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Many music educators use word groups or syllables created by noted musiceducation figures such as Zoltan Kodaly, Carl Orff, and Edwin Gordon when teaching beginners to read rhythms. Rhythm syllables and word groupings are typically used as a device to help students decode and perform rhythms either visually or aurally. Students who are taught to associate a particular duration with a specific syllable or word are often successful at both reading and hearing those durations. According to advocates of using syllables for rhythmic learning, these associations help students understand new material because they act as a kind of scaffold, bridging old knowledge with new comprehension.
Probably the most commonly used rhythm syllable system in elementary general music is the one adapted from that of twentieth-century composer and pedagogue Zoltan Kodaly. Basing his system on the one developed by nineteenth-century French musician and teacher Emile Joseph Cheve, Kodaly attempted to improve students' music literacy by creating a way for them to decipher written rhythms. Figure 1 shows the Kodaly system as...