"Parent Aids" / Fingering Flash Cards for Beginners:
Dear Directors,
I decided to include the initial letters of introduction in the original Rhythm Masters Book 1 and posted on the website. It explains why I began the “Parent Aids” project, although perhaps some things have changed since then. I started the “Rhythm Masters” project in the late ’80s or early ’90s, so many of this series’ materials are some “forty” years old. Some adaptations may need to be considered for technology and instrumental curriculum evolution, but most of it is solid pedagogy, even by today’s standards. Content in the “Rhythm Masters” series continues to be amended and expanded, primarily in the “Ultimate Musicians” curriculum found on the “Rhythm Masters Improvisation” website. The entire original content of “Rhythm Masters” books 1 &2 (and more) can be accessed, downloaded, and printed out for free at www.rhythmmasters.org if you would be interested in “checking it out.”
Below is the initial letter of introduction for the Level 1 flashcards, which I posted a day or so ago. I usually will include the initial introduction letters for each “flashcard” level as an attachment. Also, from here on out, all flashcards are created on Finale, so my “artistic abilities” will no longer be a factor.
“Rhythm Masters” and Parent Aides:
Introduction:
On occasion, my website deviates from the focus on rhythms and counting and explores other areas of instruction for young instrumentalists. For some beginning band students, the music staff and its music notation is a very abstract concept. These students have difficulty simultaneously processing note names and fingering identifications from staff notation. Some students find that “guessing” requires much less effort than learning note names and fingering identification. Suppose we begin with a small number of notes and gradually expand them. In that case, there is a better chance of identifying them correctly and less opportunity that students will respond by guessing.
The processing levels needed for students to correctly identify notes and fingerings on the staff are as follows:
- Is the note head on a line or space?
- Is the note head identification part of the student’s “sight vocabulary,” or is some appropriate line or space formula needed to determine the correct note name?
- What is the correct fingering to coincide with the note identified? It usually takes a while drilling this skill before students can quickly and accurately combine steps b & c.
- Finally, does the pitch require a high or low “buzz” for brass players?
What would be the correct embouchure to attain the appropriate pitch, as indicated by the staff?
The ultimate goal is for our beginners to instantly combine all these above steps. First, however, we may need to break down these skills into smaller groupings. The idea is to lower the number of required “processing levels” until each binary group is mastered, then separately combine them to perform all the needed processes successfully.
Examples of possible groupings include notes on the staff to note names, note names to correct fingerings, and, finally, notes on the staff to correct fingerings. As our students succeed in each of these binary tasks, the level of challenge will gradually increase (such as speeding up the required identification), eventually expanding their processing abilities to perform all three tasks simultaneously.
Another obstacle that sometimes presents itself to young musicians is “transference.” Normally, after the initial flashcard drills have been completed, the correct identification and performance of a whole note when pictured on a staff is relatively consistent. However, when some students are confronted with the same note head, with the note head filled in, or an added stem, it is almost like starting over again. These students will need to drill on the same material, this time in the form of the half, quarter, and eighth notes, to regain the mastery level of the flashcards they initially possessed.
With this in mind, drills that directly target this transference challenge will speed up your class’ readiness and ability to move on to higher levels of note identification. One cannot assume that students of this age and inexperience will automatically be able to “logically” associate the different-looking note shapes with the consistent name of each note as is dictated by the position of the note head on a particular line or space of the staff. Be sure you take time to explain these similarities and differences and drill your students on these skills, using some kind of individual assessment to confirm comprehension.
Another key idea behind “Parent Aides” is to involve the child’s parents. Even though most parents do not have first-hand experience with their child’s musical instrument, things can be kept basic enough so parents can correctly observe the accuracy of their child’s performance of fingerings and correct identification of note names. A “practice contract” (or perhaps some kind of “check-off” system) can be devised by the director, with the defined tasks requiring completion within a designated amount of time. The length of time needed for such an activity to positively impact student comprehension is relatively minimal, only minutes each day. This minimal amount of time should not impose any inconvenience on even the busiest of parents. Parents working with their child on these basic drills will demonstrate their direct support of the child’s learning of a musical instrument and the parent’s commitment to all other academic endeavors in their school.
Sincerely,
Rich Moon
“Parent Aids” Level 1: Fingering Flash Cards for Beginners:
Dear Directors,
A director friend recently took a new position, going from high school to his first middle school “gig.” He worked with me last year on field testing “multi-directional” counting and asked if I had any “unique” materials for middle school band students, especially beginners. Decades ago, I wrote a series of beginner fingering “flashcards,” which I used in Rhythm Masters Book 1. I called them “Parent Aides,”; my thought being to involve parents in their child’s participation in learning to play an instrument. Like a parent’s helping their child with multiplication and division for math class using “flash cards.” I started with a set of the first five fingerings, for each instrument, on a half sheet of paper. I felt starting students out on a few “large” fingering maps initially made things easier to decode while they were getting used to using a fingering chart. Plus, they could keep it beside the page in the method book they were using for quick reference (if needed).
