My piano teacher taught me the wrong way to read music

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When I was a child, learning to play piano, I struggled to read music. When I look back, I know what my problem was – it was that I didn’t know what the notes were on the staff and how they connect to the notes on the piano. Rather than directly teaching me this, instead, my teacher told me to figure out the notes by counting up the lines and spaces using mnemonics, such as, Every Good Boy Does Fine.

Fast forward a few decades to when I began teaching music… For the first twelve or so years, I taught my beginners to read music the same way I had been taught, with mnemonics, and many of my students struggled with music reading, just like I had.

For them, it was like, say, if you went to a library because you needed some information about something, but the library shelves on that topic were bare – the library just didn’t have the information that you needed.

For my students to be able to read music, they needed the information about what the notes were in their music, but that information had not been filed into the library shelves of their minds – and that made it difficult for them to read music.

When I had students who struggled to read music, it felt like they were stuck at a road block, and I was stuck there with them. After twelve or so years of this, I felt like I had to make a change, and start teaching in a different way!

So, with all my beginners I started to spend 5 or so minutes each lesson teaching them every single note, one at a time, and to make sure that the knowledge about every note got filed and stored in the library shelves of their minds.

The difference in my students from making that one change was truly amazing! Now that they knew what the notes were, I could put new music in front of them, and straight away they could sight read it effortlessly. This truly opened the door of music to them and enabled them to take in a lot of music all the time.

Having all that music constantly passing through them caused them to grow musically progress quickly, like I had never had students grow and progress before!

Over time, making that one change caused a huge transformation - for me, for my students, and for my whole studio!

When you know how, it’s really easy to put the knowledge of each and every note directly into the minds of your beginner students. That’s what I want to talk about in these newsletters – how to file and store the crucial knowledge that our students need into the library shelves of their minds.

We are working with kids who have brains that are so wired for learning! Their brains are so fresh and they have a high degree of “neuroplasticity”- which is the brain’s ability to adapt to change and to learn. Their ability to learn is at an optimum!

When we put brains that are wired for learning together with powerful teaching tools, we will get amazing results! Then, teaching becomes exciting, successful and enjoyable, with results that will blow you away!

I want to send you newsletters each week and look at various powerful teaching tools that combine together into a formula that really works; a formula that produces strong music readers, right from the beginning of their musical journey.

So, watch out for my next email, which will be about the first powerful teaching tool you can use. This one is so amazing, and kids fall head over heels for it! Once you start integrating it into your lessons, you’ll find your students lighting up, learning, and loving it!

We don’t have to get stuck at the struggling-to-read-music roadblock with our students. With this formula, that roadblock will become a distant memory! We can enable our beginner students to become great music readers, so that they can have access to the music that will cause them to grow, and grow, and grow!

So, let’s create strong music readers!

Rebecca

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