Learning from Orff instruments

Abstract

In recent years in Italy in the musical education field there has been an ever wider methodological divide between the approach to the musical experience in general and the approach to the traditional music system.While the first of these two didactic areas is ever more directed towards creative games, the second has generally been unable to free itself from substantially academic techniques. As if to say: children, creativity is like playing a game, but Music with a capital M is hard work.The following examples indicate the possibility to venture into the traditional area in a purely game form using "manipulation" procedures of Orff instruments, undoubtedly legitimate vehicles of formalized musical experience. These procedures not only offer a very tactile familiarity with the notes, but also leads to recognition in a very concrete, empirical way of some of the basic structures of our music system.