I numbered the initial fingering charts and flashcards from the numbers 1 through 5. I used 1 for concert “F.” I felt that “F” was a better starting note for most instruments, and it made more sense for beginners to work their way down the scale (brass players dropping their jaws). Although Scott Rush prefers “syllable” solfege (which is used in the “Habits” series), I always liked initially using “numbers,” being a concept that beginners could more easily grasp. I could also conduct with finger cues; to help get students to learn to follow their director and create various warm-ups “on the spot.” I also like using numbers to identify the different notes for each instrument (early on) so students do not have to deal with “transpositions” until after they have mastered their first five fingerings. You could always write the note names before copying the flashcards if that is your preference.
The “Level 1” flash cards included the same first five notes, which can be folded in half, presenting the note on each instrument’s staff on the front side, with its coinciding fingering on the back. I tried to make the fingering maps large enough so parents could decode them visually to confirm the students were performing the correct fingering when shown to them. Initially, I created and used these cards for my middle school band and drew them by hand. I realize they are not the most “artistic,” but they did the job. At that time, it was more common to start instruments (outside of the “main five”) after their beginning 5th or 6th-grade year, so initially, I only did the instrumentation I was using then. If you are interested, let me know, and I can try to complete flashcards for any additional instruments needed. If anyone out there is more confident with their “artistic abilities,” please feel free to make one of your own, and if you share it with me, I will gladly add it to the set of combined PDFs for any teacher’s future requests.
Finally, I included “Basic Staff Line and Space Recognition” sheets for all instruments to help students learn and review “note names” to “staff positions” for each instrument’s first five notes. These can be used as worksheets or easily modified for assessment if used. I will soon send you the rest of the “leveled” flash card curriculum in two (or possibly three) additional installments. Feel free to print out (and modify if you wish) none, one, or all of the future flash card segments presented. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me.
Rich Moon
843-875-5594
“Parent Aids” Level 2: Fingering Flash Cards for Beginners:
This Level is more of a worksheet than “flashcards,” so for Level 2, flashcards will not need to be cut out. The recognition speed is increased by requiring the students to identify and finger two notes per challenge. You can also use a metronome to begin working on the student skill of tempo consistency. The Level 2 exercises are designed to aid students through the transference of reading note heads written as whole notes to note shapes incorporating stems and the note heads filled in. On one page, students will have the two-note combinations on their staff that they read from while their parents or team partner check if the responses are correct on a separate answer sheet. Level 2 will use the challenge “numbers” to identify what two-note combination is being asked and where the “monitor” can find the answer. The concert “G” is added to our young musician’s fingering map repertoire at this level. I introduced the “G” in the “chromatic” flashcard series, which I used before introducing the Level 2 flashcards. Note that the fingering maps are pictured as if the person monitoring is looking at the instrument.
When your students practice Level 2 at home, try to encourage them to get a small pocket metronome, or a metronome app on an i-pad or i-phone. For those that cannot get one, have the parents watch their child’s foot as he or she does their daily drills. Check and be sure that the student is saying the flash card answers at a steady pace. The speed at which these drills are practiced is not nearly as important as the tempo consistency at which the two-note combinations are recited or performed. Tempo consistency will significantly aid in developing a child’s pulse conception and hopefully avoid fluctuating to accommodate more challenging fingering combinations. Your band parents make excellent allies, so use them. Just like using math flash cards to help their children to memorize multiplication and division tables. Parents, as co-participants, can use the answer sheet to call out the exercise numbers randomly. The child then quickly finds the corresponding measure on their staff sheet and, in time, correctly fingers and states both note names or performs the two notes as written. This strategy will also help your band students develop quick eye coordination, eventually aiding them in looking back and forth from their music to their director in rehearsals and performances. Here again, set smaller parameters first and then gradually expand as each student’s ability dictates. Start with drilling on numbers 1 to 10, then 1 to 20, etc. “Multi-Level Tasking” can still come into play, as some students are working on # 1 – 10, while others may be up to #1 – 60. When using the answer sheets, it is possible to have students still on Level I team up with Level II students as they drill each other and possibly compete for a class or section championships. I have found peer tutoring in this form can be very effective in preparing your slower students for future challenge levels.
