 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: simon
Date: 1999-06-28 22:52
Here's a question that should start a storm with the teacher's.
"When learning to read music, should the letter names be written under the notes? Does this simply encourage the student to look at the letters or do they learn to read music?"
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Author: Dave Goss
Date: 1999-06-28 23:31
Hehehe, yup here's the first post from a music ed person.
I learned without the names below. Some people believe that students may end up reading just the letter names instead of the symbol. When only used for a very short time I think they can help learn the names.
The same thing goes for brass valve combinations. You'll may see 0, 1, 2, or 3's under begining brass players notes. I was taught in my methods classes not to have students do this. But again when used for a very short time it might help. When I learned French Horn back high school, I wrote in the fingerings for the first few exercises until I learned them.
Overall I think that writing names or fingerings in is bad, but if a student is having a difficult time learning them it might help to learn them by adding them for one or two exercises.
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Author: Dee
Date: 1999-06-29 00:42
The student needs to be able to associate the letter names with the note AND also needs to be able to associate the printed note directly to the fingering without having to think about the letter name. Judicious use of the note names should be beneficial. Perhaps written in under the first couple of measures or the first line only when a new note is introduce. You'll notice that a lot of good method books take this approach. However, a significant shortcoming of many method books is that they do not drill long enough on the new material that is introduced before moving on to the next item.
Ideally (yes I know this can't always be realized), teachers need to look at each student individually and attempt to determine how to approach teaching that person and tailor the course to the student.
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Author: Ginny
Date: 1999-06-29 01:18
Reading music is a complex skill, and as Dee says above students vary in how they learn. However,when I first taught classical guitar, I had spotty results with children. At that time I took a very individual approach with each student. I had excellent results with adults. I then hunted for better methods with consistent results for all children. I found that a very slow increase in difficulty with a well graded order of presentation enabled ALL of my students to suceed. Eventually, I wrote my own Kolday based method and was well pleased with the results.
I think that the first block to reading is recognition of the note names, and less so place on the instrument. Reading rhythm also seems to be a major block, possibly the largest. When a student understands the notation (up and down and reads rhythms) they can usually convert this to any instrument. As a result I have taught rhythmic reading without the instrument in hand. Seeing pitch patterns helps too.
My own children learned to recogise pitch by singing modified solfege, and sylables for rhythms while in under age three. I personally believe this is the age to begin music, with the instrument to follow later. They read well. At ages 10 and 13 they sight sing, can play by ear and occasionally catch my errors (the little snots. My youngest reads by interval (on several instruments) and my oldest has perfect pitch and reads by note.
As to writing the note names in. I would be inclined to get the child to write them in, do the flash card thing, draw them, make it into a game on a staircase (up and down) and sing them too. If the child is silly enough and young enough. You might be able to understand the childs strongest learning mode too.
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Author: Dee
Date: 1999-06-29 01:44
Ginny wrote:
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... As a result I have taught rhythmic reading without the instrument in hand ...
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My older daughter's clarinet teacher often had her clap out the rhythyms before attempting to play them. I find it to be useful to do this myself if I come across something really oddball. It allows a person to focus on the new element and then it can later be incorporated into playing the actual note values.
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Author: Jim Carabetta
Date: 1999-06-29 11:53
The Essential Elements series of instructional books incorporates the printed note-names and the rhythym-clapping technique, and they're effective tools. I appreciate the note-name printed on the first page, with the second page printed exactly the same, without the note-names. I can fold the first page behind, and flip back for reference if the student has a problem. I also have a set of "Flash Cards" that helps make note recognition fun for my younger students. I'm not a big fan of using note names beyond the first few lessons, since the object is recognition and not "reading". For the students who are having difficulty, I incorporate a few songs from those E-Z Organ books; the songs are simple, the print is large, and the note-name is printed in reverse print on the note but only very early in learning music.
As Dee stated, clapping rhythyms works pretty well.
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Author: Mark Charette, Webmaster
Date: 1999-06-29 12:47
A little fun to have with your students after they get good at clapping ryhthm:
Get the "Time Further Out" CD by the Dave Brubeck Quartet, and have them clap time to "Far More Blue" (5/4), "Unsquare Dance" (one of my all-time favorites, 7/4), "Maori Blues" (6/4) and "Blue Shadows in the Street" (9/8). These tunes were written by Brubeck to "show off" the different time signatures and are accented enough for a student to follow. His later works with odd and mixed time signatures didn't have such strong beats and are much harder to follow, but these are fun and "doable".
