Product Description
Dots and Beams creates a wide variety of reading materials for musicians at all skill levels and for all instruments. The goal of Dots and Beams is to break music down into its elements and provide reading material focused on systematically developing each element in isolation. These books can be used in any number of ways and are an invaluable tool for creative musicians who enjoy inventing new exercises. In addition, these books make excellent, thoughtfully graduated sight-reading material for a wide range of ability levels from student to professional.
This
collection presents its user with a series of notes on a treble
staff
in
the context of increasingly complex rhythmic material.
The
pitch material in this book is entirely diatonic with
a space
left at the beginning of each system in which one can write a key
signature. Early
chapters use only notes on the staff while subsequent chapters begin
to add notes on ledger lines above and below the staff.
Each chapter contains
two
exercises in each of the following time signatures: 2/4, 3/4, 4/4,
6/8, 9/8, and 12/8. This gives exercises in 2, 3, and 4 beats per bar
in both simple and compound meters. From
chapter to chapter the conceptual difficulty of the rhythmic material
increases.
The
exercises in this collection are intentionally aimless, wandering,
and difficult to internalize. They resemble standard melodies on the
surface but dont emphasize any particular tonal centre or harmonic
movement. They are designed this way for several reasons.
In
keeping the melodic material as non-specific as possible the door is
left open for the materials to be used in conjunction with any number
of exercises, something that would be much more difficult with a
composition that dictates the harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic
phrasing. It also allows the user to read the exercises in any key
signature, making this a great tool to help students learn to think
in different keys. The unpredictability of these exercises also
forces the user to process every note and rhythm as its own event
without relying on pattern recognition or melodic and harmonic
tendencies to help in figuring out the notes and rhythms.
While
I absolutely agree that the skill of predicting musics direction
from harmonic and melodic cues is an essential skill for any musician
to develop, I think we will all agree that resources for this type of
reading practice are already abundant. This collection, on the other
hand, is designed to develop the users ability to process raw
musical data. Once this skill is strengthened and internalized it is
my belief that the act of reading more predictable and typically
melodic music will be made much easier as the processing of notes and
rhythms will be second nature, allowing the musician to focus on
musicality. This book is a supplement to practising sight-reading
using "real music," not a replacement; I encourage you to use
both.
If
this material is being used to practice sight-reading, it is
encouraged to cycle through the exercises quickly rather than
dwelling on a particular exercise for a long period of time. The goal
in practising sight-reading is not to learn the material but to
develop the skill of reading new material.
Some
suggestions for how to use this book include:
-
Read
each exercise in all 15 key signatures from 7 flats to 7 sharps.
-
Practice
key changes by writing in a different key signature for each system.
-
Increase
the challenge of the previous exercise by using a metronome on weak
beats. For example, instead of putting the metronome click on each
quarter-note in 4/4, play the exercise with the metronome giving the
second eighth note of each beat, or the last sixteenth note, or
beats 2 and 4. Be creative with this one, the possib
This product was created by a member of ArrangeMe, Hal Leonard's global self-publishing community of independent composers, arrangers, and songwriters. ArrangeMe allows for the publication of unique arrangements of both popular titles and original compositions from a wide variety of voices and backgrounds.