Help: trouble w/ student seeing tones/semiton

Subject: trouble w/ student seeing tones/semitone
From: katlaughing
Date: 06 Feb 01 - 06:42 PM

THIS WAS MOVED FROM A DIFFERENT THREAD, FOR A MORE SPECIFIC THREAD TITLE. Thanks, kat

Subject: Tones, semitones
From: GUEST,Everest
Date: 06-Feb-01 - 01:20 PM

My 12 year old student can not see the two white keys on the piano the E-F and B-C which form semitones. She can show groups of three and groups of two black keys but when I ask her to play to me an E sharp or a B sharp she jumps notes and does mistakes. Why is she doing that? Why she is not getting that? She can not form tones and semitones and she does not understand. What can I do?

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Subject: RE: Everest
From: Grab
Date: 06-Feb-01 - 02:32 PM

Some JoeClone fix the title? Thought this was going to be a thread about climbing... :-)

Grab.

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Subject: RE: Everest
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 06-Feb-01 - 03:16 PM

Does she normally wear glasses? Maybe she should... maybe she can't differentiate between the keys because she can't see the thin line between them....

LTS who had the same problem once.....

Subject: RE: Help: trouble w/ student seeing tones/semiton
From: alison
Date: 06 Feb 01 - 08:13 PM

she probably thinks that it has to involve black notes....

try telling her to ignore the colours and to count the notes...

semitones are right beside each other even if the notes are the same colour so you count to 2...

full tones are a note apart so you count to 3.....

worth a try

slainte

alison

Subject: RE: Help: trouble w/ student seeing tones/semiton
From: GUEST,Everest
Date: 22 Feb 01 - 08:48 AM

My student is such a weak student but I am trying to make her understand. I try to simplify things. She still can not write on a piece of paper whethet two notes form a semitone or a tone. What is a simple way of explainng to her how to from tones and semitones without the help of the keyboard on a piece of paper? I explain to her that E to F and B to C naturals form semitones. All the other natural cobinations are tones. If we sharpen or flatten both notes of the semitones we get again semitones, if we sharpen or flatten both notes of the other combinations we get again tones. Now how do I explain in a simple way the other cobinations for example the combinations with one note flattened or one note sharp?

Subject: RE: Help: trouble w/ student seeing tones/semiton
From: alison
Date: 22 Feb 01 - 09:02 AM

If there's a gap between them they are tones?

No gap = semitones

worth a try...... until she picks some that are a few notes apart...

good luck.... I tried to teach my 7 year old to play "Mary had a little lamb" on his recorder today... believe me I sympathise....*grin*

slainte

alison

Subject: RE: Help: trouble w/ student seeing tones/semiton
From: MMario
Date: 22 Feb 01 - 09:02 AM

When you manage to get it explained to her, will someone please explain it to me? This is one of my major stumbling points.

Subject: RE: Help: trouble w/ student seeing tones/semiton
From: English Jon
Date: 22 Feb 01 - 09:03 AM

My approach would be to do a lot of aural tests with her, try to get her to hear the difference between a whole and a half step. At least, if she can hear the difference and sing it back, it might help her singing. I think the technical details may be a bit beyond this one, but then, I aint a good teacher. Good luck.

English Jon

Subject: RE: Help: trouble w/ student seeing tones/semiton
From: GUEST, Jerry Friedman
Date: 22 Feb 01 - 12:26 PM

Since this is about sound, I agree with English Jon that an aural approach is best. However, for something visual, maybe you could get her to focus on the far ends of the keys, where the black ones separate the white ones unless the white ones are a semitone apart. If she's looking at those parts of the keys, then the interval between adjacent keys is a semitone and the interval if you skip a key is a whole tone, regardless of colors.

If you like this idea, you might even try covering the wide parts of the white keys with a strip of cardboard or cloth so she can ignore the fact that, say, C and D are misleadingly next to each other.

MMario, did that help you? If not, try this: a semitone is the interval between adjacent frets on a guitar, or between adjacent keys on a piano (if you don't skip over the black keys). Twelve semitones equals an octave, and we hear two notes an octave apart as "the same note only higher (or lower)".

For reasons having to do with history and with the way humans hear, we're used to a "diatonic" scale in which two semitones and five whole tones (each equal to two semitones) cover an octave. Piano keyboards, and our musical notation, are set up to make such scales easy. Thus the steps in the A minor scale, A-B-C-D-E-F-G-A, are whole, semi, whole, whole, semi, whole, whole. On a piano, you play that on the white keys.