The Level 2 sheet also is an OUTSTANDING warm-up for your beginning band. Using a metronome, playing just one (at most two) lines at a time, is an excellent fingering review guaranteed to accelerate your student’s fingering recognition. You can speed up the exercise with a metronome or go from the “half-note” to the “quarter note version of the sheet to increase fingering fluency. I have also used the “half-note” version of the Level 2 “flashcards” to “pre-teach” the concept of “cut-time” to first-year musicians.
A final benefit of Parent Aids Level 2 is helping your young brass players learn to adjust their jaw and embouchure to handle a large variety of interval skips. At the middle school level, most intervals performed are diatonic or thirds. Larger interval skips are rarely found in their repertoire, except for maybe low brass parts or occasional exercises that target them in their method books. The level 2 activities are constantly alternating between familiar and less common interval skips, “pre-teaching” an essential skill that will benefit brass players in the future.
Introduction to “Chromatic Fingering” Flashcards and Ensemble “Multi-Tasking”:
While some students are still drilling to become proficient at the introduction level, others can move on to the “chromatic” sequence, groups A, B, and possibly C. Some are trying to master five flashcards while others are preparing ten or even 15 cards, allowing students to work at their own pace. Students can then work in teams during class or with their parents at home, each at their level. An assessment or “check-off” system to determine if a student is ready to move on to the next level is needed, but this also allows the director to put some grades in the old grade book.
I tried setting up the groupings in Level I to coincide with the order in which they are most commonly introduced to the students in most band method books. The first five flashcards in “Chromatic” Level “A” is very similar to the original five introduction flashcards. The slightly smaller version of flashcards helps to gradually get students used to reading the size in most method books. I think that practicing reading fingering maps (using the concert Bb chromatic scale) is a good strategy. It also introduces students to breaking music down into “chunks” when trying to learn things such as scales. The “five fingerings at a time” strategy is an excellent one for students to continue to use to memorize their full chromatic scale as required by their band director.
The “Chromatic Flashcards” group “C” introduces the “break” on the clarinet and the more extreme beginner ranges for the brass. Group “C” also gives the rapidly advancing students time to memorize additional fingerings, giving them a little more time to develop before attempting to perform those notes physically. Directors can put together some “congratulations” card or “certification” form to recognize the student and their parents for a job “well done” and inform the parent of the student’s progress in class. The director may consider a “Karate Belt” award system or “Top Gun” for each instrument’s fastest recorded test time. Your students can continue to work on their speed skills and fingering dexterity to eventually “bump off” the present “Top Gun” and have their name replacing the previous champion on the “Wall of Fame.” That student remains on some “award board” until unseated by some other member of that section.
A final “game” or small group activity might be to take the cut-out flash cards and have your teams line them up or reconstruct the three-row grid in their actual “chromatic” order. You can choose whether to go from “low to high,” “high to low,” or alternate the directions if you do this activity multiple times. It is also a GREAT activity to use when you are having a substitute cover your class. After each team constructs their flashcard sequence, ask the teams to play through their final solution and ask if their answer “sounds” like a scale by “semi-tones?” The correct card number sequence (if going from “low to high”) would be; “15, 14, 5, 10, 4, 9, 3, 2, 8, 1, 7, 6, 13, 12, 11”. In addition to a small group activity, this could also be used as an individual assignment or assessment. Perhaps even issued as a class test or individual written worksheet by a visiting “sub.” After doing the activity multiple times, if students are still struggling with the concept, setting up a one-on-one “tutor with an apprentice approach” is a very effective remediation strategy.
Level III:
Level III begins featuring the concert “Bb” as the “lead” note for all your instruments. In this way, the student automatically knows what the first note will be, initially lowering the processing level required. The concentration is then on the preceding note names and fingerings at the more rapid performance tempo of eighth notes. The students expand to additional Flash Cards, each set with a different “lead” note, yet still covering all of the different potential ”skip” sequences. Eventually, the flash card sets can be mixed together and any one of the five notes can be the “lead” note. Students must be able to identify the full repertoire of note fingerings they have been exposed to up to this point, as (using a metronome) they perform them at a faster 8th note tempo.
In addition to performing at the Sub Level “A” time line, or eight note tempo, another factor addressed at this level are the performance of eighth rests. OOOOPS!!!!!! did I use the “r” word? Sorry. To some of our younger musicians just learning to play an instrument, a “rest” denotes a slight break or pause, possibly a short vacation (like to the Bahamas), and sometimes even a complete BRAIN SHUT DOWN! For this reason, I try to come up with some different term, like “durations of silence” instead. Come up with whatever term works best for you, and please, if you come up with any really good suggestions, forward them to me. All music educators need to find a way to stress to our young musicians that the positions on our rhythm time lines where we do not make a sound are equally important as those when we do. In most cases, we need to highlight or “showcase” the silent durations since they are more often “mis-performed” than the actual notes themselves.
