Music Learning

You see all those notes on lines and spaces and don’t have a clue about how to read music. Maybe you know enough to get by but start to get overwhelmed when trying to read notes. These are common feelings when first starting to learn music.

Learning to read music starts with a basic understanding of notes. The note itself conveys two simple aspects and is the place you begin to learn to read music.

To prepare you with a good start on reading music you need to begin with concepts of what are notes and what do they mean. This along with other characteristics are what will enable you to internalize notes and the music that follows.

The Essentials of Reading Music

The elements below are part of the fundamental framework that the beginning student will undertake.

1. Learn what notes symbolize, are shown and used.
2. Learn rhythm and how that rhythm is revealed using notes.
3. Learn how notes and tones make up a scale and how that scale defines a harmonic system.
4. Learn how combinations of scale notes in a harmonic system work to form intervals and chords.
5. Learn how the flow of notes as melody, intervals, chords, and scale tones are arranged to create songs.

Purpose of Notes

Start with notes, as symbols, that convey information. Two very important aspects are symbolized by notes. There are time tone and a time value.

An example is a quarter note it can be shown on a staff and convey a tone that will be played on your instrument. A second aspect is the quarter note will represent a beat or partial beat or multiple beats based on a time signature.

If we say that we get 4 beats to our measure of time and that we count quarter notes as a beat then we get four counts to our measure. That beat gets a time associated with it so that it may be fast or slow and is known as our tempo.

Note Tones

Notes are defined in half steps. When we look at a piano keyboard you can note that each key such as moving form white and black represents a half step in tone. Each of the steps produces a new tone and pitch until we reach the 16th step and the tone repeats and sound like the first note, but at a higher pitch. They are know to be in unison.

A to G alpha letters define the notes names. Lowering or raising note pitch by half step is accomplished with a flat or a sharp to lower or raise the note respectively. Therefore, using the note of ‘A’ you get a note names like A sharp (A#) or A flat (Ab) when using these modifiers.

Notes are shown on a staff where each position and notation represents a tone to be played. This is the process of translating any given note from composer to paper to musician to instrument.

Take it one step at a time

Learning notes as tones and various time values is where you start to read music. Additional effort then follows and before long you begin to understand and read music that once looked complicated and impossible to understand.

Don’t be fooled by thinking this can be done quickly. It takes some time, in a couple of months you can become fluent at reading music and within a year you can become good at understanding and potentially even creating complex music on your own.

Do more than study how to mimic and play notes; this might be like reading a book by spelling the words. Your aim is to learn the fundamental principles of music theory and leverage that not as a way to read music, but as a way to tell a story with music.

At the Music Learning Workshop.com you can learn the basic principles of music in mini lessons throughout the site.

The nineties have been the decade for widespread news about the affects of music on the brain. Everyone seems to be asking about the “Mozart Effect”, specifically what it is and how to use it to their child’s benefit. It is certainly an exciting time to be a music educator and a parent. We are finally able to look at documented research that shows that music is integral to a child’s growth, and use this information to help our children achieve their full potential. What more do we want as parents than to give our children all of the tools necessary to become happy, well-adjusted, intelligent human beings?

Unfortunately, like most popular theories, the “Mozart Effect” has become watered down in an effort by some people to make more money at the expense of the general public. You can go into any bookstore nowadays and buy “Mozart Effect” books, videos, tapes, and even bumper stickers.

In researching this article I did just that at several local music stores, as well as on the internet. I looked first in the music section, and when I didn’t find any books on the subject, wandered over to the children’s section with my 2 year old daughter. Again, aside from a mixed assortment of compact discs with music for children’s brains, I found nothing of real value for research. Curious, I went to the information counter where I was told that the “Mozart Effect” books, written by Don Campell, were to be found in the “alternative medicine” section! And, they were all sold out. That gave me my first clue that something very interesting was happening on this subject. I decided to research further in the library and on the internet.

