All debate over the necessity of reading skills vs. aural skills aside, does anyone have any advice on how to teach reading to aurally gifted students?

How do you motivate a young child to develop reading skills who can play by ear music that is years in advance of what they can read without boring them?

Has anyone had success in teaching a student like this?

Thanks for bringing this up again I'm trying to solve this challenge myself. My teaching goal is to create good aural and memory skills, with various methods. Then there is the challenge of circling back later to reading, and how to make it exciting and relevant.

For reading fluency I do a lot of whole body rhythm reading; put the pulse in the feet and say the rhythm (vigorously) using ta, tiki, teke-teke etc, gradually building up speed and complexity. If you can read one part each of a Bach invention (do it as a duet), you've made pretty good progress.

To read rhythm of 2 parts (LH plus RH) a great game/exercise is to play one part on each leg, tapping/slapping legs with the hands. Really fun and you can go "and now, even faster!". Deliberately teach always looking ahead in this exercise. Let them try and beat you, laugh and make a game of it.

For reading fluency with pitch - sight singing is great as the student is gradually able to hear a bar of music in their head before playing it, and because they are aurally gifted I think there is more chance of getting to this stage. Start by singing together, later you could aim for singing in 2 parts - but I haven't found handy resources for this, and have not tried this yet. If they could join a Bach choir...

Theory- a lot of aurally gifted students don't actually understand what is going on in the score so interesting and engaging theory that includes the relevant aural and sight reading exercises is a great start, even if you do none of the above things. I'm impressed with Piano Adventures Theory books because they combine all of these things really well, and have helped turn around a couple of not good readers into students who genuinely want to read and are keen to get better at it - and this is the important motivation issue that you describe.

Then you can also do just a bit of sight reading in each lesson, begin with very easy for them, and maybe chart their progress in some way. Other ppl will probably have good ideas of S.R. books. Also I find Piano Adventures Method books make good reading homework, because they move so slowly and explain everything. So you can give a nonreader a method book well below their level and back-fill the reading skills after they already have basic sound and technique. This is my favourite use for method books

Continue to learn their harder pieces without reading at this stage, just so they are not too frustrated.

This is something that I've debated with myself for a while now. I used to think that I should discourage them from hearing the piece first because it would hamper their reading. But now, I think that if they heard how the music shoudl sound and listened to that a lot while reading the score, wouldn't that help their understanding of music notation? And when I learn a new piece, don't I also listen to it a lot? Not because I have to, but it really helps get the big picture.

I think that with those who have good ears, it's OK for them to hear the music as long as they watch the score. But then also work with them on sight reading so that they improve their understanding of notation without hearing it first (developing their inner ear).

Nicely put Morodiene Yes, it seems to be a good idea to use the ears as much as possible and in as many ways as possible, but to put distinct time into reading without any clues from sound.

YES! Morodiene, I have been thinking this same thing....... That in a way, just because they 'get' the music before they read it, doesn't mean that they don't absorb the rhythms, intervals, patterns, etc..., in an 'after the fact' sort of way. That is, if they look at the music. Did you ever try the Richard Chronister method for practicing sight reading - take a piece they know, copy it, rearrange it in many different ways and have them read it. In a way, this is the same thing. They are recognizing patterns they already know.

As I have mentioned, I started several of my kids on the 'Improve your Sight reading' books by Paul Harris. They are progressive, designed to add one element at a time. They suggest steps to go through for each stage (checking signatures, tapping rhythms, looking for patterns, etc....) What is interesting to me is that among my own students, how I would expect the more advanced students to fly through them - but I have a 9 year old student who has been studying for a year doing better than a much more advanced 13 year old student. They reveal the issues! Whether they will solve them or not, is yet to be seen.

There was a great article about sight reading in the most recent Clavier. He likens music reading to book reading. The other day I was driving across town and thinking about this subject, and it came to me: It's more like riding a bike! You're going down the road on your bike, not only looking right in front of you, but looking ahead too, and in fact, to the sides. You have to watch out for other bikes, cars, stop signs, kids running into the road, squirrels, deer, bumps in the road. While you are riding along, you are taking in all of this information at the same time, keeping your eyes moving and your brain alert, just like reading music. Forte (downhill! switch gears!) piano (upshift), Repeat (go back!), Double bar (slow down, stop sign!), crescendo (pedal harder!).

So, do you want to be the kind of bicyclist who doesn't see a pothole and falls on the pavement, or the kind that sees it looming in the distance and safely swerves to avoid it? I've been having fun with this analogy. Now, to teach them how to actually sight read this way!

Great post Carol,
As a cyclist about to pick up my take away Char kway teow, I hope not to meet a Sforzando Liked the analogy very much. Ok I'm going to look for specific sight reading books, I'll see if my shop has the paul harris you mentioned, probably easier and more progressive than using examples from rep books. Then I can also make it a game between students and tally their results on my wall. We did this long ago using a code name for each student (Clef Richards, Sam Phony, Con Shirto etc) but I could have used a better resource for the reading examples.

That idea from richard chronister sounds excellent, what a clever idea to get reluctant readers into pattern recognition. Now i just need some time to develop this, yeah might wait for the upcoming holidays.

Thanks again for all the ideas, Canonie

A good sight reading book that I've discovered is Rhytym and Sight Reading Every Day published by FJH.

When we sight read, we are deciphering not just the notes, but the rhythms. I find weak readers have a hard time with getting the rhythm right, and so that distracts them from reading the pitches and intervals accurately. This book really helps to build up the reading of the rhythm in addition to pitches and intervals. They also employ many different means of counting (although sometimes when they associated words with the rhythms, they don't really match that well - in these sections I substitute other ideas).

