teaching your child musical notes

I found this on the internet. Hope it helps.

http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/LearnMusicalNotes/

Thanks Patreiche that looks very useful. Karma to you!

That does look useful. Thanks.

I will try it tomorrow. Thank you so much.

karma to you! thank you so much - the site looks like it will very helpful in teaching musical notes!

Karma to you, that does look great. My five yr old goes for Suzuki piano and had started at 3 and a half. They still have not started her on notes, and this will be good to introduce it to her. She listens and plays at amazing speed.

Here also some interactive games to learn notes:

http://www.doremifasoft.com/fruitlines.html
http://www.doremifasoft.com/trstpu.html
http://www.doremifasoft.com/bastpu.html

thanks much patreiche and HH. It"ll help my kid who still weak in reading notes.

Interesting!

I know I will learn from these too.

Thanks for sharing.

Karma to both of you!!
Many Thanks.

If you want to teach a baby musical notes, check out the Trebellina DVD as well. That may be just what you are looking for. And remember that there is a coupon on the site!

Hi Cristofori!

How long does it play? How many musical instruments are introduced?

Thanks

Hello!

The DVD is 32 minutes long.

The primary purpose of the DVD is to teach how to read music and to develop pitch. Quite a few instruments are also introduced by sound and sight to round out the program. Offhand I can recall the following: viola, violin, piano, cabasa, tambourine, windchimes, drumset, bongos, congas, cowbell, guitar. There is video of some being played. Some are instroduced by photos.

I remember that right after my daughter watched Trebellina we were listening to a song on the radio in the car and she picked out the cabasa. We got a kick out of that!

We are working on the sequel – “Rock Bassey” – to take the lessons taught in Trebellina even further. It should be out by the end of 2009.

There is a video preview on the website that might be helpful to you.

Dear HH. I have been following all our comments on the forum. But I gues these games that you suggest are for older children. does that mean that you teach them o read by note until they are 4-5 (when they can move the mouse to play the computer game)or do you have other ideas for younger children.

Thanks Cristofori for the Trebellina idea… I ordered it a while ago, but haven’t gotten it yet.

someone knows some sample game with keyboard and notes for a little children?

We do not use mouse in our system: kids press keys from computer keyboard or piano in order to learn. Please, check the demos that I was providing.

Thanks for the links, I know my kids will enjoy them :smiley:

I can recall learning to read music when I was four. My mother sat me down with a "the Green Book, Pre A), explained to me how the notes went up and down the staff, and just let me practice for myself. There was a crack on the A key above middle C–that helped. I was motivated in trying to play songs ahead of my older sister. No fancy method, no flash cards, no computers. Just good old sibling rivalry.

I continued formal piano lessons with a conservatory professor through the senior college level and never had any problems with the sight reading testing before a jury. I can play music by ear and most of the time think I have perfect pitch, but when I play my own piano too much (which is sadly out of tune), I start to think all other pianos are playing a half step too high.

As an aside, I will mention that my heritage is Chinese, but I am hopeless in Mandarin. The rest of my family speaks or at least understands Mandarin, but do not have perfect pitch.

I tried the doremisoft games linked by HH (Hellene) for myself before trying them with my child.

My experience with the first game (notes falling from trees into baskets) was interesting. I found it quite challenging, as I am used to a traditional horizontal staff, so I found myself relying on the piano pitch played with each note, rather than reading the note on the staff. My ear could identify the note quicker than my eye could see and rotate the staff mentally. In IQ testing in fourth grade, my spatial mental manipulative ability was apparently one of my stand out strengths, so it leads me to wonder how much more difficult it is to learn the staff first vertically and then have to learn to rotate it.

I also found it difficult once the staff was placed horizontally to use the left and right arrows to move the baskets up and down. There are up and down arrows on the keypad. It seems that using those would just remove one bit of confusion out of the game, especially for a young child, to whom these games are targeted.

I liked the second game, with the horizontal staff and the puzzle pieces a good deal better. I can see this being something my child would be intrigued by watching, then of course want to try. However, my complaint is the same–the up and down arrows would be much more intuitive, but one can only use left and right arrows.

I do think the games are very clever and engaging, even though they have not sold me on the interchangeability of vertical and horizontal notation.

I think that it is definitely intersesting to switch from horizontal to vertical. It gave me a new way of thinking about things. :slight_smile: