In praise of those Grass-Eating Cows.

On a whim, my husband and I sold our cars and moved to Boston. I left a studio of well-trained piano students back in my old life; this move meant more than adjusting to a pedestrian lifestyle: I had to rebuild my work. "Yes, I like beginners. Yes, I like little ones," I said in the interview process and was hired by two music schools to teach piano lessons. Suddenly, I had more than thirty beginners, a third who were in kindergarten. Nothing in all my earlier teaching prepared me for the challenge of having so many students who knew no music and nothing about the piano, much less so many students who were pre-readers. Although I thought I knew my system for teaching beginning piano lessons, teaching a first piano lesson thirty-plus times over stretched and pulled me in painful and unexpected ways. All my earlier methods and assumptions were called into question when I began to see patterns of learning, patterns of behavior, patterns of what was and was not understood among these children.

Method Books

While I have long understood the limitations of beginning method books and liberally supplemented them with my own activities--creating systematic technical exercises, creative activities and ear-training methods--I mistakenly thought by simply using a method book, students would learn to read music. Unfortunately, method or concept books lull an unsuspecting teacher into thinking the books are teaching note reading. They don't. Or at least not directly. True enough, there are notes on the page, but as I watched my little ones stumble and fall as they struggled to decipher the mess .of dots and lines in front of them, I was humbled into recognizing I could no longer afford to ignore the problem: These students were not learning to read music.

Many popular beginning method books emphasize intervallic reading; that is, reading the intervals between notes rather than the individual notes themselves. This approach is an effective reading method because it teaches students to read patterns and groups of notes rather than getting caught up in deciphering each mark on the page. This approach also provides the potential for students to transpose easily, simply by starting on a different pitch. Furthermore, intervallic reading lends itself to efficient sight reading, where one must read in patterns and groups and not get caught up in details. Pianists, however, cannot just innocently read patterns of notes forever. As helpful as intervallic reading is, a good musician has to be able to read any given pitch quickly and accurately.

Landmarks

Most methods use some form of "landmark notes": certain pitches that students will learn to identify at sight, which they can then use to discern other pitches. For example, one landmark note is often middle C. Problems arise when suddenly the music on page thirty-five of the primer book begins on middle D. The five-year-old student who has had two months of piano lessons is expected to imagine what a middle C looks like and then find the D from that imaginary middle C. In the first months of my new studio of beginners, only one child could manage this feat. The rest had to be prompted and prodded and finally simply told that the first note was middle D. I found this whole scene frustrating as a teacher and terribly ineffective. The lesson learned, unfortunately, is not to successfully identify middle D, but rather that the book is confusing. The music itself is rarely a problem, especially if the student is successfully reading intervals and patterns. The difficulty is determining where a beginner should place his hands on the piano.

Another popular approach uses the landmark notes of "G" and "F" and makes use of the terms "G clef" and "F clef" instead of treble and bass clef. Many five-year-olds cannot remember which is which. In school, they are most likely still trying to remember which letter is which, much less which note is which on the piano. Suddenly, they are being asked to add a third and rather confusing layer to their definition of G and F: Which clef symbol is G, and which is F? While one positive aspect of this approach is that it lends itself to positions other than middle C, therein also lies the problem. The hand positions become progressively more unpredictable. The students have vague information about some G and F, but too often the first notes are not either one of these anyway. These are kids who could read the intervals of the pieces if only a teacher would put their hands into place. If they do not have someone at home who can do this for them while they practice, what hope is there that they will eagerly open their music books?

Still another method is the multi-key approach: beginning with C position and then moving on to the G and F positions. Like the landmark approach, this lends itself to keys other than C (Although how radical are G and F really?), but it doesn't specifically teach the recognition of any notes that fall into these positions or offer a suggestion about how students should identify these notes. The method books must sense this problem because many of them begin writing on the top of the page "C position." "This song is in C position!" the students joyfully exclaim and confidently put their hands into place. I appreciate the confidence that is now bestowed on these children who have been staring at me blankly for weeks regarding the beginning pitches of their assignments. Now, however, the students are learning yet another rather less than helpful lesson: The songs in the book are always in C position. But the fact remains the students cannot actually identify any notes on the page in front of them. They have learned to read the instructions at the top of the page: "C position."

And so it goes. Students transferring from other teachers had the same gaps in their note-reading abilities. Elementary students, upon my request to play something they already knew, would open their music and announce, "This is my favorite song, but I don't remember where to put my hands." Students who played a beautiful Bach minuet would be counting backwards off some landmark when asked to sight' read. I taught music majors at the college level who, while certainly having note reading skills, would be in their fourth semester of piano class and still consistently be putting their hands in the wrong place on the piano. They would play middle C when it should have been treble C, low C when it should be bass C, without realizing their mistake. To these violin majors, it was as if the piano was a huge Kansas plain without any identifying landmarks whatsoever.

