I thought I'd break down reading music into a couple of different parts. It's a meaty subject so one post is waaaaay too much information.
First, in this series of note-reading, is a discussion of when students begin reading music. It is one of the most frequently asked questions so I thought I'd address it before delving into the mechanics of reading music.
Reminder: this happens at different ages and stages for every student. There is no prescribed age, piece or magical calendar date when we start reading. I look for a number of things before I believe music reading is appropriate to add to a student's repertoire of skills.
First off, we delay reading because that's also how we learn language. We don't start reading words when we began speaking - it happens much later, often many years later. Children become quite fluent in their language before reading is introduced. Learning to read music is exactly the same process. Musical skills, playing beautifully and playing in tune must happen before music reading is begun.
Before introducing music reading I look for these things:
1. Posture, posture, posture
I cannot stress enough how important it is to first and foremost have secure, solid and
correct posture. Music reading requires adding an additional skill on top of everything a student already knows, which also requires focused attention. One cannot focus on cello hand position, intonation, bow hold, bow control AND reading music off the page. It's just too much! Posture has to be absolutely solid before adding a new skill. Just like building a house, you can't build on shaky foundation or else everything will fall down.
2. Confidence and ease of playing
Similar to posture, all the skills related to playing the cello must be
easy, comfortable and confident. Again, adding too much will result in too many things going on which leads to frustration. If any one aspect is not near automatic, it becomes infinitely more difficult to add an additional and complicated layer. Music reading inherently takes attention away from everything else so that means everything else has to be fluent and easy in order to dedicate brain power to reading. All the previous skills have to be comfy, easy, solid and secure.
3. Knowledge of fingerboard geography
Fingerboard geography refers to the names of the pitches
and where they live on the instrument. This must be learned and ingrained before reading music. Students need to be able to identify the notes by name on the instrument as well as locate any given pitch. For example, can they name the notes in Twinkle? Can they find F# on the D string? What is the name of the note underneath the 4th finger on the A string?
To further complicate things, unlike the piano, a single note may live in more than one spot. For example, the pitch of our open D string can also be played on the G
AND the C strings. Having the beginning stages of a cognitive map of the fingerboard is absolutely essential to understanding this especially when we start moving the hand around the instrument. We build on this cognitive map as we learn more pitches but a foundation must be there first.
Students must know the names of the notes and where they live on the instrument
before attempting to read. It's like trying to identify a color you've never seen before or trying to read and understand the word 'car' when you don't know what that object is. There must be prior knowledge of the 'language' (i.e. names of the notes and where they live) before attaching a symbol to that language.
Then, students must be able to identify the written note symbol on the page by the
name of the note,
not the finger number. This is critical but not difficult. It's very much like recognizing letters of the alphabet. However, all too often do students learn to 'read' music by following finger numbers. It's not a bad way to start but it becomes a problem when 4 on D (the note G) is indicated to be played with a 2nd finger. In other words, when the hand is no longer in one position on the neck and the hand starts moving around and shifting to different positions. I avoid this approach all together and try to rely on finger numbers a little as humanly possible.
Keep in mind, the finger numbers all throughout the Suzuki books are for
you, the parent,
not the child.
4. Understands reading concept
Reading music is not unlike reading words. It's essentially the exact same concept just a different 'language', if you will, with a different set of symbols. Understanding the basic concept of reading words is necessary because the two skills are so alike. Then students can apply the same concept and understanding to reading the symbols of music.
5. Solid concept of intonation
Students need to have a solid concept of sound, intonation and pitch. Without this, notes are near meaningless. 3rd finger is not F# if it's not on the correct spot on the fingerboard and F# is not F# unless the right pitch, the right frequency, produced by putting the finger in the correct place. It's either F# or it's not. Much like the color '
red' is not '
red' unless light waves form the correct wavelength. This aspect of playing has to be solid and understood, though it's not necessarily explicitly explained.
String instruments are challenging in that we can't just hit a key and F# is perfectly in tune. There's unfortunately a lot of wiggle room in terms of where the finger can go. This is where the concept of intonation and what's 'in tune' is so important. Even though students are in no way expected to understand or know about harmony, music theory and the physics of sound, they can still learn to hear when a pitch is too low or too high relative to other pitches.
***
There are a lot of skills involved in reading music plus a lot of dots of information that need to be connected in order for all this knowledge to be readily accessible, usable and applicable.
Students need to be able to take in a lot of information, translate it to meaningful knowledge and use that knowledge to produce sound. This means juggling, sorting through and interpreting a lot of information. For example, the page will be a note on the staff and a finger number, which students need to figure out what that pitch is and where it lives on the instrument. Also, students will have a sound concept in mind of what that pitch should sound like, much like singing a tune in your head (read about
audiation for more about this). Then there's a physical skill attached to make the sound happen that involves placing the indicated finger down in the right spot, on the right string and hearing whether or not that is the correct pitch. Whew.
All these bits and pieces of information need to be weaved together in order for music reading to become fluent. If one aspect of music reading is weak, it can impact the skill as a whole.
This takes
time. Lots of time. It's totally okay if it's slow going at first especially because there is so much new information and it just takes time and practice to sink in. I don't expect this to make sense or 'click' the first time it's explained because it just won't. But rest assured, it will sink it and it will make sense. This goes for many musical concepts, by the way.
One more reassuring note, I typically start music reading about halfway through Suzuki Book 1, when students reach Perpetual Motion. By this point, students have typically achieved all of the above things, whether they know it or not. Most of these things are built into my curriculum and sequence of teaching. So even though I don't explicitly say it, we are preparing for music reading all the time! And it all begins with posture. :)
