Echo singing

What is echo singing?

Echo singing means one person sings a short phrase and the others sing exactly the same phrase straight back: same notes, same rhythm, same words. The leader is usually a teacher or a parent; later a child leads. An example: you sing “Hel-lo” on two notes, high then a little lower, and the children sing “Hel-lo” on the same two notes. Because the echo comes right after the model, a child needs neither to read music nor to remember a whole song to join in.

It is a basic step in two of the best-known methods for teaching children music: in Orff-Schulwerk (Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman, Musik für Kinder, 1950–54) imitation comes before improvising, and in Kodály teaching the first tunes children echo use sol and mi, the falling minor third that starts “Rain, rain, go away”. Mika's very first tune is that sol–mi, G down to E.

How to play the echo game

Listen, then sing: pick who sings first, Mika, the owl or the frog, and tap “Go, sing with me”. When the button says “Your turn”, the microphone listens for a few seconds and you sing the tune back. First you hear the tune again, then your echo on the glockenspiel (the frog plays it on a marimba).

One more note each time: Mika starts with two notes. When the echo matches, the next tune has one more, up to five. When it doesn't yet, the same tune comes again. Each sung note is moved to the nearest note of the tune's scale (C major, the white keys), and your rhythm stays as you sang it; a much lower or higher voice is moved by whole octaves, so a grown-up can echo too.

Your own tune counts: if the echo sounds nothing like Mika's, the game says you've made up a tune of your own, and plays it to you. There is no wrong answer and no score.

In Brumm Kids the echo turns into music: a beat, a glockenspiel, and the child can sing a whole tune along.

For parents and teachers

The page listens only after “Go”, for a few seconds, and keeps nothing: no recording, no account, no points. The tunes stay between middle C and the A above it, where young children sing easily. Good from about three; a few minutes is plenty. More about Brumm Kids.

Echo songs for kids and preschoolers

Good echo songs for preschoolers have short lines, few notes and something to do. These are well known in English-speaking classrooms; the ages are where they usually start to work.

For an echo without words, clap a rhythm and let the children clap it back: Clap back does that on the phone. For more games where children sing, see singing games.

How to lead echo singing in a classroom

1. Start with two notes. Sol–mi (a call like “cuck-oo”) or a child's name sung on it: “Ma-ya”, and Maya sings back.
2. Show whose turn it is. Hand on your chest while you sing, an open hand towards the group for the echo. No words needed. For a child who can't see, say their name or touch their shoulder lightly for the echo.
3. Keep the beat. Tap a knee or walk while you sing, and bring the echo in on the next beat.
4. Keep phrases short. Two to four beats for the youngest. Make it longer only when the echo is easy.
5. Sing light and high enough. Adults speak below a child's singing range: about 85–180 Hz for men and 165–255 Hz for women (the ranges usually quoted from Baken, Clinical Measurement of Speech and Voice); this game's tunes sit at 262 to 440 Hz. Sing in a light, high voice, not your speaking voice. A man's normal singing voice sounds an octave below the children's, and many children then sing low too. Children match a man's falsetto at their own pitch more easily (Small and McCachern, 1983), or let Mika sing the model.
6. Change one thing at a time. Same tune as quiet as a mouse, then like a bear; slow, then fast; with an owl's hoo, then a frog's ribbit. Never louder than a comfortable voice, no shouting.
7. Hand over. Once the group knows a phrase, a child sings the model and the group echoes them, or split the class in two: one half sings the call, the other the echo, then swap.

Two ways to use this page with a group:

• The phone as your model: you don't need to know the tune. Tap “Hear the tune again” as often as you like (the microphone stays off), sing it to the group, and let them echo you. Then let one child sing into the phone.
• Echo round the circle: one child echoes Mika, the next child echoes that echo, and so on round the circle, like a whispered message. At the end, tap “Hear both again”: it plays Mika's tune and the first child's echo, and the circle hears what travelled. One child at a time.

Echo singing by age

These are rough steps. Children of the same age differ by years in how their singing voice has developed, and that is normal.

When a child doesn't match the notes yet

Many children under six or seven chant the words in their speaking voice, or sing the right rhythm and shape on other notes. Music educators describe this as a stage, not a lack of talent: Joanne Rutkowski's Singing Voice Development Measure (first published 1990) runs from the “pre-singer”, who chants the words, to the “singer”, who uses a consistent extended singing range. Singing in tune is learned, like speaking: children who sing often get steadily more accurate, and nearly all children who don't match yet learn to with practice (Graham Welch, “Singing and vocal development”, in The Child as Musician, 2006). What helps:

• Sing the phrase at the child's pitch, wherever their voice is, then move it slowly towards yours.
• Glide like a siren or an owl (“whoo” from low to high) to find the light high voice before echoing.
• Let the child hear their own voice: a whisper phone (a curved plastic tube from mouth to ear; two plumbing elbows work) or a flexible tube. Sing softly into one end held at the child's ear, then let the child sing into it. Always softly: a tube carries a loud voice straight into the ear. Perkins School for the Blind uses tubes for this activity, with a falling “yoo-hoo” as the first echo; a resonant hallway works too.
• Never say “wrong”. Echo the child's version back to them, then sing yours again.

Why teachers use echo singing

• Pitch matching: the child hears a note and finds it with their own voice, again and again, in a few seconds each time.
• Listening and memory: the phrase has to be held in the head until it's your turn. Phrases grow as the memory does.
• Steady beat: in a good echo the answer starts on the next beat, with no gap.
• Confidence: the phrase is short and modelled just before, so nearly everyone gets it. Children sing a new song on the first day, before they know its words.
• The teacher's voice: in echo songs the children sing half the song, which is why music teachers reach for them on a long day (for a cover lesson, see substitute music lesson).

Echo singing, call and response, and the echo effect

In echo singing the answer copies the phrase exactly. In call and response the answer is a different phrase: the leader sings a line, the group answers with its own line, often the same one every time. Many classroom songs mix the two. An echo voice is the voice that answers in an echo song, or a voice with an echo effect on it (below). In church the old form of echo singing is lining out: a leader sings or reads a line of a psalm or hymn and the congregation sings it back, still heard in Scottish Gaelic psalm singing and in African American churches.

If you searched for how to make your voice echo when singing: that is an audio effect (reverb or delay), not a way of singing. It plays your voice back a moment later and fills it out, which hides small wobbles in pitch and timing; that is why singing sounds better in a bathroom or a church, and why a singing app with echo flatters. This game adds no effect: the echo you hear on the glockenspiel is the tune you sang, each note moved to the nearest white key.

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