Another good thing about this series is that they have ensemble pieces that the student plays with the teacher. Nothing like sight-reading with the teacher playing along to keep you honest!

CarolR - I like the bicycle analogy, too, bcause it is so much more a dynamic vision than the way sight-reading is usually described, and music, after all, moves - not one note at a time, but flowing.

I am also really interested in ways that people have found to keep a student interested when they have great ear skills but are also asked to learn to read. A young friend of mine was playing Linus and Lucy by ear, as well as other popular and rhythmically interesting pieces, with all the right accents and dynamics, but when she started lessons and started to read - . I heard her play a blues duet with a friend, just the kind of music that many of you use to give students some variety - excellent composition of this genre, and the music was gone. The accents were gone, the phrasing was gone, the verve and life were gone. Somehow they were short-circuited (or long-circuited, as the case may be) by going from a piece of paper and through her eyes before they got turned into sound coming out her fingers. Now she doesn't take lessons. She comes from a very musical family, so music is a part of her everyday awareness, and she loves to dance.

I think you are onto something when you talk about listening to a piece before playing it. It seems to me the notes on the page are just a way of translating basic information about the sound, so it can be passed on, and not the music itself. So perhaps if the approach really is about the sound first and foremost, whether it's heard first or read first, and the teacher really passes on the idea that the notes are in service of the music and not the actual music, the student who hears so well can approach reading as another way to get to the music they want to play - and in particular, as many of you point out, to music they haven't heard before but might want to play. I would think sight-singing might be one approach, which again, several of you use.

I also have some suspicion that playing many pieces from a genre they like, rather than only one or two, will help, too, because any style of music has its own performance which can't be accurately represented by the sheet music alone. But if a student is familiar with the sound, and plays music of that genre by ear, then they can become familiar with conventional ways of notating what they hear - swing 8ths are a prime example. I am not familiar enough with classical to know an example, but surely Chopin and Beethoven, tho notated similarly, don't sound alike, and being familiar with Chopin and Beethoven or the styles from their eras will lead to a different interpretation of the notations.

So, thanks for the discussion. For me, the music, and not just notes, came when I started playing dance music for dancers, and I wouldn't be surprised if that turns out to be true for my friend. Perhaps one of these days she'll come to jam with her dad and play the bass line along with me and that rhythm will hook her once again

Cathy

I have thought of having an 'All Studio Sight Reading Challenge' or something like that, but haven't figured out how to implement it. Please let me know, Canonie, if you figure something out! How do you accommodate different levels? How do you keep a weaker student form feeling bad if they aren't progressing as fast?

And then my big question - with these sight reading drills I've been trying out, I'm amazed at how one of my students who has been playing 4-5 years and is in the 7th grade, and is in level 6 Celebrity Series, can still fail to read skips and steps correctly. It's something about the way she takes in the information, or sees it, or maybe her attention span, I'm guessing. So my question is what do I do if a student like this reads through a very, very, very simple drill (one hand!!)and still makes mistakes? The idea is to read through them and not stop, but anticipate everything (aka riding the bike without crashing) ahead of time. So if she has done all that, or thinks she has done all that, and I have talked it all through with her, and she still reads incorrectly...... maybe what we need to do is have her only do them in her lessons, and give her the same ones the next week, until she gets them perfect.

In general though the kids don't mind doing these at all.

Carol, I had just started teaching so all students were close to absolute beginner. But what I would do is make reading one page always equivalent, so the beginner earns a tick on the chart for a large print page in 5 finger position, and a later student would have to read a whole page of denser more complex music. The other possibility is to use a handicap system where 1/2 page = 1 page = 2 pages depending on student's level. The reason no-one felt bad last time was that the code names meant you couldn't for sure know who anyone else was.

My students became obsessed with finding out everyone's code names. Of the students who live in my street the older ones managed to get a couple of the younger ones to admit their code names, so I had to assign new code names for them and put in a few fake students to confound the sleuths. All was revealed at the next concert when I called up each performer by their code name "And now, all is revealed! Calling the famous, the incredible, Sam Phony!!" to a storm of applause by less than 30 ppl, while I slipped a cardboard medallion over their head with their code name artistically rendered upon it.

Oh and I did golf scoring, I remember! instead of a tick I wrote in words like birdie or eagle (a count of errors) so that it really was quite difficult to see at a glance who was best. And I gave out no winnings. Don't know if I'd bother with this again. (sigh) sometimes I wish I had only 12 students again, their was so much extra time for silly projects...

Cathy, you really get to the heart of why this is so important. How do you make a page sing and dance in your head. The transfer students I've had have played more like key-pressers than dancers. It's not that they're not capable of filling the sound with life and vigour, it's just a habit from too much of the one thing: going from page to sound. Learning to go from feet sound/feel and throat sound/feel to music played by hands can make these connections.

The transfers I've had who have changed teachers in order to break a cycle of frustration and finally learn to read (not necessarily the last teacher's fault, more that a change can be beneficial when an impasse has been reached for what ever reason) have had inability to read and especially feel rhythm at the core of the problem, so they can't even begin to have any fluency. Feet beats in 2 3 and 4 patterns with mouth rhythms turn this around really fast and suddenly you have a student saying "I can read!!" and pretty happy about it. But at this point motivation is really high so that is helping. Changing teachers helps with motivation as previous frustrations are more easily forgotten.

