A truly fascinating video on the power of the pentatonic scale. American musician Bobby McFerrin demonstrates the ability of any audience to sing the pentatonic scale without any training.

We will be having our next Colourstrings follow-up this Saturday 13 April; 

12:00 - 12:30: a meeting for teachers who would like a little extra work and explanation on tonic solfa, 12:30 -14:00 Colourstrings session (La pentatonic) and 

14:00 - 14:30 Colourstrings theory worksheets for those interested. 

Rose will be presenting her workshop for her masters at 9.30 on Colourstrings recorder.

Thanks to everyone who attended our Colourstrings Kindergarten course this January. We’d especially like to thank Zelda Martin and our tutor, Karen Mackenzie, for making the course possible. We hope that everyone has enjoyed these first few weeks back at school.

Our first get-together will be held at the University of Pretoria, Saturday 16^th of February from 10:30 to 12:00. These get-togethers are extremely important to the development of all those who wish to become Colourstrings accredited teachers, as they allow us to share our experiences and ideas, and, most importantly, to develop our musicianship.

There will also be a half-hour session on introducing theory lessons to instrumental students, presented by Zelda Martin at 12:00.

This will be aimed towards instrumental teachers, but all are welcome to attend.

Thanks once again to all our attendees, we look forward to seeing everyone at our first get-together.

Colourstrings Music Kindergarten Level 1 Certification Course

Dates:  4, 5 and 6 as well as 12 and 13^th January.

Tutor: Karen Mackenzie, an internationally acclaimed Colourstrings lecturer and

practitioner based in the UK.

Participants will be consolidating the knowledge gained in the Foundation course as well as acquiring additional theoretical and practical training that will prepare them for assessment and certification as Colourstrings Associate Music Kindergarten teachers

The assessment will take place on the Sunday (13^th January) and successful candidates will receive the Associate Music Kindergarten teacher’s Certificate issued by the Szilvay foundation.

You will be emailed all requirements for the course and assessment once your deposit has been paid.

Participants must have completed the Colourstrings foundation course.

Cost R2000.00 per person. Deposit of R1000.00 secures your booking, balance 1 week prior to registration. Venue: Pretoria University.

To apply for this course contact:

Zelda Martin at 083 695 4721 or zelmartin AT gmail DOT com

5-day course in Pretoria for teachers and musicians 7 -11 January 2013

Colourstrings is a child-centred approach to musicianship, conceived and developed in

Finland by Géza Szilvay. It is based on the principles of Kodály who saw music as a

birthright and recognised the voice as the fundamental tool for experiencing and expressing music. Through singing, children from birth to 5 years enjoy music, develop aural skills and become musically literate. Their training in the Music Kindergarten, means young beginners are musicians before they start an instrument.

A course covering the Colourstrings Singing Rascals song books, child psychology, lesson

planning, repertoire for babies through to 5 years, dance and movement ideas, principles of Kodály and the philosophy of Colourstrings. The course also includes daily Kodály tuition.

Tutor: Karen Mackenzie, an internationally acclaimed Colourstrings lecturer and

practitioner based in the UK.

Only 30 spaces available.  Cost R2400.00 per person. Deposit of R1000.00 secures your booking, balance 1 week prior to registration. Venue: Pretoria University.

To apply for this course contact:

Zelda Martin at 083 695 4721 zelmartin AT gmail DOT com

More on the Colourstrings' Philosophy

Colourstrings is a music education programme that starts from pregnancy and is a continuous developmental process. Although Szilvay divides his methodology into separate teaching phases, he did not want the process to be felt by children as separate but rather as one continuous process. If children felt it to be split into phases, the new phase would be difficult to start and would have to be related back to the previous phase, but if continuous, the child would just grow into the new phase seamlessly. He envisaged a programme where instrumental tuition would be a follow-on from the kindergarten programme. The kindergarten programme directly connects to instrumental teaching.


After the kindergarten programme, once the child starts school, s/he would go to a Colourstrings instrumental teacher and start an instrument from the beginning but have an enhanced level of understanding of the basics and elements of music. Also, the children should know 50 to 70 children’s songs by the time they start instrumental tuition and some of them they would learn to play on their instruments. This he called subconscious education. He believed that instrumental music would be made easier, and the teacher would go through the process so much more quickly, if the kindergarten teachers did their job well.  Szilvay went as far as to say that kindergarten teachers could change the life of instrumental teachers if they did their job well. This is because the same ideas and material should be followed throughout: that is that the material initially introduced to the child is also used as the introduction to each successive phase and because of its familiarity, it can be easily assimilated by the child.

Secondly, Szilvay wanted to develop a philosophy that was for the average child and not only the talented child. He felt that most instrumental teaching philosophies were written for the talented and musical child. The average child fell by the musical wayside. ‘The Colourstrings approach acknowledges that there are born talents or natural abilities but also takes into consideration the extreme importance of the environment or surroundings for the development of the child. Colourstrings creates an environment for the child where toys, fairy tales, singing and instruments live side by side serving the happiness of the child. Such a music land which is an integral part of the child’s play world should be available to everyone’ (Vainio 196:50).

By Zelda Martin (extract from a Master's thesis - University of Pretoria)

Certified Organic Music

While all around us we see a drive to the natural and the organic, in the area of musical culture we see a trend to the artificial. Lullabyes and nursery rhymes are a fundmental part of our muscical culture, however what we see today is that electronic toys and their synthesised sounds are literally driving out the parent’s voice.

Ironically these toys are being promoted as educational. The value of training the young ear with good quality sounds can never be overestimated. A baby’s ear is at its most sensitive stage while it is developing speech and learning to recognise different sounds. This is the time that they should be exposed to good quality, well played, in tune music. In fact, this exposure should take place during pregnancy.  Sadly this is the time that babies are most exposed to artifically produced sounds. The synthetic sounds from a toy, synthetic nursery rhyme tunes and sometimes even synthetically produced human voices.

Flat batteries and the inevitable wet and wild use that babies subject these toys to result in even the best quality toys quickly being reduced to out of tune horrors.

Other sources of poor ear training are synthetic instrumental sounds and badly recorded or played music.  The prevalent idea appears to be that if music is recorded for children, quality is not an issue. Recorded music for childen should be of the highest quality, as this is the music that is forming their ear. Just as poor quality food affects the development of the child more than the adult, poor quality music affects the intellectual and aesthetic development of the child more than it affects the adult. If you can’t stand a noisy toy it is a good sign that your child shouldn’t be listening to it. It is a fallacy that children enjoy noise.

One of the greatest gifts you can give your baby is to sing to him/her regularly, play good quality music on real instruments, or well recorded, well played classical music, whether live or on compact discs, as opposed to out of tune synthetic sounds. This will assist the child in developing a good musical ear. 

Naxos have recently released a series of “My First” albums. These include "My First Lullaby Album", "My First Classical Music Album" and "My First Mozart Album". 


"My First Piano Album" and "My First Violin Album" may be of interest for children learning these instruments.


These are all available for download from Classics On-line.  Tracks can be purchased individually to allow you to make your own compilation.


By Colourstrings South Africa