Alaina Sheridan, M.M., MT-BC
If you give a student music they can read, they might ask for more. And when they ask for more, you know they’re ready to explore. And when that happens, you know the student has bought into their music education. But when the student is learning to read, and play, and use their hands in new ways all at the same time… what makes them want more? How can we as educators approach music literacy in an accessible way that meets the standards and the needs of students today?
I currently teach private traditional and adapted music lessons, and like many music educators, I utilize iconic notation. A quarter note becomes a pear and an eighth note an apple. A triplet turns into a grape soda while sixteenth notes become watermelon. We explore different ways of moving our bodies with music and finding new items that fit into the rhythms we are creating. In my practice, I have found iconic notation to be foundational when teaching emerging readers and neurodiverse students. For quite a while, many of my beginner students who started at the same time all thrived on games, visuals, and recreating phrases using iconic notation on the piano. They composed and learned how to write rhythms, they learned how to write within a time signature, they could identify the treble clef note names, and they learned that music was fun. But as my students have grown throughout the years, the need to expand my repertoire for more challenging, yet still accessible, notation became apparent. My challenge as a teacher was figuring out how to engage the students with what they love and what they needed to find success in their music learning journey.
In reflection, as a new teacher, I was in over my head. I had very little community in a brand new city, I had just started teaching straight from undergrad, and I did not have the knowledge of resources that I do today. I made mistakes. I tried to recreate the music lessons I had taken and it did not work. My students, who had just been laughing and working with their bright and creative ideas in the previous lesson, found themselves staring at black and white sheet music. The piece of music with a title that made no sense in the method book with a singular color picture that was almost related to the song they were being asked to play. I gave my students music that was inaccessible and held no meaning to them. Suddenly, I found myself barely hanging on, trying to teach correct fingerings, notes on the staff, and rhythms all at once. And if I was barely hanging on, I imagined that some of my students had already let go.
I had to quickly self-assess and figure out why their music-making experience had changed so drastically in a week. Theoretically, they were ready for sheet music. They understood rhythm and note names and could even pair those together. But what I gave them was not the music they expected. They had learned that music was bright, colorful, fun, and relatable. For so many weeks and months, we used their favorite foods, movies, colors, and sports to talk about music. They learned which rhythms made the same sound as their favorite afterschool snacks and which note name had their favorite color. They reluctantly found every “French fry” and “cheese” in the new music and played some of the right notes, but they were quickly losing interest in learning.
Here is where a teacher could say something along the lines of “sometimes we have to do things we don’t like.” And those teachers are right. Music lessons teach a diverse set of skills that are applicable in nearly every area of a person’s life. Musicians learn to be patient, to work with others, to persevere, and so much more. I believe it would have been okay we had just pushed through the transition between beginner lessons to more traditional music learning. But I did not want my students to have an “okay” experience. I wanted to see them fall in love with music because I have seen and experienced the drastic amounts of burnout musicians face. Burnout can impact every ounce of your being and can quickly become unmanageable if you are already good at “pushing through it.”
So I searched for something that was going to make the transition to traditional music notation smoother. When I found adapted music notation, I felt like I should have known to search for something like this all along. Hal Leonard had already created the resource that I needed and it was called the “E-Z Play Today” series. They had books with different genres, movies, and artists, and so many single copies of music sold individually on Sheet Music Direct and other sites. Black and white music, with traditional notation, on a staff but with the note names in the note heads… and it was all music they knew. Suddenly, my brain lit up with possibilities. Uptown Funk by Bruno Mars, You’ve Got a Friend in Me from Toy Story, and Shake it Off by Taylor Swift were the first three songs I purchased on Sheet Music Direct. I planned my lessons that week around the songs so that iconic notation was not suddenly gone, but it was supporting our new music. I came in ready to sell it to the students, but I didn’t really have to sell it. They were hooked again as soon as they recognized the title.
The students spent the week looking at a song on staff paper and learning to match the note names on the paper with the keys on the piano. Slowly developing the skill of reading music without looking down and starting to build on their foundational rhythm skills from their iconic notation work. I started worrying less about correct fingerings and more about letting my students connect with the music they love. They had developed strong foundations and just needed one extra step before transitioning to traditional notation. So we worked with adapted notation for a while, some of my students will still use it when needed or if they just want to play something quick and fun.
My students learned to read music without looking at their hands, how to play basic chords to accompany themselves, and how to find accidentals in a song. They had an opportunity to build on their skills without having to learn everything new all at once. I supplemented additional music literacy worksheets, games, and visuals to continue supporting note name identification, composition, and rhythm skills. Once I started to build my resource collection, I knew where to find quality materials online and was able to produce more worksheets and items myself. One of the challenges for new music teachers is that they often just do not know where to look for materials. I encourage new teachers to seek out community and build a strong collection of go-to resources as they develop their teaching style.
If you give your student music they can read, they will want more. If you give your student music with meaning, they will learn it. And if you give yourself the chance to do something different, your students willlearn. There will always be a place for traditional music notation in the world of music. But I am here asking you: How can adapted music notation support young musicians? In a world of distraction, redirection, and shortening attention spans, what if adapted music could create more accessibility and more musicians?
Alaina Sheridan is a board-certified music therapist working in Lexington, Kentucky. She obtained her undergraduate degrees in music therapy and music education from Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania and went on to earn a Master’s in Music Therapy from the University of Kentucky. Her current research interests include accessibility and social emotional supports in music environments. She can be reached via email at alainakstroud@gmail.com