Carol, for your student- "So if she has done all that, or thinks she has done all that, and I have talked it all through with her, and she still reads incorrectly......"
If you do hit a wall try these steps if you like:
1. you play steps or skips (she is watching) and she has to identify "stepping up" or "skipping down" etc. Then get her do this for you but you're not allowed to look and she has to spot your on purpose mistakes. So now you are laughing a bit, and she is no longer failing at the task.
2. Same game but she isn't allowed to look. Also very good for you to sing along, and she sing the pattern back, so that she can feel steps and skips with her voice.
3. Aural dication: Give her some nice wide music paper, give her the starting pitch, and then she has to write your examples down after you play them. Take lots and lots of time and repetition (use most of one lesson if needed) as this may be a breakthrough moment for this student. Start this as easy as absolutely possible e.g. looking at the keys as you play them, but later if she can do it by sound she has internalised something very useful. Starting easy might mean always starting from the same note, using treble clef, no blacks and lots of repetition.

Then finally she plays what she has written on the piano.

If you decide to use this I would be very interested in what she manages to do, and what was difficult. I'd be interested to know exactly what the missing link in her understanding was.

I think in addition to aural ability there is another component to making the music sing and dance - and that is a child who has danced to rhythms on his own at a young age - the bouncing about little tot always in movement and especially when he hears a rhythm. This is a from head to toe body experience I'm talking about not just clapping or tapping recognition. It's that the child's engine starts when he hears music.

If a child walks into the music room with tight body mannerisms, he will play the piano in the same tight way unless directed different. Kids do what is native to them and the things they best like to do, they do with enthusiasm.

If it's rhythm recognition you'd like to establish and give the student some reactions to hand from his conscious analysis - give him the book by Allan Small: "Basic Timing". Each line is numbered and they can connect to the next line or not. One new concept is added at a time.

I appreciate seeing the recommendations of other teachers and will have to look those resources up to see how they function. Thank you.

Betty

Thanks for all the thoughtful replies! You all have a lot of great ideas and good reminders not to overlook the importance of rhythmic reading.

Canonie - I like your ideas for the student having trouble with steps and skips and I am going to have to use that one for a student of my own who is having similar difficulties. Sounds like a good tool for students who are having trouble hearing their mistakes.

To spark motivation to read, I am going to try a sight-reading game. I'm going to make a set of recognizable tunes to sight-read with the song title missing and have my students read and then try to identify each one. Then, maybe I'll throw in some unfamiliar tunes. I'm hoping this will help get students interested in reading as a way to discover new music. I'm also hoping it will help train students to listen while they play. Beginning readers are often so focused on deciphering what's on the page that they don't actually hear what they're playing. For this reason, students with strong aural skills may feel a big disconnect between sight and sound and may find the pleasure of making music absent when they are playing from a score.

Here is something to consider for students having trouble with steps and skips.

First, before anything else, teach all half steps with the mirrored D contrary motion Chromatic Scale. Do this without using the music staff - the student is building it into his experience first.

For younger kids, I would do just right hand at the first lesson, then left hand at the next or later lesson, and then hands together which is a big kick to students.

Do one octave from D to D and stop: RH starts at middle D and ascends; LH starts at middle D and descends. When you put hands together, go for one octave first and then expand it to 2 octaves contrary motion away from the middle and back toward the starting note. Kids love the "trip!"

(Note that for older kids, 10 and above, it often works to do the hands together from the first, but to do it slowly and steadily in under control movement so that there are no stumbles or inaccuracies creeping in.)

Rules are:
All while notes are played with finger #1
All black notes are played with finger #3's
And where two white notes are adjacent, the 2 finger is used
|_|_|

Watch the student to make sure he uses proper fingering in the return of the keys from the outside notes (highest RH and lowest LH)as often coming back, the students do 3-1-2 instead of 3-2-1. Tell them how you go up is how you return in fingering. Consistancy.

A later lesson after completing the lesson(s) about chromatic scales being half steps and having precise fingering, you can show the accidentals in #/b keys on the black notes (enharmonic names)and use the music staff to show chromatics on the staff.

By now, the students would have achieved a faster and lighter touch with the scale and should have some dexterity and fluency with their scale playing. I think this scale actually comes before teaching C Major.

When the chromatic scale has been learned, it is now easy to say that (2 half steps are a whole step). I think this way of preparing actually makes the lesson of identifying half steps and whole steps easily: by definition, naming notes on the keyboard, writing them on a blank music staff, and in ear training (if you the teacher do those kinds of things).

One of the side benefits to doing a contrary motion mirrored D chromatic scale is that the students ears adjust to what sound like wrong note playing (dissonance).

Then constructing the C Major Scale becomes much easier for them to understand the tetrachord formula and to identify half and whole steps. From there you are on to building all major scales.

Teaching degrees of the scale is important (8 being octave). And the constuction of any major scale is now possible from any given note, knowing that there are whole steps from the keynote except half steps occuring between the 3/4 and 7/8 degrees.

When you think of it, there are a lot of concepts and lessons starting with Middle D, and with Middle C. We teachers just need to decide which concept comes first, then next and we have a teaching system to incorporate theory from keyboard experience that translates into real understanding of what the music staff is all about.

Which comes first? The keyboard? Or the music staff?

Betty Patnude

There are many good answers to that question. For me, the answer is the staff - because singing comes before playing, and in singing the staff actually makes a fair amount of sense to read. But I don't believe there can be absolute answers to this question, because any item we teach that is not false in and of itself, can probably then be built on in a successful way.

I have done sight reading challenges in my studio in the past and have found that students do best if they they compete by the amount of minutes spent sight reading. Time is the great equalizer.

