Let's Simplify Music Notation 
and Teach Kids to READ It.

Most music educators, having stumbled through piano proficiency during their college years, have thoroughly understood the importance of beginning with these two skills. In the present millenium there are advantages that never existed before. Electric piano-type keyboards can be had cheaply and can be very serviceable in elementary group teaching situations. Today's children receive early indoctrination in "keyboarding" (the other kind, with computers) so their eye-hand coordination is alreading being trained through typing in a manner in which the mental process is exactly like that of musical keyboarding. And the language of musical notation can be considerably less complex than either an arithmetical matrix like a multiplication table or the 26-letter alphabet from which we form words and sentences in English. 

Reductions and Simplifications 

1) Limit meter signatures to 2/4, 3/4 and 4/4. Eliminate "cut" time and "common" time to be introduced later. Feel free to mix meters. A 3/4 bar followed by a 2/4 bar is easy to count and feel and provides a good introduction to a later introduced 5/4. Similarly, there is little need to complicate matters with 3/8, 3/2 or 6/8 at this stage. Such meter notations can also be introduced later and more easily. There is almost no music that cannot be written in 2/4, 3/4 and 4/4. Teach this level with quarter-note and quarter-rest patterns in measures. Help the student develop fluency in reading and playing such basic on-the-beat patterns before introducing a wider range of rhythmic symbols. Most any teacher who has struggled with a relatively capable player who doesn't read well knows that the remedial work starts with counting beats and measures. Let's start here with beginners at the beginning. 

2) Teach notes AND rests. We have all seen piano method books in which a simple quarter rest does not seem to appear until near the last page! And then we wonder what makes a young student ignore the time value of a silence? Between whole notes and 16th rests, there are only ten symbols to learn. When set to simple percussion music or one-note keyboard music, quite a lot of music and education can take place, both in unison and in ensembles of duets and even trios. Thus much reinforcement can occur before heading on into pitches. 

3) Eliminate the dotted note and use ties instead. Why not also do away with the dotted notes at this stage (the dot equals the addition of half of the time value of the note or rest that precedes it - huh?). That includes the sacred dotted half note. Instead, use a tie. Since the advent of jazz, the tie has become more prevalent in written music than at any previous period. Once acclimated to tied notes, the comparison and associative learning of comparable dotted values is quite easy and doesn't entail first deciphering a complex algebraic formula for initial conception of their meanings. 

4) Treat black keys and white keys with equality. Get out of key of C now. Let's eliminate the sharp symbol at this level and also the natural symbol. Use only the flat symbol and place it, even redundantly, before every note intended to be flat. There is, after all, nothing new about the principle of "every note is natural unless preceded by a flat." 20th century composers used it regularly. We can save the "through the measure" rule for lower intermediate level. Now, since every note becomes a simple see-and-play tablature of sorts, fluency in reading can be more easily attained. Additionally, since keyboard intervals are easy to see, one can begin transposing a three or five note tune very soon without any elaborate explanations of altered pitches, tonics, submediants or other relatively irrelevant music theory. Just as language grammar is easier to understand after one knows the words, likewise, such theory is easier to grasp after one has heard and played actual transpositions. This also becomes the foundation for the later understanding of keys and key signatures. The real learning of intervals occurs quite readily from this process. Later theoretical explanations and interval names then simply attach themselves to aural patterns a student already knows. Why flats instead of sharps? Well, a G-sharp scale looks better in flats (A-flat scale) and provides a more logical foundation to key signatures to be introduced later. 

5) Explore the keyboard and the staves. Beyond the simple transpositions of primative melodies, one can lead students through a range of sounds from simple 12-tone serial tunes to soundscapes of massed chords, all within two octaves on either side of middle C. Little ears can soon be opened to the idea of music as organized sound. All of this can be readily notated in ways that are easy to read and play. And, with the ready availability of hundreds of timbres a mere push of a button away, one can cover many "new sounds" while repeating reading basics. 

6) Save the key signature idea for later. Any major, minor or even whole-tone and diminished scale can be noted with only naturals and flat accidentals. A key signature really has no meaning for a student anyway until he/she can hear the relationships of the scale degrees to the tonic. No one "remembers" which lines and spaces such sharps or flats are on anyway (one reason why key of B is a "hard" key). And one surely doesn't not have time or brain room to "remember" such individual accidentals while reading and playing both rhythm and pitch. Even most music major pre-professionals learn key signatures as memory by association. That is, they see the key signature as a whole and associate it with a tonic in major or minor. Then scales and arpeggios are learned by rote and hours of repetition designed to pass juries. Outside of major and minor scale-related "keys," key signatures have no meaning at all. They are merely a shorthand for a lazy composer/copyist who probably should be using software anyway. 

Some may argue that "changing" the music to this "new" system would be very difficult. But it isn't. A simple plug-in in Finale 2000 puts accidentals in front of every note. This feature likely exists with other softwares too. Thus, it would take very little time and expense to implement and disseminate. The greater amount of time would probably be in overcoming the objections of certain traditionalists and purists. Selling files to educators via CD-ROM reduces much of the print and distribution problems of traditional books.

I have received some objections from those music educators who believe that students must learn key signatures before they can deal with non-key music. Strangely, those same folks manage to get around the internet without having first learned how to program computers. And, though I don't visit elementary classrooms very often these days, I'm not aware of any keyboarding prerequisite courses where children first master the old Underwood manual typewriter.

Yet another objection has to do with the perception of teaching music as it really is. Though, in my proposal, nothing is left out. It is merely postponed. The reality is that few people read music at all. And few people are aware of much music beyond what they hear on radio or hear about through promotion or scandal. There is also the popular notion that one need not be able to read music notation in order to be musically "literate," and that "many" of the big music stars can't read music. (Some music stars do not read music.) Those things seem to suggest that, lacking a governmental directive like reading and math standards, we should always be evaluating ways of refining our music teaching.

By introducing these reductions into our new beginning method books, we can bring about improved reading fluency on which to build. Perhaps even sheet music publishers, eager to expand their sales, might also adopt this approach in order to sell more sheet music to the masses at the lowest common denominator. Studies have indicated that, at best, less than 3 percent of the American population can read music even well enough to follow their church hymnal (Lowell Mason may be shuddering in his grave). Publishers using such a reduced notation might sell more music. After all, a population that can fluently read simple music without sharps is still better than a population that remains almost proud of not reading music at all.