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Mandy H., Tennessee

Personally, I change it to whatever they’re already familiar with. Changing terminology is just confusing, and it’s only one piece of a very big puzzle. Same goes for rhythm syllables like ta, ti-ti, tiri-tiri, tika-tika, etc, etc. Lots of rhythm naming systems which all make sense. Better we adjust than the student.

Leeanne I., Australia

Mandy but then you are not teaching them Simply Music. Why bother doing the RR program at all?

Stephen R., California

Leeanne I agree! Teach the SM approach and terminology in entirety. It’s non-traditional for many different reasons! It’s a whole different way of thinking (learning).

Mandy H., Tennessee

Leeanne that’s not the case at all. I love the program because it is playing based. The only problem I have with it is the rhythm reading. Sorry for being honest, but I have a masters in music education and 30 hours beyond that, and that’s my honest, well-informed opinion. I’m also a professional organist, and reading music is my jam. There are students who already understand the rhythmic relationships and concepts, and there’s no reason to force them to “learn” rhythm if they already get it. I think if Neil took a Kodaly, Dalcroze, Orff, or Music Learning Theory course, he would be able to do amazing things with it – probably far more than any of those leaders in music literacy have done. That’s all I’m saying. Neil’s a genius, but as he admits, reading was not his forte.

Leeanne I., Australia

Mandy that’s fine, you are entitled to your opinion. Look at it this way, what if your students don’t really get the reading rhythm concepts they have been taught? You are offering them an alternative view. This might be enough for a light switch to be turned on in their brain, which is what happened with me. I am not knocking your degree or training in other methods, but I think this can actually get in the way of really seeing the SM concepts sometimes. If your students get RR quickly, great, push them through RR quickly.

Stephen R., California

Mandy I like the Reading Rhythm program but I know it’s not comprehensive with rhythm (ie no dotted eighths are presented, no combinations of eighths and two sixteenths shown, no triplets or grouplets and no 32nds or 64ths). Maybe one or two of the earlier pages could be trimmed. I’m still a little unsure about the MOR 5’s and 6’s with notes across different lines/spaces and the clefs. I think it’s just supposed to show how actual music looks, but we ignore the clefs, etc.

I also use the Read & Play supplementary series for extra practice but once students are reading actual music we don’t see anything with 16ths for quite a while. The Mirron is the first with those in the program! Everything else I supplement tends to be entry level for most students.

I know Neil is listening. Hi Neil Moore! 😁

Mark M., New York

Stephen Re: The Mirron being the first with sixteenth notes in the Curriculum: well, no, it just may be the first time a piece is learned from the page with sixteenth notes 🙂 RR (and RN) by design have us refer to previous Music Books as source material for deepening understanding of reading concepts by joining them to familiar Playlist pieces — this is explicitly indicated as one of the very key reasons we maintain a Playlist. Well before The Mirron, multiple Playlist pieces include sixteenths — and we have the opportunity to use those Music Books to make those connections. My Reading Repertoire Program, available through Laurie Richards’ Ivory League, is explicitly designed to simplify teachers’ ability source material from Music Books to maximize student benefit from all that previously learned material. https://ivoryleague.thinkific.com/courses/reading-repertoire

[answer author="Ian B., California"]

Stephen Your example of 1/8 and 2 16ths is actually a perfect application of the single vs double relationship. I don’t teach it that way and I agree that it’s a rhythm not covered in the program. But it is a good way to reinforce that relationship

Mandy I agree that experienced students need not “relearn” rhythm. It’s more of a point of application whereby certain terminology will need to be explained. But much of that can be done in an accelerated manner, maybe even a simple conversation when a fork in terminology is discovered.

I have stuck with the singles/doubles/quads terminology even with more experienced students. I just talk them through the lingo in a setup conversation at the beginning, and ask for a little bit of trust that there is a method to the madness, and that we will switch back to fractions soon. With experienced students, I also breeze through the first few modules and generally end up slowing down when we get to ties. Even more experienced students have to spend more time on that and dotted rhythms.

