How to Teach Children About the Music Staff

Video Transcript

"Cool, so we've got c,d,e on the keyboard. We're going to move ahead a little bit and we're going to move to the point where your children already know all of the keys on the keyboard. They obviously now they know that it goes from a to g and repeats. Let's move on to the staff. The staff is one of the hardest things to introduce to children and here are a couple ways that can help you know what they're thinking and how to get it across for them. First thing, at the very very beginning, the staff is a word for cage. The notes have to be in cages because if they're not in cages, then somebody has to tell you what to play. Because, up until now all of the notes that they've been seeing on the books have said their little names inside it. It'll say an a inside it or it'll say a b right next to it. So, somebody has had to tell them. But, if the notes have special positions in the cage, then nobody has to tell you, then you can be a big hit all on your own. That's something that obviously you're reinforcing then. You want them to be able to not need you. You want them to be able to look at the music and play it or hear the music and play it, they don't need you at all. Very sad, but it's what you're working for. So, on the cage, there are five lines. And when you count the lines it starts from the bottom. One, two, three, four, five. Reinforce that again and again. So, say find line two, find line three, find line four, whatever. Inside the lines are spaces. Space one, space two, space three, space four. There are only four spaces, obviously, five lines, four spaces. It's like a swimming pool with lanes. You can only swim in the lanes, doesn't matter how many ropes you have. So, what you want to do is to see if they can find the notes, the lines and the spaces. Can you point to line two? Can you color line three? Can you find line four? Can you find space four? See if they can find the difference between lines and spaces, then you introduce the idea of putting a note on that. The note has a fat part. That fat part of the note must go right on a line or must go right in between a space. This is sort of a difficult concept and if you have, one of the things that really helps with this is a moving board, or like a drier base board, with magnets on it and you can move the magnets up and down, little circle magnets. It's really cool, great fun. You can play races like, who can find line four quickest? All sorts of things like that. But, what you need to get over and over, is that it goes from bottom to top and that each position on the staff is something different. Line one and space one, they're really really close and your kids going to be like, but that's the same thing. It's not the same thing. Make sure they understand how it moves and that there are nine different positions on that staff because it's going to go, obviously, five lines, four spaces. Nine different positions on that staff that move from lowest to high. That means that it moves from lower to high on the piano. That was nine notes that I just played and they all went right in order because I moved up slightly, slightly, slightly, every single time on that staff. That's a pretty good way to introduce the staff to start with."