Transcribing Music in All Keys?
Found in: Reading, Scale & Key Signature
Fiona H., Australia
I have a quick question, am wondering if anyone can help me….
If we have students writing, writing, writing through RR and RN, then, how do they keep writing when they want to write their music in a key that is not C? (and not using accidentals).
Sounds a simple question, but I will rephrase: what I mean is – by following the RN program, we don’t teach note names on the stave/staff (except the location points of C in the regions). If that is the way all teachers have been teaching – then, when we come to key signature and the scale journey, then how do students write their own composition if they have never been taught what #’s and b’s go on which line and space so they can write the key signature in at the beginning of their music?
Yes, we do teach FCGDAEB and BEADGCF etc – this is great. But, pretend a student has been raised within SM curriculum, without traditional background – and now they know the order (and name of # and b’s using the above), but how do they know WHERE to write their # and b on the stave? Do we have an extra trick that we slot in as we chat about the scale journey – to enable the students to keep writing using key signature??
Or do generative students stop writing when we reach First signs of winter (TFMM)? 🙂 (that is really the consequence of not teaching what the note names are on the stave I assume!)…
Gordon Harvey, Australia
The first answer to this might be simply not to worry about the key signature and let the student write accidentals against each applicable note. This would be appropriate if the student is relatively new to key signature, and they just needed to get their song down on paper before they forgot it. If writing the song in its correct key adds too many thought processes, it may be counter-productive.
If you decide that including the key signature is developmentally appropriate (and leaving aside any considerations about whether the student knows what is the correct key signature for their song), you could have them find the sharps or flats in the key by reverse-engineering. So if the key is 2b, they look at the first flat (B) on the keyboard and see that it’s a second below C. Then they find a second below C on the page and write their flat there. Repeat the process for the second flat. That’s a great generative exercise. Of course, it doesn’t tell you which second below C to use. Well, I’d just tell them which one – no big deal.
One thing you may not have noticed is that the key signatures follow a pattern. This is best illustrated by the flat keys. If you have a copy of “Home” from Foundation 6, you’ll see it’s in the key of 6b. Looking at the treble clef, you see that the first flat is on the middle line. The next one is up a 4th. The next is down a 5th. Next is up a 4th, next down a 5th, last up a 4th. Visually, you’ll see they form two parallel lines a 4th apart, or you might see a zig-zag. This makes them very easy to figure out once you know the starting position. The sharp keys form an equivalent pattern of down a 4th, up a 5th etc. The only trouble is that from the starting positions in each clef you end up overshooting the stave, so in both clefs, at some point, they break the pattern by going down a 4th instead of up a 5th. If you look at the keyboard, you’ll notice that down a 4th is the same note as up a 5th, so it’s really still following the same rules, it’s just not as visually neat.
I would just supervise the students’ discovery of these relationships, seeing how much they can self-generate and stepping in with advice when you feel they are close to being overwhelmed. It would be a great conversation at some stage to unfold the patterns on your whiteboard. This would be especially true of a student who you think wouldn’t be able to figure this out themselves. At that point, I wouldn’t care if they wrote up the keys up to, say, 7#/7b, in their manuscript book. You wouldn’t have to write up each key, just the 7# and 7b keys, since all the other keys are visible from them.