Learning to write notes/music dictations

With Soft Mozart we have a unique system to capture music text with fast writing. Little Rachel, my student, who now lives in Singapore was taught how to do this remotely. Pei Lin, Rachel's mom and I decided to share the essential steps of this exciting learning with you.

Working in a music school in Ukraine as a teacher I developed some interesting and fun way to write music down as composers do and to learn how to write music down at the same time! My students loved it and were very successful. This part of curriculum is called MUSIC DICTATIONS.

Unfortunately here, in US, such subject is being taught mostly when it is too late - in music colleges and universities. But in our curriculum we will teach you to do it and you can start teaching your children to do it (4+ year old or when they can write with a pencil)

Step #1. Learning how to write music notes FAST.

In many schools beginners are taught how to write music notes as circles or ovals. Students spend hours to make perfectly rounded ovals and fit them on on lines and between them.

We do not think that such writing is practical idea. If you look at any script written by composer or professional musician you barely will find perfectly rounded music notes: you'll find sticks and crotchets instead. It happens, because musically literate people write music and hear it in their head at the same time!

I asked Rachel to use her index finger to place between the notes at the beginning. Why is that? Kids have tendency to place the skinny notes too close to each other. However, when you have to write any melody down FAST you have to be really generous with the space. Otherwise you won't be able to read and correct what you had just been written.

I suggest to make music paper yourself using Microsoft Word program. The reason for that is: you can place the lines wider. It is very important! Unfortunately, note paper from music store mostly with lines way too close.

Now, please, look at the picture, how the paper suppose to look like and at the video of Rachel learning how to speed writing notes. Let's start!

Next steps in writing melodies now are also recorded by Pei Lin and Rachel. Thank you so much for your help!

To be with us on the same page, open Solfeggio and Chords Major 1 C and find 'Millet' song. Put it on the 3rd mode.
Press S and listen to it.
Press R and play it 'till you will get perfect score. Be advised to SING the notes of the song out loud.
Press RH, play and sing the song again. If the score is perfect, try to play the melody without the computer



Take you note paper and a pencil. Sing the melody and write the notes at the same time.


Draw stems to each note. Make sure to make an angle between the note and stem. Do not draw a note and a stem as one line to avoid the confusion between one and another.



Sing the song again and mark longer notes with a dot. *If next song will have long notes and longer then long notes, mark longest notes with 2 dots.
Connect shorter notes by 2:

With the help of Olga Kolesnikova we created a new product that will help your children to master music writing.

Please, follow these links to download the practice sheets for Treble and Bass:

pianolearningsoftware.com/collections/fr...treble-clef-octave-1

pianolearningsoftware.com/collections/fr...treble-clef-octave-2

pianolearningsoftware.com/collections/fr...ss-clef-small-octave

pianolearningsoftware.com/collections/fr...ss-clef-large-octave

omshree wrote: Hi Hellene,
Thanks for posting rachel's videos on practising how to write music and practice melodies.
Need some help for me please!
U had mentioned in the post to follow that song which she is practising open solfeggio and Chords Major 1 C and find millet.Please excuse me if i'm being too ignorant.
I'm using home version 2.16 and i tried to find what u mentioned, but couldn't.Please guide me here! Am i missing out anything by having 2.16 version.Please throw some light.

Thanks
Om

Solfeggio and Chords are the Courses that could be found in old Deluxe or all the current versions.