Waiting for the Butterflies

trey wrote: Hello,

I have always taught my students, as early as possible, to start looking ahead when reading -- for example, when playing a half note or whole note, look ahead to see what's coming next, but I've noticed that watching for the butterflies prevents looking ahead. Perhaps the skill of looking ahead should be taught later? Or maybe I'm missing something in the process. Any input on this would be most helpful.

Thanks!

You asked a very interesting question, Trey!

There are 2 areas in reading music that every beginner has to deal with: coordination and shifring eye sight among the notation.

In our 1st and 3rd visual presentations we support coordination development and this is why 'butterflies' are more important then the rest of the text.

But when students play on the 5th and 6th visual modes, they can look ahead. But at this point their coordination is improved and they are able to handle the new task.

This is why I think we have to divide piano lessons into 2 parts: 1 part is for coordination/piano technique development with more visual hints - and 2 part - sight -reading. The pieces for the sight -reading should be more simple for coordination.

Hope, it makes sense.

Have found with myself and my own kids that the butterflies are only important when they are first learning a piece. Once they have a good grasp of it ( rhythm, flow) they seem to automatically look further ahead and they just intuit when the butterfly is "done" I have found my son at times finds the butterflies disgracing to his fluency in view 1, when we notice this I switch him to view 3 and it is easier for him to look head. I do think out larger screen size helps stop them from being distracted by the butterfly. W tried it on the other laptop with the smaller screen and I was hopeless, my older two kids did fine ( they read sheet music also) and my son was with me as we swapped the computers back over!
If the butterflies are distracting your kids I would suggest playing the music on S more often. Familiarity will take away the crutch.