It seems like the teachers here are mainly classically trained and of a certain pedagogy. Reading is not that useful unless you want to play a classical score exactly as it was written. For all other music, jazz, pop, rock, gospel, folk, ear training is immensely more important.

Why not just let students who are aurally gifted keep learning to play by ear. For some people, reading music is a detriment to their playing. It confuses them and gets in their way.

For my beginner students, I teach them sounds first. How a major and minor scale sounds. The relationship between notes (intervals).

I'm reading that some of your students have trouble reading even simple songs. Perhaps they learn better completely by ear. Throw away the sheet music for now and concentrate on the ear.

Try this with your students. Pick a key. Sing a simple song in that key. (Happy birthday, row row row your boat...) Then play the song while singing the note at the same time. See how accurate your student is.


If they can do that very well, try harder songs. Fur Elise for example.

Most musicians other than classical pianists and violinists learn to play by ear. Think of rock guitarists, or jazz sax or trumpet players.

Jimi Hendrix couldn't read music. He was the greatest guitarist ever. The SOUNDS he got were so unique and crazy. Guitarists who wanted to play like him LISTENED to his records. Forget about trying to read the score, you'd miss out on all the nuances, accents, reflections in his playing.

What is needed is a paradigm shift in the approach to learning music.

As for rhythm, forget about finding it on a sheet of music. You need to HEAR the sounds!! Think of Bossa Nova from Brazil. The drumming, the dancing, the mood. Watch Carnaval and then you know where they learn it from.

That story above about the little girl who plays great by ear and then when she starts to read music, all the life is gone, is a perfect example. The sheet music is a hindrance, it blocks their natural path.

It's like when people have written a speech beforehand and just dictate it. The flow is gone. It sounds robotic.
The best speeches are just people talking normally.

You wouldn't teach a child to read English before they could speak it. Don't teach them to read music before they hear it.

David_A: I'm coming out of my lurk long enough to ask what you mean by "singing the staff".

Doesn't he mean "and in singing, the staff actually makes sense..." etc. That is, the phrase wasn't "singing the staff" but "singing, the staff..."
That's how I read it, anyway.

Yes. Please replace "in singing" with "when used for vocal music,"

Clarifying:

When used for vocal music, the staff actually makes sense. When used for piano music, it takes more work to decipher because it doesn't relate to the keyboard very well.

I have one great student, who often 'alters' the written music, to suit her ear.

This is with popular music, not classical.

Many transcriptions of current music, are woefully badly written, and so she will say, "I have changed this bit, to sound more like the actual song", and usually, she is right!

I just sit there and smile at her ingenuity, and ear skills.

For me, as long as she knows what 'should' be played, I give her free rein to alter parts to her heart's content.

It gives her complete ownership of the piece, and makes for some very interesting lessons!

Thank you. May I play with this?

I had some solmization with the old fashioned board when young, and that became my only reference to music. There were exercises along the major and nat. minor scale, so I had "theory" but by ear. Then there was a piano, inherited music, and knowing the tonic. Mercifully the music was common practice: mostly sonatinas which went well with major and minor scales.

When I "read" the music, my ear led. The notes went up, down, skipped, and I went by the old oral exercises. So the piano keys were no obstacle. My aural gift, if such it was, did not lead to my memorizing a melody. It led to my following the score like a singer would, and playing what I expected to hear.

Could anything along those lines work with reading music for "ear" people? Though maybe it exists already.

Keyboard Orientation is something that assists greatly the reading of the music staff and placement of the locations to the piano keyboard - enen better than the keyboard charts which some teachers and students use that fit behind the keys.

Bass Treble
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Sitting at the keyboard, turn the music page so that the clef signs are at the top of the page and you are looking down the lines of music, not across. (You have changed the music lines from horizontal, going across the page to vertical reading.)

Look at the top line of music, the students nose (imagination) is opposite the Middle C location on the music which should also coincide with the horizontal notes on the piano keyboard. Nose at Middle C on the piano also.

To the left are the bass clef on the music and the notes on the piano from Middle C downward. To the right are the bass clef on the music and the notes on the piano from Middle C upward.

The student has now experiences a realistic orientation to the piano keyboard.

If you are reading this with a piece of music in your hand, are you getting the relationship I am talking about?

There are many steps after this that orient the student to the music and to the piano keyboard but I'm not going to try to speak about what they are unless there is an interest in doing that.

This is plenty as it is the start of comprehension about the student's mind and body entering the picture and having the diagrams of empty music staff and piano keyboard graphics work together.

Actually, the problem in all method books is that they don't teach this. I do. And, it's one of the things that makes by "Introduction to Music" and "Orientation to the Keyboard" in my method "Piano Power" different. I try to provide answers to questions like these at the very basic level of early beginner.

I think we as teachers know where the obstacles are and that we are still discovering today how to teach certain cognitive things that the music symbolizes but our published methods do not provide.

I wonder if we could describe these missing things as" "The thinking that goes on between the lines"?

Betty Patnude

I myself am aurally gifted, so can try and share my experiences.

All of my early learning of music from age 5 was done entirely by ear. I would hear music that I enjoyed, be it simple pieces like happy birthday, or completely score-less music such as that from video games. I would sit at my keyboard and learn everything by ear, but as a result couldnt learn by sight reading to save my life, and progressed up to Grade 7 with absolutely no reading or theory skills.

When I were older and got to university, I found that learning Grade 8 pieces was now far too difficult. I tried to learn to sight read from Grade 1-3 books, but failed miserably. The problem was that as soon as I had read and played the notes on easy pieces one or two times, they were already memosised and then I were playing too far ahead by ear and memorization then I could play from reading, so I couldnt even practice sight reading because playing by ear and memory would take over too soon.

