KMI's Mission

KMI provides professional development to music educators while promoting best teaching practices.

What is the Kodály Concept?

Zoltan Kodály and KMI

The Kodály Music Institute offers a music teacher education program based upon the concepts, philosophy and practices developed by the Hungarian composer, linguist, philosopher and educator, Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967). The Kodály (pronounced KÓH-dye) concept has been adapted around the world.

Concept of Music Education

Kodály’s concepts are based on teaching, learning and understanding music through the experience of singing, giving direct access to the world of music with the most universal instrument.

The Kodály approach to music education is student centered and skills are taught in a logical, sequential manner. Kodály believed, as we do now, that music is a language that everyone can learn to speak.

This approach begins by teaching students to sing in tune combined with extensive physical movement to develop timing and rhythmic competence. Music is taught in a way that requires each person to learn via a variety of modes—kinesthetic, auditory, and visual.

The musical material begins with the music of the people and languages represented in a community and then moves to composed music of all genres.

Music is learned first through immersion and then literacy is learned using the tools of relative solfa, rhythm names and hand signs. Relative solfa is derived from John Curwen’s Tonic Solfa and rhythm solfa is inspired by and simplified from the French rhythm solfa system of Gallin-Paris-Chevé. The trained musician will be able to look at staff notation and hear the sounds in their head.

Why is singing so important?

The singing voice is nature’s built-in musical instrument. We all have one, and Kodály educators believe it is the birthright of every person to learn how to express themselves musically with the singing voice. Musical development can in this way begin for everyone in childhood. Singing is a joyful and social activity feeding the spirit as well as the mind.

Singing gives direct access to music without the technical difficulties of an instrument. Singing and active participation is therefore the fastest way to learn and internalize music and to develop musicianship skills.

Through unaccompanied singing and active participation a student can begin to acquire skills essential to all musicians: aural perception, musical memory, inner hearing, true intonation and harmonic hearing.

Kodály-trained instrumental teachers regard these skills as pre-requisites for instrumental study at every level. Teachers who spend time preparing musical material through singing find that students play successfully and musically.

Engaging in singing and Kodály-oriented musical activities leads to a marked increase in the powers of concentration and focus, a rise in achievement and improved social harmony.

How does the teaching progress?

The approach is very effective with young children who will learn, unconsciously at first, all the musical elements, which musicians need, through playing and singing of musical games and songs of their mother tongue. As with language learning, it can happen very spontaneously and naturally when parents and care-givers sing to young children as a part of everyday life, and especially if this singing approach is continued through the school years.

At an appropriate stage these musical elements and skills are further developed by being made conscious and then, later, reinforced. In the process of reinforcing, new elements are introduced – again unconsciously by the teacher, thus continuing and developing the cycle further. Central to this work is the development of the Inner Hearing (the ability to imagine sound) though a potent combination of singing, rhythm work, Solfa and hand-sign work, stick-notation, memory development, part work, and improvisation.

But I am an adult!

Kodály’s approach to learning can be used to develop musical skills at any age. Anyone, whatever their age or ability may aspire to the highest levels of musicianship. The training starts with the simple and progresses to the more complex by logical steps and is therefore suited to all ages and stages of musical development.

But I am an instrumentalist!

When music is taught or learned using Kodály’s approach, skills vital to advanced music making such as “inner hearing”, rhythmic co-ordination and harmonic hearing are strongly developed at an early stage. The approach is therefore relevant for instrumental teachers as well as general music teachers and performers.

Through Kodály training teachers come to realize that all pupils need a core of musicianship skills which are relevant to all instruments. Instrumental teachers therefore need to develop skills and material for musicianship work with their pupils as they master the technical requirements of their instruments.

But I am a choral conductor!

Kodály certificate training includes conducting…a lot of it. Everyone needs  a core of musicianship training relevant to choral singing. It is helpful for the choral conductor to use a Kodály-style sequence with learning new choral music as a way of developing sight-singing skills. All certificate levels include conducting training, conducting labs, performing with adults under a master conductor, and observing youth in choir rehearsals and solfège classes.

But I am not a singer!

You do not have to be a trained singer to enjoy or benefit from this form of music making. If you can draw breath, you can sing in such a way that the musical world will become accessible to you. The teaching and learning of music through the use of the singing voice enables the most direct of musical responses and provides the opportunity for musical understanding at the deepest level.

All students are taught to work with rhythm, structure and style in music – and to understand pitch by using a relative pitch system, which uses pitch syllables (do, re, mi, fa etc) to develop keen aural discrimination. This is central to Kodály training and provides a stimulating and challenging means of improving personal musicianship and musical awareness.

Kodály teachers are trained to carefully analyze each song that is used in teaching. From this song analysis, common melodic and rhythmic patterns emerge, dictating the most appropriate teaching sequence for musical reading and writing.

Students gradually learn how to hear and then sight sing standard musical notation through the use of these repetitive patterns, thus developing true musical literacy. Once children have acquired music-literacy skills, they are then able to easily and successfully apply this to instrumental study.