ChOreos: Teaching Music Theory with Cookies and Milk

For the past few years, I've been working with my students on improving their music theory skills. With a combination of the traditional resources as well as using online exercises and lessons, we've been able to change the language of how we talk about music in the band and orchestra classroom.

However, there was something missing. It especially became difficult when talking about intervals and chords. Especially chords. Students dreaded learning about both, but chords were the be all end all. Student levels of achievement were still low and struggling at times. Why was this?

Taking a step or two back, I decided this year to break this down a step further. There was something about intervals and chords that was scary to them. Chords especially. However, that meant really looking at intervals, with the two being so interconnected obviously. So, I decided to take a different approach.

In the first year, I simply had students read some online lessons, usually from www.musictheory.net or some comparable site and then using musictheory.net for the exercises themselves. With musictheory.net you are able to adjust and tailor the exercises at your whim; adding accidentals, key signatures, or removing them to simplify the experience. These all proved beneficial, as I was able to really manage and tailor them from the beginning of the year to the end by simply adjusting the exercise and sending out a new website link to their specific exercise. This was good, but not enough.

I did this with intervals and chords. For intervals, I left out the quality of the chord or interval, and asked simply for 2nds, 3rds, 4ths, etc. or major and minor, before adding seventh chords. That was a good step, but in my first year, I spent too little time letting them develop the concepts and make them inherent. So, in year two, I did something different. I spent an entire month to a month and a half solely on intervals. First I started with simply naming the interval, regardless of quality. Then, slowly I added major, minor and perfect, and explained the tritone. This became more successful, and I was also able to begin to introduce diminished and augmented.

Once we achieved success with intervals, and increased the success rate by about 20-30%, I was able to bring on chords. This is where the fun began. First, I did only major and minor triads. Keep it simple.

Once we had that for a couple of weeks, I added the seventh and explained the use of the outer interval, since that becomes important at this stage. It's important also to have them hear the chords being used, and having examples on hand. The site www.musictheory.net provides for that afterwards. This year I added it to the learning process. And, now we get to the big tie in, the part that made chords palatable. Oreos. Whoever developed the meme building chords (and modes, but that's another story) with Oreos, is a genius. If you haven't already seen the memes online of Oreos used to explain chords and intervals, google it. Example provided, but there's more out there. It's everywhere. Simply google 'chords oreos' and it will appear, along with donuts explaining form (we'll get to that another time).

I decided that if it was good enough to meme, it was good enough to do in real life. I researched exactly how many oreos were in the packages, and figured out how many I needed for 90 band and orchestra students among three ensembles. Roughly $60 in Oreos, by the way, depending on the price and where you get them. I recommend the following: Double Stuf: Major 3rd. Regular: minor 3rd.

Thins: diminished 3rd/minor 2nd. More for fun.

Mega Stuff: If you're brave enough to go here, it's an Augmented 3rd/Perfect 4th.

The lesson was simple enough. about 2 regulars and 4 double stuf for everyone (when doing 7th chords). No eating until the end. Milk optional; I was able to connect with our cafeteria and have milk provided. Much easier to manage, you just have to pay for it. The exercise was simple, and I had given them a chart ahead of time to use as a reference for how chords are built with intervals. I would call out a chord and students would build it with Oreos. I had them work with partners several times to confirm and double check their work, which also made it more interactive. One tricky thing: regular and double stuf are often very close in size, so it can make it tough to tell what is being built. This is another reason I had them partner up into groups of 2 or 3, so there was a buffer for that. Once you're done, the students eat oreos. A win-win situation. What I also found is that it made learning about chords less of a dreary concept. With cookies involved, it at the very least had a good ending, regardless of score. I also found that scores did go up in terms of how successful they were in connecting and correlating to the intervals in terms of chord building. It requires making sure that you do it a few times with the Oreos in hand or in other exercises and lessons.

To let you know, there were also several also lessons and review moments, usually once a month where I went over and we did examples on a white board or some other method to make sure that it was connected to the traditional way we teach theory. The Oreo example added another dimension that reinforced what we do using traditional theory books, examples, or exercises. In the end, it took a variety of tactics and ideas to at the very least make chords and intervals more appealing, less formidable and create another layer of learning other than traditional examples and drills that, while might be successful aren't as satisfying, or as tasty.