I recently found an exercise that has worked very well, and now I can sight read well enough to read and play through 16+ double bars in a day. This was to visualise an imaginary scale in my mind before bedtime, and learn to read and recognise each note by its name without using any mnenomics, and after much practice, this has now allowed me to read very well, to the point that I can now learn the music faster than my hands can learn to play it.

Now I just have to wait for my hands to catch up. I learn my musics melody and rhythm by ear first from a recording, and then sit down to learn it with the notes since Joplin is far too advanced to learn purely by ear for me, but at the same time I still learn to play a lot of simple music that I like from ear, particularly from video games.

I have an 8yo student who started in Sept who has good ears. So far all pieces are learnt singing the words first, and by rote and pattern.

All she can do at this stage is
- read and write 8th 4th 1/2 dotted 1/2 and whole in
3/4 time and 4/4 time. She has good pulse, no hesitations and always knows where 'one' is. If I ask her to write the rhythm of a song she already knows (e.g. frere jacque) she can transcribe the rhythm by humming it to herself and figuring it out. So I'd say her command of rhythm is good at this stage.
- she can sing in tune, she can sing one thing while playing a simple bass line.
- she has learnt about a dozen very easy pieces in various 5 finger positions (all black and white keys have been used) and has done some transposing. she can play a few 2 hands pieces where the parts move differently.
- she can find and name any white key on the piano

This is a good start, and it is at this point where i think I could do better. Learning feels quick and musical, the ears and memory are developing so well that sight reading at the piano feels like holding back. And i've always been keen for the written notes to resemble sound before keys... but my later students definitely could read better.

So I took my own advice and designed a lesson to introduce how to show pitch on the stave. First I got her to write out the rhythm of jingle bells. Then I showed her the "address" of 5 pitches, then we began to write jingle bells on some super large music paper. Refering back to the 5 pitches that i had written and labelled at the top of the sheet. We were sort of playing the song by ear "Start on this note and play "jingle bells, jingle bells" ". I nudged her quite a bit to find all the pitches, but she had to do the transfering to paper once they were worked out. She'll finish writing at home this week.

She found it very interesting, enjoyed the lesson, so far so good. At this stage I plan to continue to teach her to read by writing and then reading what she has written. Reading at sight and in rhythm I guess I'll introduce after she can write a good span of notes. Hmmm I'm thinking that it could make for some very useful and fun theory assignments each week. Writing out a song at home every week would have to be good for your theory

Does anyone else teach reading via teaching writing first? If you do, any advice, stories, problems encountered?

I don't know another good way to read, other than what you have just described. It's what I've always done, I guess, now that you mention it. And my first music lesson was of the "this is middle C" variety, as far as I can remember.

So, I'm a little confused now. Are other people able to do something different - perhaps using the staff as a sideways and really poorly laid-out system of keyboard tablature? I wouldn't last long like that.

Well, what I've caught is that people see the note on the staff, and relate it to the key on the piano, and even that they then listen to see what sound it will make, rather than hearing that sound in their head first. So if for me it was from staff to inner ear to key, theirs is from staff to key to external ear. It also seems that when people speak of intervals, it is visual. It is this distance on the staff, this distance on the keys - it is not a sound. That's the kind of thing I was thinking of.

If that's true (I mean, that there are indeed people reading that way) then no wonder reading could be slow and difficult.

David said: "So, I'm a little confused now. Are other people able to do something different - perhaps using the staff as a sideways and really poorly laid-out system of keyboard tablature? I wouldn't last long like that."

David,

The turning of the music page on it's side is more or less a 5 minute experience to see that the music staff and the keyboard are oriented to each other.

I am going to post a diagram here that can be viewed as posted or printed and turned around in another way giving you two ways to let your mind relate as the pianist must learn to relate to the combination of a music staff making sense upon the keyboard.

Every pianist needs to acclimate themselves to cognifying how the keyboard and music staff together. The music publishers do not do a realistic job of that.

This diagram may have some problems in it as it may not convert to PWF the way that it is set up in my msw document.

Please give me credit if anyone chooses to print and use this:
"Piano Power" Method by Betty Patnude Piano Studio - Puyallup, Washington

Diagram of Keyboard Orientation

Keyboard - Music Staff
_____
_____] C _____ (2nd Leger Line) _____ _____
_____] B
_____] A _____ _____ _____ _____
_____] G
_____] F _______________________________
_____] E
_____] D _______________________________
_____] C (Space)
_____] B _______________________________
_____] A
_____] G _______________________________
_____] F
_____] E _______________________________
_____] D
_____] C Middle (Line) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
_____] B
_____] A _______________________________
_____] G
_____] F _______________________________
_____] E
_____] D _______________________________
_____] C (Space)
_____] B _______________________________
_____] A
_____] G _______________________________
_____] F
_____] E _____ _____ _____ _____
_____] D
_____] C _____ (2nd Leger Line) _____ _____

I don't think pianists should acclimate themselves this way at all, because the relation between keyboard and staff is a poor one, in terms of actual use for reading music. Keyboard tablature, as used by Bach for instance, would make a much better reading method than pretending the staff is something it isn't. A pretend relationship of the staff to the keyboard is harder to use than the real relationship of the staff to sounds, just because of the pretend-ness of it. (I hope that sentence was readable and/or useful.)

Also this method is not new or original - I read about the same type of thing in A Soprano On Her Head by Eloise Ristad, some years ago. Note she was not the originator either, but was quoting another author and showing copies of a couple of pages from that other author's piano method. I can't remember whose piano method the examples were from.

