Resonator Bars

I’d like to take a minute to review why we use bars in our classroom.  This may be new information for you or may have heard it before in the Fall.   But that was a long time ago, and you may be wondering why we use this instrument with almost every single class.  (In some age ranges, we DO use them every week!)

Getting On Pitch
Our bars are accurately pitched and help a child to develop good relative pitch, which is the ability to sing or hear pitch accurately despite not having perfect pitch. Perfect pitch is a gift very few people are born with. It can’t be learned. It is innate. So the rest of us get by (rather well, mostly) on the skill of relative pitch. The more a child is exposed to accurately pitched instruments in these formative yeas when their brains are developing so rapidly, the better their sense of pitch will be in later life.

Why an A and a D?
The range of the bars we use in class is a D above middle C to concert A.  The concert A pitch is used to tune an orchestra.  So, an accurate tonal memory for this pitch will benefit future orchestral participation.  These pitches are the singing range of the young child.  Between the ages of 2 and 4, most children will sing fairly accurately in this range.

Sing to Speak
Singing is closely linked to speech.  A child who sings will often have a more varied speaking voice, use more spoken pitches in their speech patterns, have cleaner diction, and be more pleasant to listen to.  Many speech pathologists use singing as a tool to teaching children with language delays to speak, and singing has been used for decades in the treatment of stuttering.  Amazingly enough, a person who can’t speak well can very often, and quite easily, sing.

Which Hand is Your Hand?
Because the bars are a bi-lateral manipulative children are given the opportunity to experiment with using their hands in equal strength, without one or the other being dominant.  This allows them to work through the delicate process of determining handedness.  Most children are not definitively handed until they are between three and five.

My oldest child literally didn’t make the left or right decision until the last week before kindergarten started.  He could change the pencil from his right to his left hand in the middle of a page and there was no difference in the quality of the work.  Using bi-lateral manipulatives on a regular basis can help a child to use both hands in a non-stressful environment. Singing while we are doing this “work” makes the process joyful and fun.

Engineering 101
And just so you know, the bars are designed to be taken apart. For two and three year old children, engineering is just as valid as playing them.  And there will always be at least one adult (your teacher) playing them in class, modeling bi- lateral playing and singing in their range, and hopefully some of you are playing, and singing, too.  So don’t worry too much if they take them apart and build a train out of them. It’s all good. 

Here are some songs that can be played on the bars: Twinkle Twinkle,  The Alphabet Song, Ba Ba Black Sheep, Peas Porridge Hot, Sweetly Sings the Donkey, Oranges and Lemons, There’s a Little Wheel (a turnin’ in my heart), and lots of the songs on your Kindermusik CD’s.

If you’d like to purchase a pair of A and D resonator bars and mallets like the ones we use in class, please contact our Director, Analiisa, at analiisa@studio3music.com. We’ll give them to you at our cost, which is $40 plus tax. That may seem expensive, but remember, they are real instruments, individually tuned at the factory so they are accurately pitched. In the big picture, much less expensive than a Stradavarius, and way more developmentally appropriate for toddlers and preschoolers!

-posted by Miss Allison, who promises that there is no wrong way to play the bars!