In September, many teachers welcomed first-time piano students.
Now that it’s October, these little kiddos are starting to play with alpha notes.
Alpha notes, if you are not familiar, are music notes with note names placed in the note heads.
These notes help brand new students focus on keyboard awareness without having to focus on note reading at the same time.
While alpha notes are a wonderful tool, they have been hampered by one major flaw; a flaw that we solved with the invention of the “Wunder Staff”.
In today’s post we are sharing an Alpha Note Halloween piano solo that uses our Wunder Staff to bring more meaning to early music.
What Method Books Get Wrong About Alpha Notes
In most method books, alpha notes just float in space; they are not connected in any way to a musical staff.
And while they do show directional movement based on their placement in relation to one another, for the most part, alpha notes and the pages they exist on have historically been cluttered and confusing.
But this isn’t even my biggest issue with the traditional display of alpha notes.
My biggest issue is the missed note reading opportunity created by letting alpha notes float in space.
And this led Andrea and I to develop the Wunder Staff.
Solving Alpha Note Problems With The Wunder Staff
Unique to the WunderKeys Method Books and resources, the Wunder Staff is a modified grand staff used with very new piano students.
It contains the top two lines of the bass staff (referred to as the LH staff) and the bottom two lines of the treble staff (referred to as the RH staff).
The Wunder Staff provides a home for alpha notes so they do not have to just float in space. When alpha notes are placed on the Wunder Staff, kids learn directional movement of music with much greater success. They can easily see when notes move higher, move lower, and repeat.
And it gets better.
Alpha notes are placed on the Wunder Staff according to their positions on the grand staff. So, while your students are reading note names inside the notes, they are also learning to recognize the placement of notes in middle C position.
This is an incredible advantage provided by the Wunder Staff. When it is time to move piano students away from alpha notes and onto the grand staff, they are already familiar with the appearance and placement of notes in middle C position.
The transition is smooth and easy. If you have never used the Wunder Staff with a student, check out what these teachers have to say:
“The “Wunder Staff” is brilliant: As another reviewer stated, I too have never found the notes without a staff to be helpful because SO many students have trouble with directionality and I’ve had to do a “connect the dots” type lines to help them see it. And middle C doesn’t have it’s ledger line going through it for reference either! My student hasn’t progressed to the lesson where the note names are removed from the note heads yet, but my hypothesis is that the Wunder Staff will make this transition MUCH easier for many students.”
“I love the Wunder Staff. From the first time students are introduced to notes with names, they see those notes written on lines and spaces. It gets students reading and playing from the staff so much faster and with greater ease.”
Before You Download Today’s Music
At the bottom of today’s post you will find our Alpha Note Halloween piano solo, but first…
We are excited to announce that the next book in Andrea and Trevor Dow’s Very Useful Piano Library will be released on October 13th and will be all about alpha notes.
For those who have been desperately waiting for us to release V.U. Level C, the wait is almost over. Check in on the Teach Piano Today blog next week when we share more details on another loveable piano resource.
If you are not familiar with Andrea and Trevor Dow’s Very Useful Piano Library, it is a 17-level supplementary piano library for primer and level 1 piano students.
You can click on a cover below to learn about some of these exciting titles or click here to check them all out in the WunderKeys Bookstore.
Download Our Alpha Note Halloween Piano Solo
Click on the first button below to download our Alpha Note Halloween piano solo from the Members Only Printables section of the Growing With WunderKeys Toolkit.
Remember to enter the password found in the email you received today.
Not yet a member? Want access to a ton of free printables? Join here.