That is so clear, so concise, so clear and concise, so concise and clear, so clearly concise and so concisely clear ...

... and concise, and clear, so.

Thanks landorrano, I was just going to ask.

There's room for disagreement here, obviously - it just reminds me of Mencken:

"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong."

This is the very thing that puzzled me when I came to forums. To me the keyboard was simply where the sounds lived. The sounds go up and down. We feel high sounds in our heads and low sounds in our chest. The grand staff also reflects that. The fact that the piano is sideways make no difference. We can still hear where the high and low sounds are.

I mean, on violin the pitches are also left to right, and the same with transverse flute. Nobody makes a fuss about it. But on piano it's supposed to be a big deal that the keyboard is sideways and the staff notes are up and down. That is visual. What about what we hear? When you hear the low notes as low, then it can't be confusing. This is what I have wondered about.

I first read about turning the staff sideways in Making Music for the Joy of It by Stefanie Judy, many years ago.

Cathy

Reading is very slow and difficult for those who can only read by relating the staff to a key. If you hear a beginner play who reads this way it sounds very odd, with no flow, the music is hardly decipherable. Part of the answer is of course sound before piano key. Sing in every lesson, and play games that go from sound to piano key. Sight sing and transcribe songs. That's how I like to teach, but I am particularly averse to halting unrhythmic playing... ergh!

But I think as pianists become more proficient more things happen. When reading more complex pieces even a good aural imaginer doesn't hear every part of the sound, every detail when reading at speed. You might hear a whole bar of melody ahead of time and catch an idea of the shape of the LH parts. What is really interesting is that (I think) there are lots of tiny feedback loops where what has just been played informs the imagining of subsequent parts.

Say you are hearing a piece in advance as you sight read it, then you arrive at a denser more chromatic bar, your inner ear has a cloudy shape of the sound and would accept quite a range of possibilities. Calling in your staff-to-piano-key understanding you read the notes that fall on the first beat, and immediately you hear this your aural imagination can better imagine the rest of the bar. The cloud is smaller, possibilities are fewer. So there are feedback loops of many sizes as you read.

And while you sight read each bar that is heard makes it easier to imagine the rest of the piece. You have a useful sound memory of the style and tonality of the piece so far.

This is what I think happens anyway.. but it could be just me I'm enjoying the discussion, interesting area.

I think there is a possibility here that those who are more aural in their learning style tend to ignore the reading (visual) of the piece from the music staff.

I make it a point to teach visual, tactile and aural skills - acquired skills to all of my students. The less they have of any one learning style, it is my opinion that they need the missing part now more than ever. All are necessary and used in the study of music.

In addition to any talents the student brings with him to lessons, the acquired skills are where the power is in becoming a fine musician and in being one's best possible self at the piano. Acquired is disciplined into the player - drilled, retrieved, a set of thinking and habits in response to visual symbols and stimulai. Learned and acquired.

I also say this because of the aural learners posting here are not getting the signicance of my diagram nor are they able to use it. They probably just look at it, once over, and say "so what." Let me say: "So plenty!"

We need all learning styles in our ability levels to do a good job in reading and making music. To me, the aural and imitation approach are not the primary approach - they are adjuncts - often useful - but not primary.

Discipline is at the forefront in every way. A requirement.

Betty Patnude

Not "So what" at all, but "This method doesn't involve reading music, and fibbing to a student that they are learning to read music is probably a mistake."

A student who "reads" in this false way will not be able to sing (or play other instruments) from a score, unless they start over again and actually learn to read music. Learning to read is IMO quite enough work even when you only have to do it once. Twice - no thanks. I fully understand the diagram, and it's extremely well done - but it's a hoax in the same way that hand-position method books are a hoax: real music doesn't go like that. Success at hand-position pieces and success at pretending the staff is a keyboard don't translate into real success, because when the student encounters real music they're forced to go back and re-learn everything properly anyway.

The desire for success is very strong, and that makes it attractive for us as teachers to be able to offer guaranteed success at SOMETHING. But if the success we're offering is in our own made-up discipline that's sort of like music but not quite, is that good for the students?

Betty, how to teach, and what balance to bring toward strengths and weaknesses is probably not something that can be stated as one rule. Every teacher, yourself included, makes judgment calls continually regarding the student in the room. If you teach only to a person's strength, the weakness will get in the way. But if you ignore a person's nature and teach in a way foreign to them, it also doesn't work well. You yourself stress the need to know the student in front of you.

There is nothing wrong with your diagram. But surely that should not mean that addressing hearing is wrong? The fact that we aural people have looked toward hearing the score should not be something you are against - is it?

In the past I have explored the various methods you use and have gained from doing so. That was no cursory glance on my part. The fact that there are patterns and visible ranges on the keyboard, and the same thing on a score, does indeed help in finding one's way quickly on a piano. But that does not mean that the ear cannot also be used.

Actually I wonder whether there may be a miscommunication here:


We are talking about reading from the score, but "aurally". Some of us look at the score and hear it. We play what we hear from the score. This is not the same as memorizing a melody - which would indeed hurt reading. it means that when you see C,E,G,C you hear an arpeggio, and play an arpeggio. It is like sight singing on the piano, if you will. Perhaps the words "as well" should be added.

If this is a skill, and if some people are aural, can more not be done with this?

