Playground Forums

I am halfway through the rookie bootcamp. Should I continue to use the finger number method?...switch to the letter method or go full on just reading notes? I feel like I am not actually learning to read music but that I can actually count to 5.

Everyone learns differently and at their own pace. You can disable the fingerings in the top toolbar of the screen. You can switch between note letter names and nothing at all. A good thing to do is to play through a lesson 3 different times, and using a different setting each time.

I'm nearly done with Rookie, but I still leave the numbers on for now. My intent is to go through the lessons again before I move onto Intermediate, with the letter names displayed rather than numbers. Then I'll go through again with just the notes and no numbers or letter names. As Thomas notes, every one is different.

To help with reading music, you might consider building yourself a deck of flash cards. On one side you show a note on one of the clefs and on the back you put the name of that note. Once you have a good representation of the notes you will likely see (going above and below each of the five lines by several notes) you then scramble or shuffle the flash cards and work through the deck, naming the note before you flip the card over to check your answer. I would think 3x5 inch index cards would be perfect for such a deck - and reasonably inexpensive.

As you build the cards, you'll reinforce your lessons on the notation. Use the mnemonic for each line or space: "Every Good Boy Does Fine" for the lines and "F-A-C-E" for the spaces for the Treble Clef, and "Good Boys Do Fine Always" for the lines and "A-C-E-G" for spaces of the the Bass Clef. The progression over the ledger lines just follows where the clef leaves off.

I recommend you the "music tutor" app that does the job you described with the flash cards perfectly (free).

For the moment I just do a couple of minutes of this app everyday and even if I let the fingering mode activated, it helps in later lessons, especially when you have to move your hands, because you start to know/guess which note is where on the staff.

Aside from the bootcamp I am also learning a rookie piece. Once I master it, I will remove the fingering and tried to "relearn" it again. I leave the fingering activated for the bootcamp because I want to use those lessons to learn how to move my hands and the theory behind music, not especially to read for the moment.

Romain

For purely learning to sight read I have had https://www.sightreadingfactory.com/app recommended to me. I'm giving it a try now.

One approach that I like, which is used by many of our users, is to complete the Rookie Tour using the fingering numbers, then go back and redo the Rookie Tour using the letter name instead of the fingering numbers. After completing it that time, or at some point along the way, you can then go back and play the content with fingering numbers and letter names both turned off.

This will help with your sight-reading ability.

romain wrote:I recommend you the "music tutor" app that does the job you described with the flash cards perfectly (free).

For the moment I just do a couple of minutes of this app everyday and even if I let the fingering mode activated, it helps in later lessons, especially when you have to move your hands, because you start to know/guess which note is where on the staff.

Aside from the bootcamp I am also learning a rookie piece. Once I master it, I will remove the fingering and tried to "relearn" it again. I leave the fingering activated for the bootcamp because I want to use those lessons to learn how to move my hands and the theory behind music, not especially to read for the moment.

Romain

Great advice and great app suggestion. Thank you!