The benefit to learning this way (single/double/quad) is that later down the track, even very complex rhythms and time signatures can be understood as a variation of those RELATIONSHIPS…rather than just fractions or nomenclature.

For example: Fur Elise is written in a 3/8 time signature which becomes a bit confusing to someone who only understands 8th notes as even divisions of a quarter note. If you show an SM student that the 8th notes have now become the “Singles” and the time signature is asking them to “Count to 3 using 8ths” then the numerous 16th notes are now just “doubles” and appear much easier to read and count.

Stephen R., California

Ian Yes, and I have had conversations with students about 3/8, 6/8, 9/8 and 12/8 time signatures being compound time and the “beat” is divided into three eighth notes. The beat as distinct from counts or even pulses of the beat. I have seen this terminology reversed in traditional theory books too so there is a bit of confusion on this terminology too.

Mark M., New York

Reading Rhythm does not simply present alternative terminology. It presents concepts distinct from individual notes. A quad isn’t a sixteenth note. It’s a group of four of them. A double isn’t an eighth. It’s a group of two of them. Those groups are meant to be seen and processed as whole entities in themselves, equivalent in total duration to a quarter note. If we don’t name and use them as entities, we lose sight of how Reading Rhythm’s MOR exercises are structured.

Neil also talks in the TTM about how SDQ is not just about about quarter/eighth/sixteenth. That it can apply later on to any set of three consecutive levels of notes to help process more advanced rhythms, e.g., 16th 32nd 64th. The concept of SDQ may in one way be an introductory thing to be moved beyond, yes, but only as concepts distinct from individual note names, and in another way it is not just introductory at all.

That said, when we get to the “new” ingredients, half and whole notes, they are introduced as individual notes, in themselves, outside the idea/structure of SDQ-as-three-equal-ingredients. They don’t fit that scheme.

If students already know note names, I say please let’s use SDQ for now and not their regular names. Nothing is lost by this, and only clarity in processing MOR exercises is gained. But when the new ingredients arrive, I allow us to use their names, because it doesn’t compromise the structure of the learning the way leaving out the SDQ language would.

Mandy H., Tennessee

Mark I turned to this method because I was tired of teaching music through the multiple methods I learned as a long-time general and choral music teacher in three different methodologies. However, if a student already UNDERSTANDS those relationships, there’s absolutely no reason to have him return to something more primitive. I’m in the DC area where students have really good general music in the elementary classroom. As someone who taught it for over 20 years, I know. If they hadn’t understood, I would have talked about it some other way. I love Simply Music, but I’ll have to say the reading part (strictly speaking as someone with lots and lots of training in multiple research-based music teaching methodologies and with multiple apologies to Neil Moore, who is a genius) is what I find to be the weakest link.

Stephen R., California

Mandy I find this entire reading program far superior to any traditional method I have used and I used a lot before SM! Never seen reading notes and intervals presented this way which is great from my perspective.

Mandy H., Tennessee

I like the intervallic melody reading. The rhythmic reading can probably be improved upon.

Terah W., Kansas

I agree! There are hidden and maybe even latent benefits to processing these things almost like playthings. Once you are super ‘friendly’ with all of them, everything gets easier.

One of my most delightful discoveries with teaching SM was realizing how much better my own reading skills got—rhythm AND notes. And my reading was never an issue; I cannot remember learning to read and it was a minute or two ago. But imagine my delight picking up a Disney book (a good one!) and playing ‘You’ve Got a Friend in Me’ and ‘You Ain’t Never Had a Friend Like Me’ with nary a miss. And I was like, “…..wait….what just happened?!?” I can tell you: Rhythm Reading and Reading Notes from Simply Music. Just trust the method and the Man. (Salute, Neil!😘)

Laurie Richards, Nebraska

As Ian mentioned, the purpose of the terminology is to instill an understanding of the relationships between the different note types. They can be used later on to simplify complex rhythms. I did a free webinar on this a few years ago. If you’re interested, here’s a link to the webinar:

https://ivoryleague.thinkific.com/courses/teaching-advanced-rhythm