I would not dismiss everything that isn't "hearing" or doesn't resemble sight singing. I came back to piano, which I self-taught, decades later, and also relearned reading music. I learned to associate key locations with notes in the score, and retrained using different senses. This has been very useful. You cannot prehear a four part Bach chorale and sight read prima vista in the way you sight sing. It seems impossible for me with modern atonal type music or music that goes strange directions. I'm thinking that there must be a number of ways of approaching music and that it's useful to have more than one.

David, I really feel you are not getting what I'm saying at all and it bothers me greatly.

This is a less than 5 minute experience in your life time that you look at the music on it's side - not to read the music at all but to see the organization of the keyboard in relationship to the music staff - the equidistance is very important using landmarks of 8 C's.

Something I didn't mention is the seeing of 1-3-5-7-9 intervals from line to line or 2-4-6-8 for spaces.

And, this document is followed by the centerline reading of each clef and at middle C.

I am convinced that despite what you are saying to me, you don't have the perspective of what it offers the student. I have 9 year old kids who get this, understanding it, and using it. And, they find the notes they need. The kids with high visual acuity are much better at it by far - but the kids who don't have visual acuity as their dominant learning style also need the extra time with it because it will work for them too, they just won't see it immediately.

I don't like it when a good thing is being dismissed by the uninitiated. And, it seem we are in conflict about it.

The reason I posted this to a discussion of aurally gifted is because I am on the opinion that without visual and tactile senses being highly developed also, the aural skill is not going to be the vehicle to get you reading music for the piano. You may do solfeggio and sing as a singer sings, one note at a time, but you will not get all the harmony in just one beat of a measure by yourself from the singer's point of view.

It takes a great deal of experience and knowledge with intervals and reading accurately melodically and harmonically before you have that gift.

I don't believe we are talking about the same scope - I have the capacity of diagramming 88 keys of the piano keyboard to the music page in that document.

I am not trying to read music on it's side - it's conceptual only.

I am not fibbing to someone saying they are learning to read music - they are viewing an organizational flow chart - so to speak.

And, when you, David, say: "...it's a hoax in the same way that hand-position method books are a hoax: real music doesn't go like that" you are really out of your element - the 5 finger positions create the measurements of chords, arpeggios, 5 degrees of the major scale, and knowing your way around the Circle of 5th.

Each of the diagrams I do along with 5 FP is setting up measurement devices for the student to use for playing the keyboard with his body - which is the instrument that he is really using to play - brain and body movement coordinated together with thought and action.

I imagine there are quite a few people not getting my drift which makes me wonder what it is that we think we know about music making. If we don't "program" the person to the instrument how will they ever be able to master it. Teach your students how to use their bodies at the instrument in centering to it and then using physics to guide motions. Measurements (from here to there) are a very important part of piano study. You have to have a visual and tactile sense of how to accomplish that. The ear listens to the result and begins to learn about pitch on the music page - by itself the ear does not help you access any particular note on the keyboard or the music page with any given clarity, intonation or accuracy. Pitching is usually within a relationship of a given note. Someone had to play the note to establish the pitch. We know how easily it is to get off pitch in singing, don't we?

Sadly, I think a lot of glamorizing of one's aural ability is creating a false sense of security in this topic.

Give me a good ear over good sight reading any day of the week. I'm ALWAYS working on my ear. I don't bother reading music at all now. It simply is not relevant, unless you play only classical and want an exact note by note representation of the piece.

WRONG! In jazz, the aural and imitation approach is the ONLY way to learn. Nobody in the old days learned jazz by reading sheet music. It was all aural. Call and response has always been the way to learn. No one ever learned to play the blues by sheet music, you had to HEAR it!

Been thinking...
I don't think having good aural skill (being able to hear a melody in your head, sight sing and being able to at least vaguely imagine the sound of 2 hands together) is a specialist skill only for those talented in this area. We all use our aural skills all the time, that's how we notice that we've hit a wrong note when sight reading, our ears tell us of course. Wouldn't it be good if our students could audiate as well as we can (less frustrating maybe).

It seems that teachers like to have students who are naturally "musical" because they are easier to teach, remember music well, hear mistakes, have good brain to finger pattern impulse, can follow multiple parts more easily. Wouldn't it make sense to turn every student into an aurally gifted student, or at least near to it? It also makes sense to develop this area as young as possible, which means in your first years with the student. So that means having ears lead the reading at first because if reading leads (and your finger can find the note) the student doesn't develop the ear as much.

I still think the best way would be to deliberately develop both at once right from the start. If you only read, and especially if you read well, aural can lag behind unless developed along side.

I am making assumptions aren't I, I guess we all give the student the skills we value the most, create the kind of student we identify with musically. Just some more thoughts. FWIW I think the sideway orientation could be useful, I don't see anything wrong with it as a way to show how things work. But I wouldn't use it without any aural or singing games at all, just because it might work too well

Keystring, you make a good point to say that using good aural skills is part of reading, just that you don't go directly from dot on page to key, but go via the brain. Score to imagined sound to piano keys, or sound to imagined score, or sound to piano keys (no reading in this case).

(emphasis mine)

That's the way it worked for me. It wasn't until years and years later that I started to hear And since music really is the sound and not the staff notation or the keyboard layout, it seems to me the sound/aural is primary.

JMO.

Cathy

This is a very interesting thread, although it seems the thread disappeared into the stale thread pages of history without the issue being fully addressed, as far as really exploring methods to deal with the problem.

Could the question be expanded a little to include students beyond beginning children, to extend to anyone whose ear-brain-hand musical connection has gotten ahead of their reading skills? Surely that's a significant sub-group of all piano students, not just of beginning children?

I would think there are many older students who are further along but also having some trouble with their reading skills due to having the natural tendency to be what was described here as "aurally gifted."



