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The National Youth Choir of Scotland celebrated its tenth anniversary by commissioning new songs for young people to sing that reflected a structured progressive musicianship programme. Having learnt basic concepts, ideally young singers could use what they know to read these songs themselves, identifying what is on the page using the knowledge they have.

The NYCoS musicianship training programme is based on the work of Hungarian composer and music educationalist Zoltan Kodály. Kodály came to England last century, discovered a system of sol-fa which he took back to Hungary and modified and developed, to facilitate effective training of young musicians in his homeland. Kodály identified a process of learning by three stages: subconscious, conscious and reinforcement. Simply put, musical concepts are introduced subconsciously through games, then consciously by a teacher or choir leader. Our wish with these books is to provide material for the third part of this process - to help reinforce the concepts.

The Go for Silver level of NYCoS musicianship training programme introduces the notes of the diatonic scale with further rhythms and expression marks.

Ten composers, either Scottish or working in Scotland were asked to write three songs, one each for Bronze, Silver and Gold within the above guidelines: thus the songs utilise concepts at the level of the singer’s ability so that they can reinforce what they know, helping to demystify the reading process.

There are two ways to use this material.

Singers in a choir following a structured musicianship training programme should be provided with the chorus score to read the material themselves. For those singers knowing about sol-fa, identifying do, the singing name of the starting note and subsequent notes, and the rhythms, the song can be learnt by the singers without too much input from a leader.

Singers in a choir where material is learnt by rote can use the material in that way too.

The cover illustrations are by Willie Rodger. Click here to read more about his work

singsilver! songs are diatonic, with no accidentals