I LOVED today's lesson. As a Greek composer I use a lot of Irregular rhythms. 11/8, 13/8 or Greek 9/8, you name it. I was looking for an easy method of analysing and writing music with such irregular measures, and Voila!
Belinda taught us about using coloured cards- Green for Pineapple, Yellow for Butter. Each colour/phrase is associated with a particular body percussion. Students can rearrange cards creating their own rhythms. What a great way to introduce composition and improvisation!
As Belinda demonstrated, This method can aid to analyse songs that use irregular measures or rhythms. In fact, that same evening, I used the Pineapple-butter method to teach my 10 year old student about triplets vs quavers. What a fantastic result it had!
But what is the Pineapple-Butter method?
'Pineapple' has three syllables, so could be used in place of three quavers (or triplets-depending on context), whereas 'Butter' has two, meaning two quavers. When said back-to-back, they create irregular rhythms. Here is a video demonstrating the above concept.