Teacher | Children | Well

Writing is a tough business.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had someone approach me about writing for them and still not gotten the thing published.  Sometimes they’re too busy to edit it.  Sometimes the managerial staff changes.  Sometimes there’s no explanation; they just drop off the face of the earth, or at least the face of e-mails and phone calls.

And sometimes the publication goes out of business, which is what happened when Topic Magazine asked for a submission about Music Mind Games.  You’ve heard me plug MMG here before, and I know I will again: it’s the best way to teach kids to read music, period.

Anyway, it occurred to me the other day that I now have my own forum to publish whatever I want, and I won’t blow myself off or refuse to answer my e-mails.  So, enjoy!

Playing Right Into Their Hands:

How Games Help Kids Become Better Musicians

Think back, for a moment, to the way you learned to read.  In all likelihood, it began the moment you were born, when you were surrounded by cooing voices that issued from adoring, blurry faces.  Other humans spoke to you constantly until you learned to speak yourself, bungling your first pronunciations to the delight of everyone around you.  Your friends and family read you books, and sometimes they’d point at key words on each page: “ball,” “cat,” “mommy.”  You learned to speak in short words and phrases, each memorized for the effect they had on others (Remember what fun “no” could be?)  You began school, and your teachers made signs for everyday objects: “door,” “desk,” “goldfish.”  Gradually, slowly, you began to understand the way these sounds and symbols worked collectively, and you pieced together a language of communication.

It would have been absurd, on your first day of life, if your parents had placed a book in front of you and expected you to learn how to communicate.  As the black print swam on a white page before your eyes, you probably would have burst into tears (and not just because you were hungry.)  Yet for most music students, their introduction to reading is just that harsh.  Up goes the theory book; intimidating black notes stare out at them, and they try to make some sense of the signs, symbols and words that must all translate into artful, passionate sound.

My students are lucky.  By the time they see their first theory book, they have the tools to break down a line of music into something more easily digestible.  They have traced the treble and bass clefs with tiny fingers and placed them on the staff, paying careful attention to the way the dots of the bass clef sit on either side of the F line.  They have dropped colorful plastic dots onto a staff, calling out gleefully, “Space!  Line!” as the notes land in their places, and collected them with a “magic” magnetic wand.  They have curled up into tiny balls on the floor, whispering “pianissimo” amid stifled giggles, and gradually stood as their voices swelled: “mezzo forte . . . forte . . . FORTISSIMO!”  On this last one, they leap wildly into the air, acting out the dynamics with their whole bodies.  They have practiced rhythms with fun, silly words like “pineapple” and “gooseberry,” forming abstracted shapes with their fingers as they learn to keep a steady pulse while they repeat the words. So, when they see a piece of “real music” for the first time, they’re ready, and even eager, to put this knowledge to good use.
Students of Music Mind Games don’t just read music; they absorb it.  They act it out, sign it, speak it, and play it – and this last verb most accurately describes their state of mind as they learn some of the most difficult and complex musical concepts in existence.  For them, it’s all a game.

(Read the rest below.)

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