Description
PREMISE
SIGNS AND SOUNDS is a series of coloring books created by Joan Yakkey for children to learn musical notation and its execution by singing or by using instruments, designing and improvising lessons.
This recent volume “SIGNS AND SOUNDS for young musicians” is a beginner’s METHOD for PIANO that utilizes the same philosophy as the coloring books for studying the rudiments of solfeggio. The children learn to understand musical notation and interpretation by improvising melodic and chordal structures on the piano that refer to life relationships with which they are already familiar. In this new volume, they can transfer the relationships to the keyboard, following the general story line and suggestions that the written score offers.
It is not necessary at first to understand the exact keyboard notes to interpret the music provided. The children should acquire a wider view and interpretation of a musical idea, and gradually narrow down their studies to specific notes, keys and rhythm. Different tonalities and modal scales are imbedded in the musical examples. White and Black keys are used equally.
In this volume, rhythm is interpreted relatively: white notes are longer than black notes, quarter notes are longer than eighth and sixteenth notes etc. The children will learn to be mobile on the keyboard and will think of playing musical motifs in a spatial sense, moving hands along the keyboard, repeating melodies or chords, without thinking about the specific notes one at a time. The “design” of the music is what we are asking a young student to notice and interpret.
For the most part, the rests are missing, the sequence of notes from one hand to the other are obvious by their position on the staff. Key Signatures and bar lines are also missing. Children are encouraged to develop their own ideas, drawings, graphic images and corresponding musical notes on the great staff; they should develop personal titles that reflect their own musical ideas.