Teaching
Published: Oct 29, 2022 | Category: Practice Tips
Teaching an instrument and how to read music to young children and their parents is quite rewarding. When approaching the task of reading music, sometimes parents shy away. A few parents make statements or question whether their young child will be able to read because they are so young. I remind them that it is required in my studio that parents of young children learn alongside their children.
My four-year-old student and her mom were at the piano during a recent lesson. My goal for this lesson was to introduce the art of listening to pitch, thereby training the ear to read sounds of a familiar song they already know how to sing: Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. They had only one month of lessons. During those first lessons, I introduced them to the fundamental note values and then rhythm patterns based on those notes. I also introduced them to keyboard geography and how music only uses seven alphabet letters. I supplemented that introduction with a fun, colorful, animated music theory for kids app, The Mighty Maestro, Unit 1. She loved that!
What I noticed is that her eye-to-touch skill was very advanced. She can translate those written rhythm patterns in her piano book onto the piano, keeping her eyes fixed on the page as her fingers play the patterns on the given key. So, fast-forward to our recent lesson, I wanted to explore reading by ear.
With the foundational lessons out of the way, I had her sing the Twinkle Theme and clap the rhythm as she did. Then, I made up some impromptu games: Find and play C, find G, find A, and so on, the keys for the "bread section" of Twinkle; she did all that well. Then I told her to play that first part of Twinkle Theme. I sang and then played the first two notes, which she did fine. Playing the next part is where the struggle began. I noticed she could hear when she played a wrong note because she knew how the song should sound! That's a good thing. But now, to teach how to hear how the sounds are moving. While her mom was taking notes and videotaping, I had to address how important it is to train the ear by doing the following:
My four-year-old student and her mom were at the piano during a recent lesson. My goal for this lesson was to introduce the art of listening to pitch, thereby training the ear to read sounds of a familiar song they already know how to sing: Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. They had only one month of lessons. During those first lessons, I introduced them to the fundamental note values and then rhythm patterns based on those notes. I also introduced them to keyboard geography and how music only uses seven alphabet letters. I supplemented that introduction with a fun, colorful, animated music theory for kids app, The Mighty Maestro, Unit 1. She loved that!
What I noticed is that her eye-to-touch skill was very advanced. She can translate those written rhythm patterns in her piano book onto the piano, keeping her eyes fixed on the page as her fingers play the patterns on the given key. So, fast-forward to our recent lesson, I wanted to explore reading by ear.
With the foundational lessons out of the way, I had her sing the Twinkle Theme and clap the rhythm as she did. Then, I made up some impromptu games: Find and play C, find G, find A, and so on, the keys for the "bread section" of Twinkle; she did all that well. Then I told her to play that first part of Twinkle Theme. I sang and then played the first two notes, which she did fine. Playing the next part is where the struggle began. I noticed she could hear when she played a wrong note because she knew how the song should sound! That's a good thing. But now, to teach how to hear how the sounds are moving. While her mom was taking notes and videotaping, I had to address how important it is to train the ear by doing the following:
- Always listen to the music you are learning. Sing to it. Dance to it.
- If the music you are learning has lyrics, clap the sounds of the words. Make a game out of it. Ask how many sounds are in the words 'Twinkle' and 'little.' Ask how many sounds are in the words 'star,' 'are,' 'high,' and 'sky,'? What do you notice about the words with one sound? (They rhyme, and they have one sound!) For young students, this supplements their literacy skills. For an advanced lesson on this, one could ask, "What is the rhythm pattern of these words?"
- Play the Twinkle song using different variations or rhythm patterns. For example, tiri-tiri-ti-ti. You could ask the student and parent how many sounds are in this rhythm pattern.
