1.  The teacher writes two bars in C major, [2/4] time, on the blackboard.

2.  The class sings it through twice, first using the Sol-fa names for the notes, then singing to lah.

3.  Volunteers are then asked for to complete the phrase by adding another two bars.  The more musical children in the class will at once respond, and their efforts will stir the ambition of the others.  It will soon be a question of taking the children in turn, a few at each lesson—­so eager will they be to ‘express themselves’ in melody.

It is important not to be too critical of these early efforts.  The great thing is to get the children un-self-conscious—­variety of melodic outline and of rhythm will follow quickly enough.

The next step will be for two children in the class to extemporize the whole phrase between them, one taking the first two bars and the other the last two.  The key and time should be varied as much as possible—­keys a fourth or fifth apart should be used in succession, or the children will assume that any melody can be sung by them in any key, which is obviously not the case.  A melody sung in C major, which uses middle C and high F, cannot be sung in the key of G major with the child voice.

The class will now find it quite easy to extemporize the whole of a four-bar phrase.  Suggestions can be made by the teacher, such as: 

‘Begin on the third beat of the bar.’

‘Introduce two triplets in the course of the phrase,’ and so on.

When this becomes easy to them they will be ready to begin eight-bar melodies.  At first the teacher will give the first four bars, and different members of the class will finish the tune.  Modulations should now be introduced.  The same procedure as before should be followed, until any child in the class can give the whole of a tune, in any given key and time, and with a given modulation.

Next comes the sixteen-bar tune, in which at least one modulation should be introduced.  A good plan is to begin with the well-known simple form: 

1.  Four bars to the [6/4] [5/3] cadence.

2.  Four bars to the principal modulation.

3.  Repeat the first four bars.

4.  Four bars to the end.

Three children can be used for this, in the following way: 

The first child sings the first four bars, the second goes on to the end of the eighth bar, then the first child repeats what she sang, and a third child finishes.  This affords excellent practice, particularly for the first child, who soon learns to confine herself to a simple opening, as this must be remembered and repeated later.

Memory plays a much larger part in the power to extemporize than many people realize, and if this step in the preliminary work be conscientiously taken there will be abundant results later.

We now come to the important stage of extemporizing on the piano.  It must be remembered that a very thorough foundation of the knowledge of chords has been laid by the ear-training work, leading up to the power to write down chords from dictation, and to sing them in arpeggio.