Reply To: Teaching Note Reading in Orchestra

[nafmeadmin]

I strongly agree with merimom96 on staying away from teaching concepts such as ‘every good boy does fine’. Eventually they’re going to read in a different clef and they won’t know what to do! The system that worked best for myself and seems to work well with others is teaching clefs. Once the students have an understanding of the A-G alphabet they can be introduced to concepts such as: treble clef circles G, the treble clef is also called the G clef, and violins, when you play first position 3rd finger G, that’s the G on the staff. Similar with bass clef (F clef) and alto and tenor (both C clefs). Using that logic, students can infer the rest of the notes by counting, and eventually develop their own system branching off from the original thought. Hope this helps!