I think Betty is correct there. I'm one of those whose ear-brain-hand connection is way ahead of his reading skills.

I know I have the issue so sometimes I will really force myself to read from the score but even then I might get to the bottom of the page without really having seen any of the notes.

The problem is that for us the music becomes memorized so quickly the page-eye-brain connection becomes almost vestigial. We would like teachers to show us a way to nourish it to prevent it from withering.

Of course, by relying on memorization, if we should forget something in the middle of playing a piece then we're up the creek.

It does seem hard to believe that having a good ear should be a drawback. Would you say to prospective students that those with a poor ear make better pianists? I hope not.

Incidentally, while doing some googling on this I just came across the following:

"Although 86% of piano teachers polled rated sight-reading as the most important or a highly important skill, only 7% of them said they address it systematically. Reasons cited were a lack of knowledge of how to teach it, inadequacy of the training materials they use, and deficiency in their own sight-reading skills. Teachers also often emphasize rehearsed reading and repertoire building for successful recitals and auditions to the detriment of sight-reading and other functional skills."

Well it was just a quick look from wikipedia but still interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sight_reading

Hello Bolt,

It's nice to make your acquaintance! I took a few minutes to look at your profile and read some of your previous postings.

I'm replying because you quoted something I said and I wanted to follow up with you.

When an adult student is extremely aural in their perceptions of playing piano it is very important to offer them every opportunity to learn to also read the music from the music staff notation and convert it to the piano keyboard.

The aural is certainly a great advantage to a learning musician, just think of the disadvantage of someone not being able to hear and respond to the music they are making because they might be highly visual, highly tactile, and very busy making sense of what is happening between the music page and the instrument and within themselves. They are busy learning to multiplex.

The aural learner is coming from a little more creative place and doing things from within himself so that it feels natural and fairly comfortable. He's exploring on the keyboard and using what he knows about songs to find his way around. Some people really take off on having this faculty.

II think anyone with a sense of purpose and some discipline can learn to read and make sense of reading music. Both in basis information and skills sets and then when more independent, with sight reading.

I feel that if a student can't sightread the music, that means that the teacher has failed to teach notation and keyboard orientation. Not the student failed, but the teacher failed. Both are related, but it's the basic information that is missing. There are free notation trainers available for drilling on reading and finding on a virtual keyboard and actually they are quite fun and can be set up to be simple or a fierce mental workout. Some of them keep score for you, too.

I shook my head in disbelief when I read the percentage of teachers who felt they were not good at teaching sightreading. I find that so very sad and completely unrealistic to the definition of piano teacher. We have no absolutely no business teaching piano if we cannot convey instruction in a way that the student can understand, learn and retrieve the concepts when needed. If we can't teach it, students certainly can't learn it.

I'm interested in learning how you found those statistics - what questions did you ask and what key words did you use?

Because of your 2 postings here, I was expecting to learn that you are a teacher too. You have a mind set I could identify with.

I hope to hear back from you!

Betty

Hi Betty, thanks for your reply.

Sorry, I'm not a piano teacher, actually I'm a piano student. I've been a musician for almost 40 years though. Since this is the teacher's forum I tried not to make my post too much of a "help me with my problem" post. Well, I'm self taught on other instruments so I suppose in a way I'm a teacher... I have one student.

I'm glad you asked about the reference in my other post because it made me check on it more and it turned out to be quite an interesting article.

If I recall correctly the google search used key words sight reading training, then I scanned down the excerpts and that was one of the ones that looked interesting. Anyway the info I cited turns out to have come from this article on the Piano Pedagogy Forum:

http://www.music.sc.edu/ea/keyboard/PPF/1.2/1.2.PPFke.html

She did her master's thesis on the state of teaching sight reading.

I have some more thoughts on sight reading problems of the so-called aurally-gifted - let me know if you are interested.

On the way home I stopped by my local sheet music store and picked up several levels of "Sight Reading" by Lin Ling Ling and worked through the first 60 or so exercises and I have a feeling it's going to be really useful. The fact that the melodies are not that recognizable seems key.

There is only one thing that has bothered me in this thread. It is actually about students who cannot sight read well, and who memorize music which they then play by memory. If they can play by memory, then they don't need to read, and if they don't practise reading they won't develop the ability to read, and will need to play by memory. It is a bad cycle. However, in this thread one gets the impression that having a gift in hearing music, or having a strong ear, is the cause of this, and is actually detrimental. I would suspect that many memorizers do not have any special gift in hearing. It is the apparent link between a good ear or aural sense of music,and poor reading abilities, that leaves me feeling uncomfortable.

+ 1, as they say.

Thread should be renamed "Sight reading for the poor readers who rely on memory and need to look at their hands because they they forgot to memorize where the keys are"

Yes.

I think that is misleading. People go to their strengths. If a player struggles through something, measure by measure, but then instantly memorizes what he (she) has done, that player may learn very difficult music by compensating for lack of reading through ear and memory. In fact, we can't really be sure how much the ear is necessary, on piano.

The only time we have to read and read well is if we have to play something we have never seen or heard, and we have to nail it either the first time.

For this reason, you will find that there are solo performing pianists, some famous, who are relatively weak readers, but accompanists are very strong readers.

So the only way to make sure someone reads really well is to make that a major priority, stress the importance, and of course know how to teach reading. I see no proof that good readers hear better than other players (or worse), and I think that people who read very well may not have really strong ears (ear-development).

I agree, and I would add that in spite of having a very good ear, memorization has NEVER been easy for me. My visual rentention is almost non-existent.

Me too...