As a guitar teacher for kids aged 6-10, one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced is the steep learning curve presented by traditional notation. It’s no secret that learning to read music is like learning an entirely new language, and for children, that whole process is about 10x harder.
Noteflight Learn totally changes that! Yes, there is still a learning curve, but by bringing notation into the digital realm (where the children of today essentially live), Noteflight Learn makes the process of learning to read music that much easier. Here’s how:
Creating Is The Best Form Of Learning
Learning to read music is one thing; learning to write it is another. If there’s one thing I’ve found, it’s that the students who see the most success in learning guitar are those who spend time coming up with their own melodies and writing them out. The problem is, children tend not to be the best at drawing straight lines, and even those who use printed notation paper still face a major issue: there is no feedback. When you’re writing at a score by hand, you can’t hear what you’re writing down, which makes it tough to know you’re writing out what you’re playing correctly.
An Interactive Learning Environment
The pure fact that Noteflight Learn takes standard notation out of the pen and paper world and into a fully-interactive, touch-ready platform is a huge gain for music teachers. That’s because students can actually hear notes as they are writing them in, which bolsters their note recognition skills and gives them a much better sense of how each symbol on the screen relates to the note they’re playing on their physical instrument. The same goes for learning about rhythms and note lengths. The difference between a quarter note/crotchet and a half note/minim on paper is fairly arbitrary. In Noteflight Learn, students can learn about note lengths by hearing the difference between different symbols.
No More Lost Sheets
I can’t tell you the number of times students would show up without their music books or with soaking wet music sheets. Worse still, loose sheets of paper (as hard as we try not to use them) with explanations, diagrams, and scores, all too often get lost. But I can tell you this: that tablet or laptop is not getting forgotten. And in the event that a student does leave their device at home, all of the music we’ve been working on is already there in mine!
Making Group Lessons Easy
Music teachers with classes of 20+ face these same issues multiplied, and it makes it super difficult to teach group lessons. Noteflight makes teaching groups of music students simple, as you can readily share new scores with all students at once.
Try It For Yourself
If you’re sick of the pencil and paper world, and you’re ready to embrace a new way of teaching guitar and music notation, check out a free 60-day trial of Noteflight Learn.
About the Author: Ellie McKinsey is a staff writer at Know Your Instrument. Be sure to check out some of her other work today!