Teaching the Beginning Mallet Player By Mark Wessels

Teaching the Beginning Mallet Player
By Mark Wessels

Why is it that beginning percussionists have a hard time learning to READ keyboard music?! It always seems that other students in the band learn to read music faster, even though they have major roadblocks to overcome - forming an embouchure, using the air, developing the muscles around the lips - all before they can play a single note on their instrument. In contrast, beginning mallet players don't have to worry about anything except hitting a bar on the keyboard with a mallet!

The answer is complex but also very simple: there are so many inherent problems when learning to sightread on keyboard percussion instruments that many young players get discouraged and simply quit trying! We have set them up to fail from the beginning because we have not taken the steps to identify and address these problems!

Let's Identify the Problems

If you've spent any time at all trying to play on a beginning bell set, most of the problems are easy to figure out. Here are a few physical issues involved with the bells themselves:

• Size of bars vs. size of mallets

• Screws in the middle of the bars

• Players do not TOUCH the keys like every other instrumentalist

The solution to most of these problems is to have each student start out on a marimba with full sized keys - and for each beginner to have one at home for practice! That would be fantastic, but let's get back to reality. We're stuck with the hand we've been dealt. So, let's go through some other contributing factors to poor note reading habits.

We have to agree with the basic premise that beginners cannot learn to READ music without keeping their eyes ON the printed page! Do a quick experiment: Look at a word in this paragraph, look away for a second or two, then try to find your place again. Now, if the page was in Russian, could you do it? Remember that students learning to read music are learning a new language! Here are a few causes to the problem of students not being able to keep their eyes on the music:

• Whole notes at the beginning of most band method books contribute to "wandering eyes" Ð plus the lines are easy to memorize!

• Page layout and note sizes make it hard to find your place in the music if you glance away for a second.

• Most beginning bell books start with the natural keys. It's the easiest to explain, because there are no accidentals to deal with. The problem is that the key of C is the most difficult to play on keyboard because the naturals are farther from the line of sight than the accidentals. Also, there is nothing visually to break up the row of keys.

• Some beginner mallet books begin with a full octave range, and proceed to teach new keys above and below the staff within a short amount of time. Students don't have time to feel comfortable with a FEW notes before adding others. Imagine teaching a preschooler, "Okay, today we're going to learn the alphabet, tomorrow, you'll be reading!"

• Interval jumps (especially octaves) are VERY difficult to play without looking down. Actually, I'll bet that most of the instructors can't even do it on a marimba!

• Rolls are next to impossible to play on small keys EVEN while you're looking at your sticks!

• You can make a good grade on your tests if you memorize!

Solving the Problems

Some of these problems have easy solutions. Some cannot be overcome except with diligent practice on the part of the student (isn't that always the case?). The purpose here is to eliminate as many of the problems as possible so that the students can be successful.

• Develop the right habits early!

• Cover up the engraved note names with a piece of tape

• Never share music

• Place the stand as close to the keys as possible

• Eyes on the music, not on the bars

• Center the music on the stand

To blatantly obvious, there is not much to teaching reading music on the mallet percussion instruments. No mysteries about embouchure, air speed, etc. For beginners to learn to READ music, two things have to happen:

1. The student has to be able to recognize the notes on the staff and

2. They have to be able to find that note on the keyboard (and whack it with a mallet).

So, rather than approach this as a beautiful musical experience, I've had more success by applying a "typing class" mentality to teaching note reading on the bell set:

• Keep the eyes on the printed page! Since mallet percussionists do not "touch" the keys, it's important to explain how peripheral vision is used to "see" the keys without looking directly at them. The development of this habit is paramount to music reading!

• Start on the "home" keys. The closest keys to the printed page are the accidentals. Since they are also in groups, they are even easier to see with the peripheral vision. If you are stuck using a band method book for your beginner class, try re-writing the lines!

Here is an example of the first line from a popular band method book (this is also about the printed size of the original, although it's at the top of a page). Notice how small the notes are!

If you were 10 years old, playing this line in the back of the band hall at m.m.=100, would YOU keep your eyes on the music? Do you think you could resist the temptation to look down at the keys? I bet you'd have time to set a small fire & still be back in time to play the next note!