Grass-Eating Cows

I grew up in Kansas. I know about open spaces. Tired of this confusion and frustrated with the lack of understanding that my new studio of beginners exhibited, in desperation I began creating my own landmarks on the piano. I coached: "Where is middle C? This next C is called FACE C. The one below is cow C. Here is high C. There is low C." Suddenly, there are names and landmarks all over the piano. "Does my left hand need to be on cow C?" Lucy asked after just a couple of lessons. I assigned the spelling word FACE, making them write it over and over again. We found and played the notes FACE on the piano. "What do all cows eat?" I asked. "GRASS? They squealed and giggled, and we found the corresponding notes to All Cows Eat Grass. For weeks we spent thirty seconds of every lesson finding notes: find high C, low C, F-A-C-E, cow C, middle C.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Mnemonic Devices

When I was in fourth grade, I was assigned the state of Massachusetts as a research project. I learned the state bird of Massachusetts and drew a picture of the flag on a piece of poster board. But I am woefully, pitifully deficient in spelling skills: I could not remember how to spell Massachusetts. Finally, I wrote a mnemonic device: Matt Adams Sucked Suckers At Church Helping Uncle Sam Eat Tootsie Tots Sunday. Today, I live in the state of Massachusetts, and I never spell the word without "Matt Adams Sucked Suckers ..." scrolling through my brain. Since then I have become a fan of mnemonic devices. I use them for remembering the sharps; in fact, it is a creative assignment in my studio to a make up sentences for remembering sharps and flats. "Friendly Country Gorillas Drool At Every Banana" and "Five Chickens Get Deli After Every Ballet" are two of my favorite student inspirations. But one day I asked Kathryn how many sharps E major had. "It is that monkey slobber thing, isn't it?" she responded. She was right: It was the monkey slobber thing (or the "gorillas drool" thing as the case may be), but the point was made. A little goes a long way. Never use two when one will do. While devices abound for the lines and spaces of the treble and bass clefs, children often do not remember which saying is for which clef and then which is for lines and which for spaces. We could spend more time narrowing down which sentence to use then identifying the correct note. Using only the space devices and teaching students to figure out the lines accordingly is more effective. For example, the G above middle C can be surmised easily by determining what note is in between F and A of FACE. Likewise, the G on the bottom line of the bass clef can be figured out: What note is below All? Music is a puzzle, and we have to figure out the notes. Even the youngest children understand that these devices are tools, codes, lifelines to decipher the patterns of lines and dots on the page.

Flash Cards

For years I hesitated to use note flash cards, afraid of undermining the methodology of the lesson books I had chosen. After all, as a professional accompanist, I wanted my students reading intervals, not naming every note as they play. But the two are not incompatible. Students will instinctively read intervals if I teach them carefully; after all, it is easier than reading every note. They also, however, want to know where to set up their hands. Flash cards can be introduced as soon as students know their landmarks--even before students are reading staved music in their lesson book. In fact, to avoid the struggles of determining the beginning pitches of their pieces, the sooner the better. Beginning with the Cs, we play the game of finding each flash card note on the piano in under a minute. We line up the cards on the piano rack from lowest to highest card. Week after week, we gradually add in the space cards, then the line cards, until the students can race through thirty cards in under a minute. At which point we celebrate and move on to other sight-reading activities.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

These days, beginning students and I work happily through their lesson books, rapidly moving through the pages of non-staved music. Suddenly, a bass clef is introduced. We practice writing bass clefs and the five corresponding lines. We fill in All Cows Eat Grass in the appropriate spaces. Again we find on the piano the notes: All Cows Eat Grass. This is not scary, intimidating or frustrating. This is familiar and fun. After all, we have been 'finding those cows for weeks now. For the first time, I am encouraged to use the most sophisticated method books with the most variety of keys and hand positions and the most intelligent and creative music. My students go home happy and confident in their ability to play their book pieces. Thanks to FACE and all of those Grass-Eating Cows, there is always a familiar note nearby.

I have never been so humbled as a teacher than when faced with thirty pairs of tiny hands that were barely holding pencils, much less the patterns and shapes of the keyboard that my own hands can't remember not knowing. I wasn't prepared to shine a light into the dark holes of my own teaching. Nor was I prepared to recognize that my teaching needed serious attention in a concept as elementary as note reading. Make no mistake about it--we teach because we must learn.

"You know why this is called cow C?" little Teddy asks me. "Because it sounds like a cow." He plays bass C intoning "Moo, Moo" as he plays. I smile. Moo. Moo. Indeed.

Amy Greer performs and teaches in Boston, Massachusetts, where she serves on the faculty of the Powers Music School. Her article entitled "Risking Aunt Rhody" was published in the December/January 2000/2001 issue of American Music Teacher and subsequently won the 2000 AMT Article of the Year Award. Greer received an M.M. degree in piano performance from the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music and a B.M. degree in piano performance from the University of Missouri-Columbia.