Teaching folks to read music

[gh4]

I’m not sure this is the right place for this, so please feel free to move it if I’m wrong.
I sing in my church choir, I’m also a musician.
I learned to read music as a child, in school, at piano lessons, at singing lessons etc. and so forth.
Anyhow, we are a very small church. And most of the folks who sing in the choir cannot read music, not even a little bit.
So, I would like to give a few informal classes to teach them to read music. But I’ve never taught adults music of any kind.
The instruments available to me are guitars and an organ. I am not an organist really, though I have a firm grasp on piano playing.
So what I’m asking, can anyone help me by giving me some direction here? I really don’t know where to start even. These people don’t understand how to read flats and sharps, heck, most of them cannot follow a note on the scale.
Please help! I’d love our little choir to sound better!

 

[LovingMass]

Adults who have spent a lifetime singing by ear will neither easily nor quickly learn to sing to sheet music, but I have a tangential concern: have they asked you for lessons? If not, it will likely seem insulting for you to suggest that they learn this skill. Please reconsider your perspective; “these people” are likely singing in the choir for reasons less related to excellent musicianship and more related to joy, praise, and camaraderie.

 

[jilly4ski]

I’m not sure this is the right place for this, so please feel free to move it if I’m wrong.
I sing in my church choir, I’m also a musician.
I learned to read music as a child, in school, at piano lessons, at singing lessons etc. and so forth.
Anyhow, we are a very small church. And most of the folks who sing in the choir cannot read music, not even a little bit.
So, I would like to give a few informal classes to teach them to read music. But I’ve never taught adults music of any kind.
The instruments available to me are guitars and an organ. I am not an organist really, though I have a firm grasp on piano playing.
So what I’m asking, can anyone help me by giving me some direction here? I really don’t know where to start even. These people don’t understand how to read flats and sharps, heck, most of them cannot follow a note on the scale.
Please help! I’d love our little choir to sound better!

I would say before you teach them to read music, teach them about solfege. When you do warm ups, do: Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do. Then move to skipping notes: Do, Mi, Sol. (You might want to introduce the concepts of sharps and flats with the full solfege scale or you might wait. Working with this will start to build peoples pitch matching skills (and will eventually improve their sight reading skills if you get to that point).

As far as teaching note reading… Start with little work sheets and information sheets.
Label 2 notes and have them fill in the rest, or while you are explaining it have them fill it out. So if you are telling them what the lines are, have them fill out the lines as you are telling them.
Once they know the scale goes from A to G, and can recognize Middle C, and the top and bottom lines and spaces(E, F, C, D) on the staff you are on your way. You can then move on to combining the solfege with the notes on the page. (ex. going from Do-Mi sounds the same as going from C to E).
It would probably be best if you can do this visually, big board up front, or have the scale in front of each person, so they can see the spaces on the staff and how they sound.

Depending on how your music is written, you might want to teach your men, base clef first while the women learn treble. When they have a handle on one, then they can learn the other.

This will probably take a lot of work and is often more commitment that a church choir is willing to put in (unfortunately) Though you could probably sneak in the solfege without any hassle. Which will help I believe.

 

[JGMendes4049]

You should teach all of them the treble and bass clefs. If that’s not feasible, at least teach the sopranos, altos, and tenors treble clef and the tenors and basses bass clef.

You also ought to teach them neumes (four–line Gregorian notation).

 

[rom422]

I’m not sure this is the right place for this, so please feel free to move it if I’m wrong.
I sing in my church choir, I’m also a musician.
I learned to read music as a child, in school, at piano lessons, at singing lessons etc. and so forth.
Anyhow, we are a very small church. And most of the folks who sing in the choir cannot read music, not even a little bit.
So, I would like to give a few informal classes to teach them to read music. But I’ve never taught adults music of any kind.
The instruments available to me are guitars and an organ. I am not an organist really, though I have a firm grasp on piano playing.
So what I’m asking, can anyone help me by giving me some direction here? I really don’t know where to start even. These people don’t understand how to read flats and sharps, heck, most of them cannot follow a note on the scale.
Please help! I’d love our little choir to sound better!

I once joined a choir where the members didn’t know how to read sheet music. All that the choir director did was give us the songs with the notes on top of the lyrics, just as you see them in the Church music books. Then he explained the meaning of the lines. The lines denote the pitch. The notes in the higher line have a higher pitch relative to those in the lower lines. That’s all that we were told, and we started singing. We still learned the songs by ear (that is by listening to the piano or the organ), but we controlled our voices by looking at the relative position of the notes in the line. No music theory was introduced. Ah, I forgot this one. The choir director also said that the white notes are sung longer than the black notes, and the black notes without flags are sung longer than those with flags. That’s it, and it worked!

Needless to say, we still could not sing just by looking at the sheet music. We still need the choir director and we still need the piano or the organ to put our voices to the right pitch. But we did sing better.

 

[havana1]

Get used to memorizing stuff like:

EADGBE Every Adult Dog Growls Barks & Eats
EGBFG Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge
FACE are the notes between the staff

I think it’s easier to learn on guitar or piano.

 

[gh4]

Adults who have spent a lifetime singing by ear will neither easily nor quickly learn to sing to sheet music, but I have a tangential concern: have they asked you for lessons? If not, it will likely seem insulting for you to suggest that they learn this skill. Please reconsider your perspective; “these people” are likely singing in the choir for reasons less related to excellent musicianship and more related to joy, praise, and camaraderie.

Yes, they have all expressed interest in learning to read music. I would never impose my will on them if they weren’t open to it.