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Teaching a student lines and spaces

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Home Forums How To Play Teaching a student lines and spaces

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  • #258524
    carl-swanson
    Participant

    I wanted to tell everyone who teaches that there is a wonderful book specifically for teaching a student to read lines and spaces. It’s a French solfege book called Manuel Pratique pour l’etude des clés (Practical guide for the study of clefs). It’s by Georges Dandelot and is published by Max Eschig. You can find it on line.

    With each clef, he starts with an exercise that just has C’s and G’s, and the student practices learning those. Then, in following exercises, he adds the notes that are next to, above and below, the C’s and G’s, and continues on like that. It’s organized, and it prevents the student from inventing some hairbrained way of calculating or counting up or down to figure out the note. If you have a student who doesn’t read music, or is having a hard time, this book is wonderful. Spending maybe 3 or 4 minutes of each lesson with this book will do wonders.

    #258538
    glissbliss
    Participant

    Thank you for posting this. I have long struggled with reading sheet music. I can usually figure out the notes on the page given enough time, but making the connection to where that is on the harp is a secondary challenge.

    #258544
    carl-swanson
    Participant

    I would suggest you get this book. Read aloud the notes in the first exercise until you can name them easily. Then play those same notes on the harp. When you can do that with no problem (no hesitation, no “calculating or counting up or down to get the note), then go on to the second exercise and do the same thing. The goal is to instantly recognize the written note without any need to measure or count from someplace else, and to instantly know which string that is on the harp.

    You may possibly have some bad reading habits that you will need to break to make big progress. That’s OK. These exercises will help you to do that.

    #258552
    balfour-knight
    Participant

    I think flash cards would work well with this book. I always used them with my students and had great results.

    Harp teaching hugs,
    Balfour

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