When working on aural interval identification you may find that some students are struggling while others have this skill come naturally.
However, for most piano students it takes a LOT of (sometimes frustrating) practice.
To make it less tedious, you can use this game that I’m calling the Candy Listening Bingo for beginner piano students. You can use this with both groups and individual piano students.
How it works
Candy makes everything better, right?!?
This is a “reverse” game of BINGO that uses colorful Skittles and M&Ms candies.
As a group, we decide what interval each color of candy will represent and fill out the “code” cards shown on the right.
(If you use both Skittles and M&Ms, there are 7 colors possible, just enough to cover 2nds – octaves).
Then students choose 16 pieces and put one on each blank spot on their BINGO card. They may chose all of one candy or a combination. It doesn’t matter if they don’t have every color possible.
The teacher (you) play an interval on the piano. Students must correctly identify it, then may remove and eat one piece of the appropriate color of candy from their board:
The first student to remove 4 in a row wins BINGO. The first student to remove all of his or her candies wins blackout!
One of my favorite things about this game is that it can “grow” with my students and they don’t mind playing it over and over!
When students first start this game, we only identify generic, ascending intervals. Over time, we add descending intervals and I ask them to identify qualities along with distance.