Learning music reading through storytelling
Applying my favorite piano teaching strategies to violin
Decoding notes on the staff can be a challenge for some students. Perhaps you learned the names of the lines and spaces with a clever mnemonic saying or memorizing guide notes and their relationship to the staff.
One fantastic way to learn the note names on the staff is through storytelling. When I was learning piano with the Mayron Cole method, the first two staff notes I learned were middle C, the cat with whiskers, and D, the dog under the fence. As I began to teach my piano students, I found this method to be foolproof! My students often struggled to master the other notes, even after learning "Every Good Boy Does Fine" and "FACE," but they never forgot Middle C and D.
I was excited to discover Easy Notes by Rebecca Wilson. This set of two theory books teaches four octaves of notes using characters and stories that link each note's position on the piano keyboard and the staff. It has been a massive hit with my beginning piano students this year. Even my older students who have been struggling with music reading have improved their skills by creating connections through storytelling.
The colorful books come with flashcards, and the teacher set includes a magnetic grand staff and character magnets that my students love to place on the piano keys and the magnetic whiteboard. While this series is piano-centric, I will be using the treble clef stories for my violin students to help them learn the letter names of the lines and spaces. Easy Notes also reminded me of Evelyn Avsharian's ABC Notespeller, connecting the lines and spaces with animals to help students remember the letter names. Learning through stories is a strategy I also love in the Wunderkeys Preschool piano series I use with my 3-5-year-old beginners. Wunderkeys resources have influenced the materials I create for my violin students.
Download a worksheet I made for my beginner students for free by clicking the image below. It helps them learn two open string notes on the staff with a story connection. This worksheet is part of a Note Speller series I am working on to help my students connect written notes with the violin fingerboard, a struggle many of my students have.
I use two fun digital resources in online and in-person lessons to reinforce note reading: musictheory.net and tonesavvy.com.
Musictheory.net lets you customize exercises and share a link or embed of their app, making it great for virtual lessons. We even use this resource in in-person classes by using their Tenuto app on the iPad. We pass the iPad around for questions while playing a board game or use the challenge mode as a quick quiz. Try out an exercise with your students who are working on identifying the open strings on the staff by clicking the image below.
Tonesavvy.com has a tremendous online violin fingerboard quiz. First, set the parameters you'd like to test your students on, including individual notes, accidentals, and range, and then have your students answer by clicking the pitch's location on the fingerboard. This exercise is great for establishing the fingerboard-to-staff connection.
Using the Ningenuis app is another option for establishing the staff-to-fingerboard connection; each student can have their account on your device so you can track their progress each week in lessons. My students love working towards becoming black belts.
Through stories and games, we can help all our students become strong music readers! Music reading is an essential skill they will need for becoming successful ensemble members and maybe even professional musicians someday. What kind of resources would help your students? Let me know in the comments or join us on social media @myviolinclub.