Musical notation made easy

Younger Daughter has been working on reading music and now has come up to ledger lines-those little lines which are used when the stave has run out of lines so that higher or lower notes can be fitted in. Her teacher has provided some helpful mnemonics but adding extra notes was a challenge.

So we decided to try a multi-sensory way of remembering. This involved

• playdough for notes
• spaghetti for lines in the stave
• white paper
• magnetic letters-could be replaced with labels
• ribbon or pipe cleaner for the clef-putting the ribbon or pipe cleaner into the correct shape was the most difficult part!

We set the notes out

Treble clef-notes in spaces

Treble clef-notes on lines

Bass clef-notes in spaces

It was then easy to add ledger lines and work out the names of notes.

Something strange has happened to the bass clef but this does show the principle well.

Hopefully, this will translate into easier recall of the note names and will be easy to set up again, for review.

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