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I avoid the acronyms, but at some point most of my students learn them at school. It can be just as difficult to remember four acronyms that don't make sense, as it is to remember the lines and spaces, which do make sense.

Many of my students learn these funny ones at school:

Elvis Goes Boppin' Down the Freeway

Friendly Aliens Come Earth

Ashdyre - until I read this topic, I hadn't realized that I had stopped teaching acronyms, and a just started teaching the basic names and drilling students for a couple of minutes at lessons. The acronyms are helpful for a while during the learning process, but in the long run, as lalakeys pointed out, just plain memorization until it's part of your knowledge base, is the way to go. Thanks for the topic.

John

I don't use acronyms at all, if I can help it. Sometimes my students will bring it up, or parents. But I've felt it confusing. I agree with the other posters that think landmark notes are the best way to learn.

I save acronyms for learning the order of sharps and flats.


But for the heck of it:

E ven G eorge B ush D rives F ast!!!!!

Geesh! Good point! Maybe I'll just change it from:

Elvis' Guitar Broke Down Friday, to;
Elmo's Guitar Broke Down Friday!

Pretty sure I saw Elmo with a guitar once!

I think my favorite is "Eee Gee Bee Dee eFf"

FACE
good boys desverve fudge
all cows eat grass

get down and eat big fat carrots (order of keys)

Frank Burns Eats Apples in Gym Class

something like that

i use father chalres goes down and ends battle
battle ends and down goes charles father.

OK i feel really silly...

What do you mean:

get down and eat big fat carrots (order of keys)

Frank Burns Eats Apples in Gym Class

I have no idea what those stand for...???

GDAEBFC?
FBEAGC?

Order of keys.

"something like that" is the trouble with mnemonics. They can be remembered wrongly - or applied wrongly.

As for FBEAGC for "order of keys", where's the D? Maybe it should be "during" gym class. Which illustrates my point. You've got to know the right answer first in order to know whether your little rhyme is right . . .

I too use the FACE methods


Space rhymes with FACE therefore the space notes spell FACE

The Bass clef is lower so the FACE starts beLOW the staff also spelling FACE but with a twist it now spells FACEG and they love the nonsense word of the bass blef and they tend to remember it as well as the treble clef notes.

Too many things to remember is bad, but the FACE for all the face notes is what I have found the easiest.

Mnemonics work better when they conjure up some absure picture or contain some well-placed expletives.

Fat Cat Goes Down Alley Eating Boogers

HAHAHAH omg i seriously had to think about that one for a long time. i thought you meant litterally the order of the keys on the piano... and i'm like, that's ABCDEFG... LOL wow, i definitely feel silly now

Me? NO, that was KeysontheCeiling (did I get the name right?) But I've been accused of not listening carefully to every word so I went back to see what the OP had written and so the explanation in brackets. I still didn't catch everything, though, since I missed the missing D. I just did two theory exams less than half a year ago so these things are fresh in my memory.

I don't use memnonics, though. My imagery is subject to mutation. My "every good boy deserves fudge" could easily become "all kind children get popsicles" and then I'd wonder what note starts with k and p.

+1

Has anyone actually read my posting on page 1 about middle line-ness? You would be surprized what doing this on your piano does for you!

It eliminates having to name any note - much less give it a mnenomic name - finding it through the 5 line - 4 space (9 note group) using the middle line is almost instantaneous.

Use both hands within the proper position, do the lines with fingers 1-3-5 and spaces with fingers 2-4.

This finds which note on the keyboard you are looking for - you'll need to put it into content with the correct fingering for moving ahead.

But, this removes the battle - how about that!

What results are you getting?

Betty

And might some of the boys choose diamonds over Elvis?

With my pre-staff students, I do activities using the staff and the piano where the notes are placed going up or down only a step or a skip away from each other. They tell me verbally what's going on ("it skips up, then steps down" etc.) and then they play it on the piano for me after I give them a starting note. Once they are fairly comfortable reading steps and skips and the direction of notation, then we start talking about the note names.

I usually encourage each student to come up with his own mnumonic device so he can take ownership of the staff. One 3rd grade boy named Caleb who is already a computer geek, came up with accronym for the bass cleff spaces: Allow Caleb Electronic Games.

The tough part for me is remembering each student's personal sentence!

I am very surprised and motivated to read how many teachers avoid teaching acronyms. I think I'll stop drilling sentences as much and work more on intervals and directions.

The best reply yet! Acronyms place too much emphasis on the "vertical" aspect of the staff rather than developing "horizontal" reading skills. Learn your signpost notes and steps and skips first.

My personal experience:

We people from southern europe do not have your strange letter system, but the do-re-mi system.

So a child seats in front of the sheet music and learns where the middle C sits, and calls it "do", and the rest follows.

I'd say that *no one* has *ever* felt the need for complicated acronyms to know what sits where, the blue cats smoking dope over the roof, yellow boys eating electric cake and the like.. .

It sounds to me like wanting to invent complicated, difficult to remember acronyms to deal with the names of the seven dwarfs, or of the days of the weeks, or of the number 1,3,5,7 and 2,4,and 6.

Methiks, by the time a child has memorised the strange guys being good and eating fattening things which have nothing to do with a keyboard or similar very abstract concepts, he has learned how the notes are named and where they sit once and for all just seeing where they sit and calling them by their proper name.

Moreover,other than the southern European system the US one follows an alphabetical order, so whoever knows the alphabet must forcibly know the notes.
A (very young) child might not instantly remember than after "do" is "re", but if he can read he will know that after C comes D.

But that's another fake problem: if you ask me, every child can learn do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si-do, every child does that in Europe and no one has ever thought it needs further complications.

In fact, I have known 6 weeks ago for the first time that this acronyms or abbreviations exist in the first place, the need for them had never struck me in my almost 42 years of existence.

But I remember as a child being able to remember in very few days names and surnames of all my class comrades, without any alphabetical order tohelp me. If someone had told me it's "difficult" and had devised strange acronyms " the mad cow eats electric grass after the post office had continental breakfast" I think I would be still occupied with the task..

Just my two cents, but really: it amazes me...

The "do re mi" that Innominato mentions is called the "fixed do" system, and it works fine unless the student also learns to sing, in which case it can be confusing. Most colleges, voice teachers, and choir directors use a "movable do", meaning that "do" will always be the keynote of the piece being sung. A singer will relate each note in his/her part to that keynote, or "do".

It also seems to me that using "fixed do" would limit a piano student to using only the white keys for a while, because 'do re mi fa sol la si do" refers to CDEFGABC. Most modern piano methods include sharps and flats within the first few weeks of study, at least for school-aged beginners.

Of course, I'm a bit biased because I teach voice as well as piano!