Grade 6/Kitah Vav Trop Update from Cantor Ken

Wishing everyone shana tova-- a sweet new year-- good to celebrate with you! And wishing you a meaningful Yom Kippur next week.

A reminder that the Tuesday students can do their best to follow the assignments, but don't panic if you get stuck, and feel free to email me questions. (Wednesday students too)

The next Tuesday trope class is Nov. 1 at 5:30 and the next Wednesday class is Oct. 19 at 5:30, so you can work on this assignment over two weeks.

The general goals are to recognize the trope symbols we've learned, know each symbol's name, tune, and which trope it goes along with.

The first 5 trope families, which we're working on now, are enough to indicate the melodies for 85% or so of most Torah portions.

The first 3 trope families are review, and families 4 and 5 are new.

1) Learn/Review trope families 1-5: sing along daily with tracks 1-5 on the CD/website and follow along on pages 3-5 in the packet.  Please make flashcards for these five trope families; the flashcard should have ONLY the symbol on one side of the card, and the name (in Hebrew and/or English letters) on the other side.  The goal is to be able to see the symbol, know the name, and sing the melody, and be able to apply these melodies to the words of Torah readings.  You should now have 13 flashcards (10 from before and 3 new ones): mercha, tipcha, munach, etnachta from the 1st family, sof pasuk from the 2nd family (the others are repeats), kadma, mapach, pashta, katon, and yetiv from the 3rd family, v'azla from the 4th family (kadma is a repeat), revi'i and munach with the line after it (sometimes called munach l'garmei) from the 5th family. (in the picture below, the alternative name Revi'a is used, but I prefer Revi'i. The munach with the line after it is not shown in the picture, but you can see it in your packet)  Picture of the new families are immediately below, and pictures of the first 3 trope families are near the bottom of this email.

2) Please bring your binder or folder with the packet every Tuesday or Wednesday, and also bring your highlighters (blue, green, yellow, pink, orange, and purple) each time.

3) Next time we'll review trope families 1-5, and go on to families 6-7 (feel free to listen ahead to these tracks).  

If you get stuck or have questions, please call 508-650-3521, ext. 107, or email cantor@gmail.com.  Email is generally the quickest way to reach me.

Here is the initial letter with info on the class and some important dates to save.

Here are trope images of the first two trope families: 

Here is a picture of the trope from family 3 (note that this image calls the two dots above the word "Zakef Katon", while I call this trope "Katon.". 

     To distinguish between Kadma and Pashta, which look the same, draw a box on your flashcards, so that you can put Kadma above the middle of the box, and pashta above the left of the box.  Same thing for Mapach and Yetiv; draw a box so that you can put Mapach under the middle, and Yetiv below and to the right. This indicates the placement of each trope over or under a Hebrew word.