Why Music Flashcards Are Important-- A Letter to Parents

     As teachers, we want our students to learn how to read sheet music easily and fluently.  Some students catch on quickly, but others struggle with note reading.  I often feel like I spend way too much time in a lesson just figuring out the notes, and I know we could be focusing on so much more if only the student would practice notes at home.  Likewise, the parent would get SO much more for their money if the student would practice notes at home.

      For most students, I send home flashcards along with the letter below.  My flashcards are customized to include clues from the "Freddie the Frog" book series as well as clues like "Every Good Boy Does Fine."

     I created this letter with an introduction to help parents understand WHY reading notes easily and fluently is important.   Feel free to use the letter below for your studio and change it to whatever fits your needs!

Important New Piano Material Information

What makes people enjoy reading books as a hobby? In elementary school, you learned your letters and what sounds they make. At first, you had to piece together this information by sounding out words letter by letter. The more you practiced this by reading simple books, the more you started to memorize the letters, sounds, and combinations that formed words. Years later, you don't have to consciously think about the individual letters that form words at all-- you just sit down and read quickly and efficiently. If reading continued to be a process of deciphering each letter and sounding out each word, it would be a very tedious job to read hundreds of pages and no adults would ever take up reading as a hobby!

Reading music is exactly the same. I think the thing that makes music FUN and makes playing piano an enjoyable hobby for me is that I know the notes on the staff just as well as English letters in a book. I can sit down with new music that I've never seen before and quickly figure out how to play it without translating each note into a letter and then that letter onto the keyboard. Without developing this skill of fluent note reading, playing the piano is likely to become too tedious and the student will want to give up playing. Learning and memorization come to humans through repetition. Some students are able to memorize the notes just through the repetition of songs, but most students need a little more practice. Just as your child might have learned their addition and subtraction facts through flashcards, I feel that this is also one of the most effective way to reinforce music notes on the staff.

When you start off learning addition and subtraction facts, it's common to use your fingers to help you out. There's no harm in this at first-- it gives you a way to figure out the solution-- then eventually you need your fingers less and less because you start to memorize them. The same applies to music notes-- students have learned numerous ways to help figure out note names (such as phrases like “Every Good Boy Does Fine,” the spaces spelling the word FACE, and even reading the “Freddie the Frog” books), but in the end we want to have them memorized and not need to use the “tricks” to figure out each note.

Please note the flashcards that have been sent home with your child. I have designed flashcards that incorporate the different “tricks” on the answer side to use at first if the student is still getting stuck on particular notes. The end goal is for the student to name the correct letter of the note immediately upon seeing it. I've found that during lessons with many students we are sometimes spending more time than what's necessary figuring out individual notes instead of getting to the other important lesson topics. Working with your child a few times a week on memorizing the notes will provide a better value for your money for each lesson.

I am asking only $3 for each set of flashcards to help cover materials/supplies. The set includes all notes on the staff. However, beginners will not need to learn all of these right away, so I made a list that corresponds with the Faber books to tell you which flashcards to pull out and use according to where they are in their lesson book.

Thanks for your dedication to helping your child, and hopefully this will make piano even more enjoyable than it already is for your child!

Sincerely,

Courtney