The other five notes are written with sharps or flats; on the piano they're played with black keys.

Any "natural minor" scale has the same pattern of whole tones and semitones, but if you start on a different note you need to use black keys to get the pattern. For instance, the B minor scale goes B-C#-D-E-F#-G-A-B. Again it's whole, semi, whole, whole, semi, whole, whole.

The pattern of major scales is whole, whole, semi, whole, whole, whole, semi. The one that can be played on the white keys is C major: C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C.

These scales aren't carved in stone. You can hear intervals smaller than a semitone in music from India and in some 20th-century (and probably 21st-century) classical music and, I think, jazz. Anybody know about Scottish bagpipes?

Did that help?

Subject: RE: Help: trouble w/ student seeing tones/semiton
From: MMario
Date: 22 Feb 01 - 01:03 PM

nope. I understand the theory. I just can't tell when one seperation is a whole tone and when one is a semitone. give me two notes and I can't tell you how far apart they are in tones. NOt even counting on a keyboard.

And I've never understood "The same note only higher (or lower)" bit. if a note is higher or lower how can it be the same bloody note? (yes, I know, it's semantics)

this may be in part because I have never been able to "label" notes. I haven't a clue what "C" or "E#" sounds like...

Subject: RE: Help: trouble w/ student seeing tones/semiton
From: MMario
Date: 22 Feb 01 - 01:09 PM

" where the black ones separate the white ones unless the white ones are a semitone apart."

y'know - this is the clearest I've ever heard this stated.

that at least lets me count them on a keyboard. But I wouldn't have a clue audially.

Subject: RE: Help: trouble w/ student seeing tones/semiton
From: Gary T
Date: 22 Feb 01 - 06:51 PM

It occurs to me that B-C and E-F may seem like arbitrary anomalies in contrast to C-D, D-E, etc. My thought is to start with chromatic octave scales, then show major octave scales. These can be done on one string on a guitar just to show their patterns. When the concept of a major scale is understood (do re mi etc.), point out that a piano keyboard is designed to make a major scale in C use only white keys. This is arbitrary and potentially confusing, but it's what we've got to deal with. It may help to do major scales in each key on the keyboard strictly by counting the intervals, and doing so at the far edge of the keyboard where every key is present, rather than at the near edge where only the white keys show.

Subject: RE: Help: trouble w/ student seeing tones/semiton
From: GUEST, Jerry Friedman
Date: 22 Feb 01 - 06:59 PM

Well, MMario, you ought to be able to count intervals on a keyboard. Just count all the keys--and don't skip the black ones!

The Oxford Companion to Music, by Percy Scholes, suggests a way to train your ear. Every time you go by a piano (or cheap electronic keyboard, or tuned guitar), sing a note, and then play it to see how close you came. Sing it again correctly. Even if you have no idea when you start, I'll bet you'll get better. You could adapt this to singing intervals.

Subject: RE: Help: trouble w/ student seeing tones/semiton
From: Burke
Date: 22 Feb 01 - 07:23 PM

This is more for MMario than guest. I can see them on the keyboard, but never could use them much when singing, especially when told to sing up or down a whole step vs. a half step. Shape note singing helped me a lot. In the 4 shape system the la-fa or mi-fa combinations are always the half step, so we just learn to focus on the fa. Then we sing the notes for everything before we sing the words. Gradually using the notes for songs I already knew have fixed the combinations in my mind to transfer over to the ones I'm learning. I'm not perfect, but much better than I was.

The practical application is I've learned that Joy to the World is a descending scale fa-mi-la-sol-fa-la-sol-fa. I use Joy-to to learn fa-mi. Then when I see fa-mi later I have that combination in my head to sing. 7 note is do-ti-la-sol-fa-mi-re-do. (ti-do & mi-fa are the half steps) It really doesn't matter if it's C-B or G-F# or something else since the relations are relative, not absolute. After I got that idea, then I worked on using the key signatures to show me the half steps when I'm reading regular notes.

On a keyboard one could teach that each key played in turn, white or black is a semitone. Then show the major scale as begin-whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half-whole. Then one can, as Gary mentioned start on any key, white or black, & play the pattern established.