The term “Mozart Effect” has come to simplify (by Don Campbell et al) a large body of research by neuro-scientists and experimental psychiatrists showing a definitive link between music study and improved spatial intelligence. This is nothing to be taken lightly. Children are born with over 100 billion unconnected or loosely connected nerve cells called neurons. Every experience that child has will strengthen or even create links between neurons. Those pathways that remain unused will, after some time, die. Because neural connections are responsible for every kind of intelligence, a child’s brain will develop to its full potential only through exposure to enriching experiences. It is important then, to identify the kinds of enrichment that forges the links between neurons.

Music has been clearly proven to improve neurological connections responsible for spatial intelligence. Spatial intelligence is necessary for a person to be able to see patterns in space and time. It is the ability to perceive the visual world accurately and to form mental images of physical objects. This kind of intelligence is used for higher brain functions such as music, complex math, solving puzzles, reasoning, and chess. Music specialists for years have noted that their musically-trained and involved students tend to be at the top of their class, often outscoring their non-musical classmates in mathematical tasks. Until recently, however, there was no way to clearly prove it.

Definitive studies have been done since the early 1980′s when Dr. Gordon Shaw and colleagues presented the trion model of the brain’s neuronal structure to the National Academy of Sciences. By 1990 the team had shown through computer experiments that trion firing patterns produce viable music, when these patterns are mapped onto musical pitches. This study was important in that it suggested that this musical model could be used to examine creativity in higher cognitive functions, such as mathematics and chess, which are similar to music. By 1991, Shaw proposed that music could be considered a “pre-language” and that early childhood music training exercises the brain for some higher cognitive structures.

In 1993 at UCal Irvine, Dr. Frances Rauscher, a Columbia PH.D. scientist and former concert cellist, joined the Shaw team in documenting a pilot study of the earlier research, but now directly applying their findings to people. This preliminary study showed that a group of college students temporarily improved their spatial-reasoning skills after listening to a Mozart piano sonata for 10 minutes. The same study applied to preschool children showed a more permanent improvement.

By 1997, the Rauscher-Shaw team had significant evidence suggesting the benefits of music to children’s spatial intelligence. The team studied three separate groups of preschoolers. The first group received specialized music training, particularly weekly keyboard lessons; the second group received specialized computer training; the third group received no specialized training at all. After several months, the team tested the children using tests designed to measure spatial tasks. Those children who received the keyboard lessons performed 34% better than the children who had taken either computer lessons, or no lessons. And, the effects of the keyboard training was long-term, suggesting that their may indeed be a learning “window” in early childhood, where we may enhance the connections of neurons forever.

Other research has suggested the same thing–that music training in early childhood indeed helps a child’s brain to develop. In the Winter ’95 issue of Early Childhood Connections (ECC), Dr. Edwin E. Gordon, talks about a Music Learning Window. He says, “A child will never have a higher level of music aptitude than at the moment of birth… A child’s potential to achieve in music remains throughout life where it stabilizes at age 9.” Harvard Medical School’s Dr. Gottfried Schlaug, found (through magnetic-resonance-imaging of musicians who began training before age 7, began later, and non-musicians) that certain regions of the brain are larger in musicians who started their musical training before age 7.

Now we have an entire scientific collection of data suggesting what music educators have known for centuries– that music has a definitive effect on children’s developments.

So, what do we, as parents, do with this information? Here are some suggestions:

1. Although listening to well-structured and performed music such as Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach certainly is wonderful for exposure to the arts, it is not simply by listening to music that your child’s brain develops. All of the research has shown that music TRAINING is required. This means getting your children into music lessons early, while the music learning window is at its peak before age 9. Piano lessons seem to be exceptionally helpful, as the keyboard is symmetrical, balanced, and logical.

2. Support your child’s local music programs in schools, churches, synagogues, etc. Here you will find skilled, educated music instructors who will bring new musical experiences to your child, including an appreciation for music in culture, history, and pure listening enjoyment. Demand a quality music education for your children throughout their lives.

3. Reevaluate where music fits into your home. Question why music traditions and activities, once central to family life, have been replaced by mass-market entertainment requiring no familial participation. Get off the couch and onto the floor and sing, dance, play instruments with your child.