Learning music notes

[*bejeweled*]

Hi there,
My DD (age 7) started taking private 1/2 hour weekly piano lessons last month. We are trying to learn the notes together. Can you recommend a good way to do this?

We have been using memorization tricks for Treble:
Every good boy does fine.
Face.

We have been using for Bass:
Great big dogs fight animals.
All cows eat grass.

Is this a good way to learn the notes?

[moominmamma]

I to encourage familiarity with "landmark notes." Typically with my piano kids I use middle C, plus the notes that the clefs are named after. Treble clef is really a stylized "G", and it spirals around the G line. That's a really good landmark note. Bass clef is really a stylized "F", with the lines on the F having become the two dots. They center around the F line, so that's your middle-of-the-bass-clef landmark note. The next landmarks are the C's above and below middle C. Another useful landmark is low G on the bass clef, on the bottom line. We call that the "Grandpa note" around here because it has such a low sound. From those notes it is easy to work out the others by counting up or down or (better still) by eyeballing the intervals. (i.e. If it's two lines above the landmark G, that's a 5th up from G, which is D. That might sound like a tricky way to figure it out, but reading intervalaically makes for good sight readers.) In my experience it is much easier to develop four or five notes that are known cold than to overwhelm a kid with memorizing 18 or 20 all at once.

The mnemonics you described (or any of dozens of similar ones) are helpful too. Different kids will prefer different strategies, or might rely on different approaches in different contexts. My kids tend to use the mnemonics when they're doing music theory bookwork on paper, but on landmark notes when sight-reading.

Miranda

[greenmamapagan]

I always found it helped to have my students make up their own memnmonics instead of the same old "All cows eat grass". A friend of mine who does the same posted on his facebook wall that one student came up with "Every Fat Girl And Boy Can Do Enormous Farts!" (EFGABCDEF, so all the notes from the bottom line of the treble clef up to the top line).
ITA with Miranda about landmark notes, the penny usually drops quite audibly once students realise clefs indicate where a specific note sits on the stave.

[*bejeweled*]

Very interesting. Thank you both for the feedback. I'll keep in mind landmark notes. Thanks again.

[plunky]

Originally Posted by *bejeweled*

Hi there,
My DD (age 7) started taking private 1/2 hour weekly piano lessons last month. We are trying to learn the notes together. Can you recommend a good way to do this?

We have been using memorization tricks for Treble:
Every good boy does fine.
Face.

We have been using for Bass:
Great big dogs fight animals.
All cows eat grass.

Is this a good way to learn the notes?

That's how I learned. Although it was Good Boys Do Fine Always. I like yours better.

[*bejeweled*]

Originally Posted by plunky

That's how I learned. Although it was Good Boys Do Fine Always. I like yours better.

Thank you plunky. Now I know I'm on the right track.

[Laurel]

Another one is "FACE the spaces". (The treble cleff space notes spell F-A-C-E.)

[AAK]

Our piano teacher uses a story about Grandma's house to show which key is which. I will see if I can find it.

Amy

[tankgirl73]

I COMPLETELY concur about landmark notes, and intervallic reading, and recommend that you AVOID the e-g-b-d-f mnemonics. ESPECIALLY since your daughter is just a beginner.

The lines and spaces mnemonics can be problematic because, for one thing, it's easy to get confused and forget which is for treble and which is for bass. This means you haven't actually learned to READ the notes, you're basically counting on your fingers without actually understanding how to add, if you see the analogy.

It creates dependence on the mnemonic rather than an understanding of what the staff lines truly represent (ie, the relationship between pitches). I had transfer students who had been taking lessons for YEARS, who when asked to name a note, STILL would start mumbling "every... good... boy..."

Because they're mnemonics, it shows nothing about the relationship between the notes. I've actually known kids who learned e-g-b-d-f and f-a-c-e but never realized that the note above 'e' is 'f'.

Interesting fact: the best sight-readers are not NAMING every single note as they go. They follow the shapes -- the distance between notes, the patterns and rise and fall. Naming some notes, sure, but not every single one.

Again, I've seen kids look at a passage of 5 notes rising by step, who would stop and say "e-g-b... the first one is b... f-a-c... the second one is c..." having to name each note before they could find it and play it.

Anyway... a 7yo who has been taking lessons for a month and a half should not be working on memorizing all the note-names just yet IMO. They'd either still be in pre-reading materials or focusing on a couple landmark notes. They have to learn the note-names on the piano itself before the note-names on the staff will have any meaning to them.

I am speaking as a professional musician and registered music teacher, I have a master's degree in piano performance, and have been teaching for 15 years. There are MANY people out there who call themselves piano teachers but don't actually have any training or experience in how children learn to read and play music, they just pass on however they think they learned it themselves.

Learning to read music is a topic I've actually studied quite a bit. When I have had students who were with me from the beginning (as opposed to transfer students), I very deliberately AVOIDED e-g-b-d-f, and told them not to use it (and why) if they were told about it from other sources (often well-meaning parents...).

They all ended up being excellent readers, much better able to read independently and fluently.

Anyway, I don't know if I actually answered your question clearly, I kind of just went off on a spiel heh... What I would advise, truly, is that unless your teacher has specifically asked you to work on note-names, then DON'T. Your teacher may have a plan and specific method in mind already, and your well-intended coaching might end up interfering. Or, even if she was planning to use that method, it's too much too soon. She might be able to learn the 'trick' but that doesn't mean she really understands reading music.

If the teacher DID tell you to work on note-names, but didn't give any real advice on how, then 1) I can give some more concrete suggestions and 2) look for a different teacher! heh...

May I ask what method book your daughter is using?

Edited to add: I should say that the mnemonics DO have uses. Once someone is able to read fluently via landmarks and intervals, but perhaps is slow in calculating what a particular note-name is (not really important for playing, but absolutely essential for theory), then the mnemonics can be used as a quick 'cheat' for speed. But this is only AFTER understanding how to read the notes the "real" way. I think this should be the case for ALL uses of mnemonics and memory tricks. You don't memorize the times tables before you understand what multiplication even means.

Most of my students never needed the mnemonics anyway, once they reached the point of fluency they had just learned all the note names naturally along they way. But it would have a purpose in the situation of a student who didn't develop that on their own. But not as the INITIAL teaching tool. That's the MAIN point I must make. Mnemonics are an AID to memory AFTER a subject has been learned, and should NOT be the teaching tool itself!

[tankgirl73]

Another (more long-term) consequence of dependence on mnemonics rather than landmarks/intervallic -- in more advanced studies, music students will learn about other clefs. Not just treble and bass.

If you've only learned notes via these 'concrete' sentences, then new clefs are like a foreign language.

But if you've learned that staff lines simply show relationships between pitches, and the clef is merely a marker to give you a landmark to start from, then new clefs are a piece of cake. It's exactly the same method, just starting from a different starting landmark. It's all relative, not 'concrete'.

[domesticidyll]

Miranda and Tankgirl, those were really helpful replies for me also--thank you!

DS is a beginner. He's doing Suzuki pennywhistle, and is now learning his easy songs partly by listening, by watching me, and by seeing the notes by letter (A-F-A written on the page), but he is also working on learning to read music by writing out the notes on a score as he learns each song. For this, he has found it useful to remember that B is "in the middle," and to count up and down from there. His teacher suggested counting up from G because it's the G clef, but I think the B has been more helpful to remember because it is in the middle. He's getting to where he remembers a few other notes just from doing the writing. It's good to hear there is some theory that supports his process.

Heather