Have you seen Natalie’s great post about making scale blocks? Well, we must be thinking along a similar wavelength. I love my scale blocks, but wanted to have more to use in group classes. Unfortunately, the budget wouldn’t allow it. Then I thought back to elementary school and those cool 3-D shapes we used to cut out and glue together. A quick internet search, a bit of finagling on the computer, and here is the result – paper scale blocks! Easy to assemble, and inexpensive enough that the students can even take them home. Use cardstock for best results. Use them for learning the musical alphabet, steps, skips, intervals, scales, chords, and anything else you can think of!
Filed under: Chords and Keys, Group Lesson Ideas, Intervals, Scales |
Layton Music Games and Resources 
I would love to know more of the specifics on how you use these.
Thanks for all your wonderful ideas.
Here are some different uses for these:
* Build the musical alphabet, forwards, backwards, and starting on various letters.
*Practice organizing letters into skips.
*Practice intervals by picking a block, then finding a block a fourth higher, fifth lower, and so on.
*Building triads, and changing them from major to minor, then diminished and augmented.
*Building scales.
I’m sure there are many more things, but those are some I do often with the students.
D’Net
I really like this idea! I was surprised that even I could make them (sometimes, I am “creatively challenged”. I was wondering one thing, though, and that is how can I protect them? I teach group lessons and sometimes the kids can be rough on things. They obviously can’t be laminated…..is there anything out there that they could be “coated” with that would extend their life time?
I place sections of cardboard on the sides that will face in and that lends support to the overall structure of the cube.
I think you can laminate them…just use a craft knife to score the fold lines before you fold them and you shouldn’t have a problem. I like the idea of putting a piece of cardboard on the inside…and with lamination they should be pretty sturdy.
D’Net,
I love your ideas and resources. Thank you for sharing. As I was building different qualities of triads, I realized that we need some double flats (Abb, Bbb, Dbb, Ebb, Gbb ) and double sharps (Cx, Fx, Gx) to build the diminished and augmented qualities. Can you add those to your existing blocks? I just wrote on mine because they are white keys, but it would be nice to have them printed. I had to make two separate blocks for G.
Also, I made mine into stickers and just put them on blank dice so they would be sturdy.
Thanks
Barbara from Utah
[…] This week, The Rock is working on the musical alphabet. We played a little game with the wooden alphabet blocks that I made. You can print some out of paper here. […]
Wow, this is a great idea, but im teaching an adult groupguitar and bass basics, do you have anything a little more, err… practical?