Help with student?

konaboy

Pioneer Member
How do you teach a student who really struggles with reading music? I'm teaching a new student with previous music lesson background and I know the other music teacher, she's an excellent teacher.

This student is really struggling, been on the same lesson for 3 weeks now dealing with quarter notes, eighth notes and quarter rests. They can count the notes in each measure but execution is difficult.

Any thoughts on how to get them through this road block?

They do pretty good with the rudiments I've given the past few weeks, it's the reading that's the issue.

Thanks,
Kona
 
I'm really not sure. But I know if I struggle with reading something, I try going very slowly
and only play one measure at a time.

Example:
Measure one: Read and think the rythm, read and sing/say the rythm, then read and play
the rythm. And repeat (play) measure one 4-8 times times

Afterwards I do the same with measure 2 and then stick them together (read and think,
read and sing/say, read and play), then measure 3, 4, etc. But I always read the rythm
as I play it. That way I think my eyes recognize that "this is the way that rythm sounds".
I don't know if it's the right way of doing it, but it helps me get through reading
stuff. Then you could give them a page with different rythms and the same degree of
difficulty. Now have the students do the same approach, but with 2 and 2 measures at
a time (or 4 and 4 measures at a time/1 line at a time/etc).

As I said, this is how I get through hard reading stuff. But maybe it helps =)
 
yeah I've gone measure by measure and taking it slow.

I gave him a new lesson (to get his mind off the one he's been doing and struggling with), same difficulty level and told him to write out the count for each note above it to see if that helps
 
Sometimes if a student is struggling with this I'll demonstrate on guitar or piano, so that they get the idea that notes have "length" that we don't hear on drums.

I've taught students as young as 4 to read quarters, eighth, and half notes, usually by having them speak the names of the notes aloud. For example, you would say:

"Quar-ter - Quar-ter - eighth - eighth - Quar-ter" Or "Quar-ter - Quarter - Half - Note"

First get them to speak the rhythms aloud, and then they play as they count aloud.

I had one 10 year old who was really struggling. Couldn't play quarter notes evenly to save his life. We listened to his favorite song three times and counted "one two three four" out loud through the whole song, as I'm guiding him to not slow down or speed up. After we did that, we played with one stick on our pads as we counted aloud along to the song. Then the other hand. Then alternating RLRL. I made it clear that even spacing was priority #1, and we were going to work on it in every lesson until he got it. It took about six lessons, but it finally sank in and he's been a great student since. During this time I noticed he did much better when I pointed with my finger along the page as he played, and he told me he has trouble reading aloud in school. I suspect (but have not confirmed) that his eyes have trouble "tracking" along the page.
 
I have have students with this issue. I got rid of the books...work on subdivision on the snare drum...quarters,eights,triples,16th notes...Have the student pedal quarter notes between the base drum and hi-hat. We also worked on palying to music.
Once they understand the subdivisions I slowly introduce written material. I have some student that are very good groove drummers..they just have a hard time reading music. Densi
 
He's had piano for a number of years.

I'm not introducing him to drum set music rather just single line snare drum. I like to know that they can read basics first before I put them behind the kit with multi line music.
 
I have no answer for your issue but perhaps the student just isnt going to be a musician. We all have skills and weaknesses. I often read many threads where people are struggling and looking for answers to improve but by their text you can kinda see that being a drummer, as much as they desire to be, isnt for them.

If the student has hopes of a career as a drummer they will have to work extra hard by the sound of it in order to get where some people are from week two. I hope you know what I'm saying... some people are mathematicians and others are philosophers. A good teacher will direct a student to their strengths while offering help on their shortcoming. I'm not attempting to speak on you're teaching ability just to say that we all cant be great or even good drummers.... regardless of our love for the instrument.

as you can tell... I'm no writer lol
 
Have the student count the beats when playing rudiments or a beat. When I was learning this helped a lot. In fact I still do it now when I'm trying to figure a syncopated beat in a strange time signature or something.

If there's only quarter notes in the beat.rudiment just have him/her count 1,2,3,4
If there's any eight notes then 1,and, 2, and, 3, and 4, and
If there's any sixteenth notes then 1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a

Hope this helped.
 
It's hard to say without being present, but some students require a lot of creativity and even more patience. I'll say that I've had a number of kids who seemed to have absolutely zero aptitude for music finally begin to come around after months- or over a year, in a couple of cases.
 
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