In our last session of music we looked at the different ways to teach Music. Reading and understanding music notation can be very difficult however there are ways in which reading music can be made easier. A method which we learned about was figure notes this is when each musical note on the paper is replaced with a colour or a symbol.

First we composed a piece of music as a class, we created a piece of music which symbolises bonfire night. We chose images which represented different noises that you would hear on bonfire night and marked them within a grid. We then choose an instrument which represented one of the sounds and played the music in the grid line after line. This activity allows children to imagine what different things sound like and what they would look like as an image.

We then looked at musical notes that are replaced with coloured circles. If a circle is elongated it means to hold the note. We used keyboard and glockenspiel to complete this activity, each key had a colour sticker stuck to it so we could link this to the music sheet we were give. The songs we played were ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ and ‘Jingle Bells’.

‘This intuitive way of reading music helps you to play almost instantly, increasing confidence and motivation.’ (Figurenotes, 2015). This allows children to see results and not be prevented from being able to play a tune if they aren’t yet able to read music, this is a great way to encourage children to learn and is a great way of starting when they are learning how to read music. Personally i find it difficult to read music as i have poor vision and so by using colours it was easy to see what note was to be played next.

References:

Figurenotes. (2015). Home – Figurenotes. [online] Available at: http://www.figurenotes.org/ [Accessed 05 Jan. 2017]