Klarinet Archive - Posting 000847.txt from 2001/02

From: "Rien Stein" <rstein@-----.nl>
Subj: [kl] counting
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 17:37:20 -0500

One of my students never was able to learn the meaning of musical terms.
After I told her some twenty times "acc" means accelerando, and what that
means, her mother came to tell this girl suffers from dislexya (hope I spell
it right).

Now I found out she isn't able to "count in her head", as she calls it. To
play a note one, two three, and even four beats she does simply by feeling
how long to continue that note, but when a note takes longer, she makes a
wild guess resulting in notes of considerably longer duration, but also of
considerably shorter duration. During the last few weeks I have exhausted
all kinds of trials to try to let her COUNT, but she finally burst into
tears, and asked me to stop it, it had, she said, relationship with her
being dislectic.

When I studied psychology, ovr 20 years ago now, the phenomenon of dyslexya
was still rather unknown, but when I heard about it I recognized it
immediately in two of my pupils (at the time I was professionally a teacher
of mathematics in the highest form of high school). From what I remember
from my study of psychology and of these two pupils I'd say there is little
relationship between the two problems sketched above, but it is not
impossible there actually IS a relationship with some individuals. Now of
course you will feel the two questions coming up:

can someone tell me more about this possible relationship, and, more
important,

can someone give me a hint how to help her with this counting problem?

TIA

BTW, this is the same girl I asked about some time ago because she
supposedly had a contusion in one of her upper front teeth. I went with her
to her dentist and had him make a röntgen photograph of the tooth, he had
never done so. Then the problem was solved: the tooth was broken. He is
handling this problem now, and she is suffering a lot less from that tooth.
She can attack notes again the usual way. She has a beautiful
double-tongueing technique.

Rien

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