Teaching Music Notation to Children

Video Transcript

"So, you have introduced fingers to the keyboard. Now they are touching the instrument. You are good to go. In the fifth lesson something you can approach, is music notation. Which has not a good ring? But they don't know that so never call it that. P and F those are fun. Music is Italian and in Italian, P is the word for soft, F is the word for loud. It is possible to say piano and forte. The problem is of course piano is also the name of the piano and it's too much. So just let it go just like let that fact go. Even if you know instinctively that piano is the Italian word for soft and forte is the Italian word for loud and this instrument is called a piano forte because it was the first keyboard that could go both soft and loud as apposed to the harpsichord which could not do either. Let it go let all of your knowledge just go don't worry about it. P means soft; F means loud, so they can have all sorts of fun playing really really loud, really really soft. And also they are learning how to play soft, playing soft is really hard. Playing soft just means you have to slow down how fast you strike the key. But you can't slow down how fast you play. It's really a difficult concept so just let them enjoy playing soft and loud, and playing high and low. You can play high, loud and low, soft. Watch out, this is a crucial time to not mix up the words high and low with loud and soft. A lot of people say turn that down, turn that on low, meaning low volume. But in music it doesn't mean that low means low pitch and high means high pitch. It does not have anything to do with volume. And be very careful, watch your speech, watch the way that you speak to the children. They will pick it up and they will imitate you if you say it wrong. So just be very careful how you do that. The other thing that you can introduce in this time is the whole note. It's just a little circle and it means to hold down for four counts. Again, I wouldn't use the word whole note. l will with you because you can handle it but I wouldn't use the word whole note with the children. They have no idea. All it means it's a really long note and it means to count to four. So that can be practiced on the piano now. One, two, three, four. Go back to the stuff that they knew before and make sure they remember that this just means play. So if they have all this together it's going to sound like: play, play, play, play, hold down four, four. Make sense. Have them do that, again they can bring back their drum. They don't want to let go of their drum yet so bring back the drum and put that onto the keyboard. And you should be able to have them do that in soft or loud and that will be fun. And that will be what they learn there."