What is that note?
In April I started having violin lessons again for the first
time in more than 20 years. This is also part of the Teaching Musician Course I
am doing at Trinity Laban.
In my first lesson my teacher showed me a scale book
and asked if I had one. I don't because I didn’t see the point of scale books
- it is obvious which note comes next so why do you need the music? As he
flicked through the book to 3 and 4 octave scales I saw high notes I had never
seen in my life! I commented that I had no idea what those notes even were and
he said, ‘that is exactly why you need a scale book. It is how you make the
connection (that word again!) in your brain between the notes on the stave and where they are on
the violin.’ I then looked closer at the page he had open and realised that I did
know how to play those scales and so I had played those notes, but because I
had never played them whilst looking at music and had never played pieces of music
which contained them I couldn’t recognise them. Making these new connections is
something I am now working on as more and more of the pieces I am learning
seem to have ridiculously high notes in them!
I have taught all my students to play scales without notation. I thought it was more important for them to become familiar with the
sound of the scale and how to produce those sounds on the violin than it was
for them to be able to read all those notes immediately. The idea that children
should learn sound before symbol rather than the other way around is widely
recognised.[1]
For example, Suzuki followed the logic that just as children learn to speak
before they can read, so they should learn to play music before they can read
the notation and Mainwaring advocated that the most musical way to teach an instrument
is by linking sound with action.[2],[3] I introduced playing pieces from notation to my students quite early on so I haven't stuck strictly to the sound before symbol idea, but now having had this conversation with my teacher and realising that I could
benefit from playing scales from notation I am wondering if and at what
point it I should introduce this to my students. Would it help them make some missing connections?
McPherson, Edited By Richard Parncutt & Gary E. The Science
& Psychology of Music Performance. Oxford University Press. Accessed
March 7, 2016. https://www.dawsonera.com/abstract/9780195350173.
McPherson, Gary E., (Author). “From Child
to Musician: Skill Development during the Beginning Stages of Learning an
Instrument.” Psychology of Music 33, no. 1 (2005): 5–35.
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