There have been several GREAT!!! books written and published that concentrate on the accurate performance of “rests.” These are fantastic resources as well. The tendency among many of our students is to count with great care the notes they see, but “guess” at the value of the rests. It is common among many beginners, and even some moderately experienced players, to view the length of a 16th rest, is the same as an 8th and is the same as a quarter rest. Adding extra “counts” in measures can also be a result of our students “guessing” at their rest values. They simply insert some kind of “pause”, that to them, seems logical. It is imperative that the musician thinks through, or actually pictures the appropriate rhythm time line as he or she performs both the notes and their silent counterparts. The time line that should be used is normally determined by the shortest note or rest value in each measure. As an example, using the cumulative system in “Rhythm Masters” series, 16th notes and rests are identified by the “dot” time line, 8th notes by “dashes” etc… Possible additional counting strategies can include; “whole language recognition”, “verbalization”, “sounding out phonetically”, “place holders”, “fill in the gaps”, “analytical shorthand”, “anchors”, and “inversions”, all of which may be discussed at a later time.
To initially introduce this concept of silence within a time line, the third level also requires that the students identify the proper position of a single eighth rest on each Flash Card. This answer sheet now assumes that our students have mastered the correct fingerings of their first six notes, and shows the correct note names on the staff . Also, using a very basic time line graph of the student’s foot position, on which foot stroke the silence is to be performed in each flash card. This is indicated using “( )” above the appropriate down or up arrow rather than a letter from the alphabet giving the correct note name. In class, it is suggested that both Levels II & III should be performed at a targeted sixty beats per minute. The shifting from pulse to subdivision itself will move your students along through the various levels of challenge. If needed, Multi-Level Tasking still works beautifully as some students work on the quarter note and others on the eighth note flash cards.
The Fingering Flash Card “Drill Down” Game:
Another idea to challenge your beginners is a “Drill Down Tournament”. A metronome is needed to push your student contestants to more challenging game levels by gradually increasing the performance tempo. A metronome, a person striking a wood block, or even clicking a pair of sticks, can be used by the director. You might want to free up the director for more accurate assessment, and even a pervious “Drill Down” class champion can be used to keep a steady beat. The students can compete in this game using both Level II or III flash cards, depending on their present ability levels. This ability to apply Multi-Level tasking allows everyone to participate in the game, and all members to equally contribute to their teams success. Follow the regular Flash Card drill procedures, starting both levels at 60 beats per minute, and then gradually speeding up the tempo each round.
Establish how many “strikes” each student gets before he or she is eliminated from the competition. Cut strips of colored paper lengthwise, about two inches wide, and fold them in half. As each student is assessed a strike, place one strip over his or her side of the music stand. To determine how many strikes each player should get, consider such factors as: the length of your class period, the size of your class, etc.. If you do not want to eliminate any students from the game, and want to keep them all active throughout the full period, simply set your class up into two teams. As you go back and forth between the teams, record the number of points received during each student’s turn. One, two or three team points will be issued, depending on how many correct Flash Card responses are given at the indicated tempo. The tempo is increased throughout the competition, eliminating the players, until a single class champion remains. If you use the team approach, complete the last round as class time permits, then add up the team points and declare your winning team.
“Parent Aids #4” Supplemental:
Dear Directors,
Attached are two additional “supplemental” sheets I used in the “Parent Aids” series. Sorry about going back to “hand drawing” everything out, but again, I created and used this stuff 30+ years ago. Also, back then, it was common not to start double reed players in beginning bands in this area. I used the “Three Way Fingering Work Sheets” frequently, but for a short period, until the beginners all “locked in” the first five note fingerings. It isolates all aspects of note names and fingerings into three two-dimensional drills; note names to fingerings, note names to the location on staff, and the location on staff to fingerings. I might use these as; daily review sheets (pre-warm up), one of the projects whenever I had a substitute visiting, or to occupy beginners when I was breaking down instrument assembly or some other task by specific instrument groupings. It also helped ensure that students had a pencil on their stand, ready to go if needed later during band class.
I used the “Four Key Fingering Drills” as a warm-up exercise to help beginners get comfortable and used to reading “fingering maps.” I started using it once students were solid with their first five notes to help with “pre-teaching” the first five notes of the following four scales we would be addressing in the “not too distant” future. By the time we started teaching complete scales, they already had the first five fingering sequences well established by “muscle memory” in the additional concert keys of Ab, C, Db, and Eb. I would also sometimes use “finger cues” (at the bottom of each fingering) to mix up the order to help students read fingering charts with more fluidity.
Sincerely,
Rich Moon