A word of warning:
This is going to be very treble clef-centric.
Alto, bass, and both treble/bass readers, adjust as necessary.
First of all – why
read music? Surely it’s a great skill to
be able to play music by ear. Well, yes,
it is.[1] But, imagine if the only way you could learn
new songs was to memorise them. How many pieces do you think you could
memorise? A few? An entire concerto? All the works by your favourite
composer? And, imagine having to be so
dependent on others to teach you a new song.
This is why being
able to read music is so important. You
can play as many pieces of music as you like – you just have to have the book.
So, how to teach
reading.
I start by getting
the student to count how many lines and how many spaces there are on the stave. Then I explain that we always count up from
the bottom. The notes are names after
the first seven letters of the alphabet and then they repeat again. But, first of all, we’re going to learn the
notes out of order. It’s seems weird,
but it’s so I can give you an easier way to remember them.
I’ll draw up a
stave on the whiteboard. I explain that
notes go either on a line or in a space.
I draw a note that is deliberately wrong – far too big and takes up a
couple of lines and spaces. I say that
we can’t work out what this note is – is it a line note or is it a space
note. Then I write in the line notes:
E G
B D F
I say the names of
the notes a couple of times, then teach:
Every Good Boy
Deserves Fruit
I drill them a
couple of times on this.
Then, further along
the stave (not interspersed like the actually are) I’ll write the space notes.
F A
C E
I ask the students
to tell me what word they spell out, then teach them “FACE in the space”.
After they have the
hang of that, I rub out the letters and test them on the note names. I always encourage them to ask themselves:
“Is it a line note or is it a space note?”.
From there, they can count up to the appropriate note.
I ask them if they
have noticed anything about the notes.
Do any seem to be repeated? I
point out F on the top line of the stave and F in the bottom stave. Also the two Es. I ask what they think the difference between
the two notes is. If I have a piano
handy I use it to demonstrate (this is good because it is so visual. If I have to use my flute, I can just
demonstrate the difference in sound).
I rewrite the
stave, putting the notes in their correct order (starting on first line E and
ending on top line F). I ask them if
they can work out what the note just below and above the stave are, based on
the pattern they can see.
For flute, I then
point out our starting notes: B A G. I
explain that eventually we’ll learn all the other notes, but for now, we’ll
just focus on what we need to know.
Other instruments
obviously have different starting notes.
Clarinet players introduce E D and C first (teaching ledger lines from
the beginning). Pianists usually begin
on middle C in both the treble and the bass clefs.
I try to encourage
note reading right from the beginning.
If students are allowed to write in the notes they very quickly come to
rely on that and are very reluctant to learn to actually read. They also don’t look at the music to see
which octave they’re supposed to be playing in or take any notice of note
values.
Having said that,
sometimes there are valid reasons for writing in notes. Students with visual difficulties can easily
mix up notes, and I’ve found that sometimes students with learning difficulties
can get really frustrated at having to try to read the notes and figure out
where to put their fingers on the instrument.
It’s your call – if you think the student would get more benefit from
music by having some of the notes written in, then do it. But if they’re just being lazy…
P.S. Posts will be limited to Mondays only for the next couple of months. I'm heading off overseas to live and so am a bit pre-occupied! I'll be back regularly as soon as I've settled in to live in Japan :)
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