What Music Looks Like

As promised, here is your first installment from "Our Kindermusik Share Wall."

Many a piano student has sat frustratedly staring at a piece of paper with notes written on it, wishing desperately to be able to read the darn thing or at least to read it better or faster or more easily. One of the big secrets that piano teachers share is that a piece of sheet music is much like a map, it is a drawing of sounds. Notes that are drawn high on the page make high sounds when you sing or play them. Notes that are drawn low on the page make low sounds when you sing or play them. And that is only one of the many ways in which written music is a very graphic representation of what we hear.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could all learn that concept before we started to try to read music? Well, that's what our students in Kindermusik for the Young Child are doing right now. (In fact, that is something the students in Imagine That! sometimes talk about as well.) Last week, our Young Child students, listened to a recording with moments of musical sound and moments of silence and were asked to draw in response to what they heard. The result (above) is something quite fascinating to see, a graphic representation of sound and silence. Who knew the beginnings of learning to write (and read) music could look so lovely and feel like so much fun?