact, 125,000 possible permutations of activities, making for a long line of lessons to drive the development of student musicianship that will last a lifetime. At the philosophical core of the suggested strategies lie the principles of Dalcroze Eurhythmics, which makes this the unique and useful resource it is. Hands down, Make It Music is an indispensable guide to the successful maneuvering of experiences by teachers for the all-out musical understanding of their students.