There’s a scene in the Pixar movie, Wall-E, which shows a kind of hovering wheelchair designed to help the elderly and disabled get around during their space cruise. Fast forward 700 years, and we see that all the humans who evacuated earth have taken to them over time (and everyone views the world around them on screens!) resulting in gained weight, decreased muscle tone and lost bone density. Intuitively, we all know that it’s not good for us to take it too easy. As much as we resist the idea, a little hard work and even struggle pays so many dividends in the long run. Health, fitness, strength, balance, alertness, mental function, there are very few areas of life which don’t benefit from a little practice and exercise. I’ve heard of the same notion being applied in some zoos – where animals aren’t just given their food, they have to climb, dig or forage for it just as they would in the wild.
Especially in the early stages of learning to read music, students are often tempted to write letter names or finger numbers under every note. In one way that’s a great exercise, because they have had to read through the entire piece note by note to do this, but once it’s done (and it is done only once) they are not actually reading the music at all, they’re reading their annotations.
In the short term this seem very useful, but in the long term it’s a recipe for disaster. Sure, it’s easier to play today’s pieces, but it can mean a student never actually learns some of the essentials and advancing becomes impossible. Recognising the same note name in a different octave, identifying new hand positions, finding those hand positions on the keyboard, changing hand position within the same piece, reading above or below the clef: a little hard work now saves a whole lot of work and frustration later.
So, let’s say your child is clearly struggling with a piece of music: what type of aide and how much help is appropriate and useful? The key is simple. An aide helps the student to think, a crutch saves them from thinking – and therefore prevents thinking.
Never write letter names under all the notes in a piece of music. Instead, you could:
- Photocopy the music, write note names on the copy but play from the original,
- Write ONE example of each unknown letter name on the music, and let the student refer back to it when it recurs,
- Read through the music on the sofa (more than just once),
- Play through the piece while reading letter names aloud,
- Memorise the mnemonics for lines and spaces on the clefs, and learn strategies for notes above and below the staves.
Written finger numbers are less problematic, but they can still prevent students reading properly. Avoid writing finger numbers under every note, instead use a few well chosen annotations – such as hand position changes (even these need to be abandoned eventually) or where fingering becomes more complex.
I’ve also seen and heard of students labeling piano keys with letter names. Instead, make it a game. Close you eyes, choosing any white key at random, then open your eyes and see if you can identify it. Begin by using a chart to help, but fairly quickly move on to working it out for yourself, using the chart only to check the answer. Some students remember one note name and count from there – that’s a good start, but challenge them to see how fast they can identify randomly chosen keys, or how many new keys they can identify in ten seconds.
A few students use memorisation or aural perception (“playing by ear”) to avoid reading the music. These are valuable musical skills (examining bodies such as the AMEB encourage the former and test the latter) however they have their limitations when it comes to learning new music. You do need to read music first before you can memorise it. “Playing by ear” requires that you have some knowledge of the piece you are learning which limits your repertoire somewhat (and who’s to say that your memory of the music tallies 100% with the printed page?). So:
- Practice playing new pieces of unfamiliar music.
- Don’t play a piece through for your child to hear, even if you can, insist they read it through themselves first.
- Don’t just tell them what the note names are, insist they read it for themselves, perhaps directing them to a chart which might help them work it out.
(This is one reason why parents without any prior musical knowledge can be just as effective – or even better – at supervising practice at home. It’s far better to discover music with a child than simply hand it to them.)
In the final analysis, the only way to learn to read music is actually to read music. Any or all of the above strategies may help. Remember, the aim is to exercise whatever mental muscle is available to the student: provide a little new information where necessary and give them opportunity to use it.
Piano with David 