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Author: STuart
Date: 1999-06-29 18:13
If you're not hearing it, your faking it. A read note should be associated with a sound first and then sound to fingerings. I had this all screwed up and it set me back, still does. If it wasn't for musicianship classes I'd be lost!
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 1999-06-29 22:24
The above is a very intrigueing [sp?] discussion,to which I had never given much thought [just "doin' what comes nachurly" -apologies to Annie G Y G!]. Seems to me that if one must see the note, name it and THEN find the proper fingering, that the computer [the brain] is delayed in the response. Then if the player wishes to lower, or raise, by an octave the tone actually played, requiring [for us] a different fingering because of the 12ths character of the clar., that should result in further delay. I have found a preference, when playing bass cl, seeing a poor-responding clarion note,to "play it an octave lower" [hereisy I'm sure] but I dont recall much, if any, delay in so doing. I hope this may make some sense and will bring a response or so from our several posters as to ?whats going on?? Don
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Author: Merry
Date: 1999-06-30 02:24
I don't like seeing the letters of the notes written under the music. When a student is first learning they don't usually learn more then one or two notes per week so it really isn't too much for them to learn. I help teach brass for our local brass band by giving group lessons to beginners (as well as teaching clarinet and flute privately). It has long been the standard to write the fingering under the notes to help start the kids, probably because it is easier when you 5-10 kids to teach and an hour to do it. I really don't think it helps the kids in the long term but I am finding it hard to change the feeling of the other instructor. I have kids that have been learning for over a year and they still don't know what notes they are playing they just put the right fingers down which doesn't always mean the right note will come out if you are playing a brass instrument. I am trying to wean then off the dependency but it is hard. IMHO I don't think they should have been written on the music in the first place. Short cuts make long delays.
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Author: Ginny
Date: 1999-06-30 04:08
Playing each little note is rather like the stage of reading a language other than music where you learn your abc's. Then I guess you slowly sound out words, equivalent to say the measure or half measure level. Eventually you learn to read larger sections by prehearing, analysis or whatever.
I've always noted a big improvment when a student could look a measure ahead when they were reading. Just looking at each note won't do it. Too slow - aren't are minds amazing?
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Author: HIROSHI
Date: 1999-07-01 02:00
In Japan, there are three ways introduced from abroad to read music notes: French,German,and English(American).But when we read in mind, or sing a song, we are taught to read in French way. Namely, Do, Re, Mi, etc. just like Jury Andrews' singing the song of Do-Re-Mi. When singind aloud we do not read sharp or flat, only change the intonation by half note. To enable this we learn the sharp or flat mark positions for each scale. For example,sharp marks are added on the lines in this order Fa-Do-So-Re...
This is a superb way to read music,since each tone consits of only one pronuniciation,not like Es or Ais(German), E-flat or A-flat(English). Since I knew German or English way of reading,I kept wondering how German or English/American people read music especially in solfege practice.
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Author: Ginny
Date: 1999-07-01 15:41
Hiroshi - I have learned fixed do (C is always do), moveable do (the tonic of the key is do, fa sharp is fee etc.), English style letters (why isn't C called A, since it's first Huh? cause they used minor back in those days?) and I teach number solfege to little kids, moveable. I am an American. For number solfege the first note of the scale is 1 etc. It conveys all the chord structure (1,3,5 is the one chord), it tells intervals(1 - 5 is a fifth), it just doesn't sing bel canto as some of the English numbers are not formed with beautiful Italian vowels. I also expect them to know the letter names, so they can talk with the world. It seems so much simpler to me, I am stunned that either letter or solfege sylables are still in use. I have found they kids really understand pitch notation, that it is intuitive to them. Theory and analysis are much simplified.
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Author: Ginny
Date: 1999-07-05 23:07
Hi Steve, solfege (which I may have spelled incorrectly, I spell phonetically) usually refers to a method of naming notes by the do re me sylabelles while sight singing. It was used to teach sight singing when I was in music school. I learned to sing melodies on sight (no instrument) while singing the names do being C in fixed do solfege and do being the tonic note of a major key in movable do solfege. I believe the Japanese use fixed do. The English letter names have rather poor vowel sounds (trying singing "f" for a whole note). Learning to sight sing is excellent eartraining, it helps you play by ear and sight read musically.
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