Introduction

There are many resources on-line, at web sites and on videos, that can explain Notation much better than I can. The deeper explanations they offer are to be welcomed. This collection of ideas from my point of view comes from the years I spent teaching young children how to understand the sheet music they would find on their desks. Of course if I was a trained music teacher I would have followed a more generic approach. However the school I taught at had gone through several teachers in the years preceding my tenure. When I had to prepare for the task if being a teacher I quickly learned to distance myself from the current approaches most were taking. My job was to HAVE FUN.Singing, dancing, learning history & science, it all made sense to me and we had a ball. We constantly wrote our own music. We learned about the rich tradition of Western Music, from Handel to Bowie. We spent a lot time enjoying the Golden Age of American popular music. We wrote our own musicals and still had time to perform West Side Story and The Mikado. All of that required reading sheet music. That was the key to having all the fun. Hope you learn it too.So, forgive my lack of precision and the mistakes I too often make in the explanations offered. This is just a very simple introduction to my approach to teaching a much more nuanced subject.

Music can be magical.

It can be overwhelming, or gentle.

It’s power has been fascinating people forever.

There was a man who lived about 2500 years ago who sought to find out what made musical sounds so interesting, especially the relationship between two important notes. His name was Pythagorus. He plucked a string to study sound, then found out some of the magic.

When you make the second string vibrate twice as fast as the first, the new sound you make almost disappears.

He created the series of notes we all learn as “Do, Re, Mi…”. The two most pleasing notes were the two Dos. We call it the OCTAVE today.

Why that is so interesting, and much more, will be explained in the following chapters.

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