Klarinet Archive - Posting 000133.txt from 2006/03

From: "Karl Krelove" <karlkrelove@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Help with teaching
Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2006 07:22:45 -0500

I have had over the past 35 years several students who could not recognize
that two identical notes within a measure (in a couple of cases even
consecutive notes) were the same. They guess randomly. These children had,
I'm quite sure, a serious problem perceiving the spatial relationships that
are involved in reading music on a staff. This may be the kind of "learning
disability" Adam referred to later in his post. Whatever you call it,
children who show this degree of difficulty are not functioning within a
normal range on some parameter of perceptual ability. Trouble is we don't
know enough to be able to pinpoint a cause, so we have to resort to
improvising solutions until either (a) we find one that actually helps, (b)
the child takes care of it himself by getting older and developing beyond
the problem or (c) the child gets frustrated and quits the attempt.

Some things to try - which will not necessarily help but could with the
right kids - are enlarging the music (on a copier), coloring the music or
using lightly tinted paper (black on white is hard is harder for some kids
to see or to concentrate on), using lightly colored film (transparency film)
over the music, having the child manipulate note shapes on a large staff
(there are magnetic notes with bulletin board-style displays made for this),
using computer software to practice recognizing notes (sometimes helps with
concentration, but probably not with actual perceptual problems), drawing
notes on a large staff, etc.... Any success you have with any of this can
help focus on the actual problem and lead to more sophisticated solutions
(like glasses, if enlarging the page shows a simple visual acuity problem).

Another thing to check is whether the student remembers fingerings and
associates them with note names that you dictate orally. If he/she can play
the right notes from oral letter-name dictation, you've at least isolated
the problem to the written symbols. When you try to do both at once you
can't tell sometimes where the problem is and where it's just spilling over
as general confusion.

Of course, it goes without saying that a child who can't read the music
isn't going to practice much from a printed music (method) book. It's
tempting to say he can't read because he isn't practicing. You really have
to diagnose where the problem is during the lesson. A kid who "gets it" by
the end of the lesson and comes back the next week a blank probably needs to
practice more (and sooner after the lesson than the next weekend). A kid who
10 seconds after convincing him that a note is an "F" can't tell you when he
sees another "F" within a beat or two of the first one probably has a more
serious problem that guessing at home isn't going to fix.

Good luck.

Karl

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Adam Michlin [mailto:amichlin@-----.com]
>
> I have never met a student incapable of reading which space
> or line a notehead is on. I have met more than a few who
> don't want to spend the time to learn how to read which space
> or line a notehead is on...

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