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Recommended Reading
I wonder if any other teachers out there have, from time to time, inherited a pupil from another teacher who has been learning for anything up to a year or more who simply can’t read staff notation?
I have had this experience all too often. I had a run of pupils from a peripatetic piano teacher in a local school who had seen a number of their pupils through grades 1 and 2 where they had often scored good marks. Imagine my horror when upon presenting them with a new piece of music to learn could literally not read a note of it!
When a pupil has reached this level it is well nigh on impossible to remedy the problem easily. One can be absolutely brutal and take them literally back to square one. Imagine how demotivating this is and what must the paying parent feel when after listening to their child play a grade 2 piece beautifully with their certificate hanging on the wall above them now starts hearing three note exercises again! One can on the other hand continue for a brief while using letter names below the notes for example and gradually phase them out literally making the student read the staff notation. This again is not always easy but sometimes all of a sudden everything clicks and the pupil is reading notation!
The sad thing is that this can all be so easily be avoided. When I begin teaching a student on the piano I still feel that one of the best books on the market is “Jibbidy F meets ACE published back in 1949 but still selling in its original cover! From page one, a pupil, no mater how young learns where Middle C is on the keyboard and most importantly what it looks like when written in treble and bass clef. Further notes are added one at a time in both clefs and there is then a simple tune using only these notes. I always ask a student to have a go at the next piece because they will be able to recognise all the notes it uses. They then will learn to read notation straight away and to develop the ability of sight reading. I do not believe that one can teach a student at any level to sight read. The ability needs to be developed from day one! Working in this I do not find it unusual for a reasonably able student to be reading and playing tunes using up to five notes in the first lesson and most importantly these notes are spread between and written in both clefs where piano is concerned. The same principal also applies to teaching a one line instrument. The note must be read from the outset.
There is a danger that if only the first five notes are taught first in treble clef, the pupil will get used to the fact that the fingers normally used will be one to five corresponding to the notes C to G. What can happen here is that the pupil will learn to read the numbers of the fingers under the notes and think of C as one, and D as two and so on. Needless to say this breaks down immediately when tunes go beyond G and it’s back to square one again.
There are numerous books out there that use colours, numbers and sometimes do not even introduce the staff for a few pages. Many of these books are written by very eminent teachers and I am sure that they have their systems, but they don’t work for me!
For any practical musician playing at whatever level, sight reading skills are vital. Even if you just go along to a very basic brass band for example, a player will enjoy it far more if they can read and play what is put in front of them as indeed they will be expected to do. At the very top of the profession, British orchestral players are noted for their exceptional sight reading skills which means that they can prepare and perform an unknown work after only one rehearsal. Brass Band players too are noted for their excellent sight reading skills. The conductor dishes out a piece of music gives the signal and everyone gets on with it!
I am always wary of methods of learning to play that in effect lead to nothing more than playing by rote. We do not teach reading words like this so why should we teach students to play by rote? Many will I’m sure remember the story of the Victorian school inspector who complimented a child on the fluency and expression of their reading until they discovered that the book was the wrong way up. I recall my granddad telling a story of how when he took a village band one of the players had the Music the wrong way up!
My advice to any parent engaging a teacher to start teaching their child would be to ask them their views on the reading of staff notation. I would personally be wary of any approach that did not teach reading the notes from the outset. It may seem easier to begin with but believe you me, if you have had to try and teach it at a later date, you might end up thinking rather differently!
