Primary Tonal Patterns

Indexado: 2026-05-15

[00:00:03]let's take a look at primary tonal patterns in this section we're going to focus on the basic rules for tonal patterns that will be the backbone of all the tonal patterns that you do and in the next section we'll take a look at some alternate ideas and different ways you can build upon your tonal patterns so the first section of primary tonal patterns is says use Simple syllables for melodic patterns okay young children are still learning to use their mouths for speak but the simple syllables mentioned below are the ones that are the easiest for children to say first in their lives this way they can focus on the pitches without worrying about the first hurdle of saying certain consonants or syllables and these syllables are ba or bomb are the most common and you can also do some fun animal songs like moo or ba or any other animals sound that you like but those are some really primary ones once again so um because children are still learning to use their mouths we want to keep it really simple so you're going to use things like baa or bum bum bum is the best one for uh for tonal patterns that'll be your most common you can think of bum as your default uh syllable for tonal patterns and a lot of times if we're coming out of a fun song Like Old McDonald or I had a little rooster anything that deals with animals it can be really fun to do an animal sound you could either do the the same animal sound for everyone or you could even let certain children say what's your favorite animal and do that sound for uh for their individual tonal patterns so you could do moo moo moo or ba ba ba is always fun as a sheep and personally I like to bring out puppets uh during some of my animal tonal patterns so I'll bring out a cow puppet and say moo moo moo moo moo moo so those are the syllables you're going to use next section says use two or three notes for each tonal pattern three is the most common you're going to want to do three notes for most of your tonal patterns and occasionally just two uh you rarely want to go above that to four or five notes in a pattern unless perhaps you have an older child like a four-year-old or upper three-year-old who you feel like could use the challenge um but people tend to cognize things to recognize things in groups of two or three if you think about your phone numbers Social Security numbers credit card numbers Etc uh it's all in groups of two or three and of course where you have four or five numbers together you can think of that as groups of two or three as well so um it's best to keep your your patterns to three notes at the max and sometimes even just two now here are the four primary tonal patterns you can use uh you don't always have to use these and I recommend not doing these every time but this will be you know the largest chunk of what you'll do um think of this as the backbone of musical learning and they're all uh they're based on major Triads which we talked about in the music theory section and um let's take a look so the first one is the one three and the five or the perfect one the major three and the perfect five if you're in a major key or the perfect one minor three and perfect five in a minor key you're like what are you talking about well uh let's take a look so bum bmm is 1 2 3 4 five and then bmm BM is 5 4 3 2 1 and let's take a look at that on the keyboard I have Garage Band open here somewhere there we go so if we're in the key of C for instance okay bum I'll go up here bum so 1 35 be 1 three five 5 3 [Music] one and once again this is the one the two one the two the three the four and the five in a C major now if we were in minor it be 1 3 5 5 3 1 and once again major 1 3 five 5 3 1 and of course you're not actually going to say these numbers you're going to go Bumm or moo moo moo moo moo moo now I'm showing you all the stuff on the keyboard here and we're going to look at some stuff on musical notation but really what I want you to be doing is just developing your ears for this so as soon as you're done with a song It'll seem very natural and obvious how to do the 135 and the 531 A good rule of thumb or a good reference to identify your 135 is the uh wheels in the bus wheels in the bus go round and round one1 13531 that's something you can always use as a little memory trick now that was in C and it's nice and easy with the white keys let's say we were in a you say 1 3 5 or in minor and if we were in let's say [Music] d 1 3 5 53 1 or minor 1 3 5 53 one so that's a quick look at the one three and the five now you can also do something like the six and the four and the two and then maybe just a 5 one and those are some of the basic uh patterns you can do uh with the group uh so let's take a look 642 let's say we're in C here's 1 3 5 3 1 well here's two here's four and here's six so I typically do this then I do which is 642 then I do 51 B or1 for the last one so you typically do four patterns with the group before you break into individual patterns and those that that particular group of patterns can be the backbone of what you choose most of the time or for the first few weeks at least of each session so uh in order let's go through them we go bu everybody repeats then you go bu 642 so there's the major backbone of your primary tonal patterns here's the same thing written out just in letter form and here's the same thing in music notation form for those musicians who choose to do it that way now you can also uh besides doing these patterns what I really want you to be doing most of the time is impro improvising some patterns as well so you might start off with the 135 531 and then for the last two you can uh you really have some fun with it so let's say we [Music] go you can really make up whatever you like uh and we'll look at different ways to improvise uh under the alternate tonal pattern ideas