Now take a look at the rewritten part:

Take a look at the SIZE of the music, the rhythms involved, etc. Ideally, there should not be a measure of rests between each measure because that encourages kids to take their eyes off the music, but I'll leave that up to you. What do you think? Is it easier to read? If you wrote out several lines like this for each of the 'whole note lines' in the band method, your students would most likely keep their eyes on the music to avoid the dreaded "playing in the rest" mistake!

Repetition and Reinforcement

Another key to learning to read music for the beginner is REINFORCEMENT. Introduce a note or two, then grind it into them until they can't help but remember it! Remember typing class? "j j j j f f f f f k k k k k d d d d d j f k k f j d k d . . . Obviously, it's hard to be THAT repetitious when teaching beginning percussion, but there are a few things that I used with my beginner classes that might help yours:

First, I created pages (and pages) of written exercises that reinforce note recognition. In my percussion classes, I would have students complete a page of these "fill in the blank" exercises while I checked roll or listened to individuals play tests. These written exercises include:

• Naming the notes on the staff:

• Naming notes on the keyboard:

• Combining both into one exercise

With all of these written exercises, speed is very important. You'd be amazed at how hard they try to finish first if the prize is a Snickers bar (I've never been above bribery when teaching 10 year olds)!

Students should not always be compared to each other (some 7th year piano student will frustrate all of the other kids in a jiffy). If you can come up with a way of charting each student's progress or have students "win" a speed contest only once, that will often provide motivation to slower students to improve. The important point is that students work as quickly as possible!

Here is a non-written version of the keyboard recognition test that may help those of you who can't make unlimited copies:

Give the students a range of notes on the keyboard, then set a metronome on 120. Call out a note, give the students one beat to find the note on the keyboard, then they have to hit the note on the 3rd count. Have the students focus their eyes on the music stand in front of the keyboard & only use their peripheral vision to locate the note. If you do this exercise for a test, looking down should count off more than playing a wrong note! Give students with a background in piano a faster tempo to keep them from getting bored!

Introducing New Lines:

Another factor that contributes to students being able to develop the habit of keeping their eyes on the music is how new lines in the book are introduced. Most band directors have other instrumentalists "finger through" a line before they play it & say the note names, but there are a few additional things that you can do to help percussionists:

• Have students name the notes that the line contains. Do a short "hit the key exercise" while you call out these notes. Students should keep their eyes on the music and use the peripheral vision to find the notes on the keyboard.

• Put the mallets on the floor and FINGER through the line (physically TOUCHING the keys with the fingers) while they say the note names.

• Point out any patterns that the line contains (scale-wise steps, thirds, same pattern, but down a step, etc.)

• Play measures out of sequence. If the song is one that they know the tune to, they will try to memorize it from the beginning. Playing different measures in the piece forces them to look at the page.

• Play portions of the etude (if it's more than a line or two long). Realize that the "I give up" factor is very high for percussionists when playing the bells. I think this has more to do with the fact that, IF they can find their place in the music, by the time they locate the note on the keyboard, they are lost again!

• Play the whole thing, then either assign it as a test grade or get off it! Students memorize "songs" that you play over & over!

Final Suggestions :

Here are a few "miscellaneous" suggestions for teaching beginning mallet percussionists. Most of these are personal preferences, so I put them last (most percussion instructors who disagree with my personal preferences probably stopped reading long ago!).

• I make "looking down" part of the mallet tests for the first 12 weeks. Actually, I make it could more points than hitting a wrong note! You have to "get in close" on your tests, but students realize right away that memorizing doesn't help.

• Sticking is NOT a big issue to me when the students are READING. In fact, many times I will tell them to "play all of the F's and G's with the left, all A's& Bb's with the right. Working up a piece is treated differently from READING a piece.

• I always review a line from each of the previous lessons before going on to new material. If I think that they know it by memory, I WON'T PLAY IT!

• Don't practice for them! Assign lines that are a bit over their heads. Basically, if they feel like they can learn it in class, they will never PRACTICE!

There's no doubt that teaching beginning percussionists how to read keyboard music is a difficult task due to the limitations involved with bell kits. But, with patience and persistence applied to overcoming the inherent problems, your students can soon read keyboard music as well as they do rhythms!