Music > Color Should Be Read as:

If you walk into an simple classroom, yous might notice that everything is color-coded: signs and charts on the wall to labels on bins to pieces of record marker certain spots on the flooring.

This is because colors are like shooting fish in a barrel for virtually young children to recognize and differentiate between.

But in music, our baseline is black and white, the colors of standard note. When first introducing music-reading, it tin be challenging for young students to recognize patterns and organize the content visually when everything is black and white.

For this reason, color can be a helpful tool when teaching music literacy and developing music-reading skills. "When we employ color in a systematic way it can help students retain information better than simply using black and white." (source)

For some, this might look similar using colored notation, where each note of the scale is represented past a different color. This is often used in beginning handbell and Boomwhacker music.

But this isn't the merely way to teach with color.

Today, I'thousand sharing four simple means to use colour to teach music literacy. Only first, let'south talk almost some of the benefits of using color as a teaching tool.

The Benefits of Using Color

Color provides a quick manner of sorting and organizing visual elements, particularly elements that are the same.

In an commodity on color-coding your classroom, Amy Curletto wrote, "Color coding is specially beneficial for students who are not-readers or who are just learning to read. When color is involved, group, fabric organization, and differentiation become much, much easier." (source)

When things are colour-coded, children can easily learn how to match things that are the same and place things that are like, only different. Amy Curletto explained, "Color helps break concepts down and make them easier to digest." (source)

Think nearly what that might look like in music: notation values, melodic patterns, rhythmic patterns, steps vs. skips, dynamic markings, loftier vs. depression, white keys vs. blackness keys on the piano, vowel sounds (colors!), and much more.

And this isn't merely for children; think nigh how helpful information technology is to organize and sort things by colour for youth and adults, especially concepts that are new and unfamiliar.

What does this look like in a applied sense?

That's where today's post comes in. Hither are iv unique ways to introduce colour into your music-teaching and score-study work with students of all ages:

How to Utilize Color to Teach Music Literacy

*Disclosure: I get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

Use Colored Notation

If y'all used Boomwhackers, handbells, or handchimes in your teaching, you lot've likely encountered colored note. This is a helpful style for young musicians and new readers to identify dissimilar pitches on the staff and correlating Boomwhacker, bong, or chinkle.

I recommend using colored annotation in this context, when each person is responsible for playing only i-two notes (and therefore, keeping track of simply 1-2 colors).

Boomwhackers and small metal handbells come in rainbow colors: one colour for each note in the diatonic (or chromatic) scale.

Handchimes are only bachelor in aluminum, but there are a few ways you can color-code them for your grouping:

1. Purchase a set of colored chime bands by ChimeWorks

2. Wrap a strip of colored electrical tape around each handle

3. Utilise a set of colored dot stickers to mark each one

4. Wrap a rainbow-colored hair tie around each handle

Once you lot have a ready of color-coded instruments, you can use colored notation to assistance children learn to follow their part, whether they're reading colored letter names on a word chart or notes on a musical staff.

Looking for a good starting point?

This digital, reproducible collection includes six children's songs using colored note — perfect for Boomwhackers, handbells, or handchimes.

Each song includes two versions: a word nautical chart with colored letter names and a musical score with colored noteheads.

Learn more + see inside the score >>

Color-Code Musical Grade

Color is a great mode to mark musical form and indicate dissimilar sections of a slice, particularly when listening to a new song or piece (without notation).

Using 8.5x11" sheets of newspaper or cardstock, choose a different color to stand for each section of a piece (displayed at the front end of the room, for all to see). If y'all're working 1-on-i or with a small-scale group, consider using paint chips. Cutting the paint chip cards apart ahead of time and make a set up for each student.

Similar to what I mentioned to a higher place, consider cutting each one into a different shape, every bit well (e.1000. triangle, square, circle).

Creative resource ideas:

• Paint chip cards — free from your local hardware shop

• Colored paper or cardstock

• Colored edible bean bags - this listing is for corn hole edible bean bags, available in 17 different colors.

Color-Lawmaking Musical Patterns and Motives

I employ this strategy all the time with my uncomplicated piano students. We are ever identifying patterns that are the same and different in our music, and often, I volition accept them depict boxes around measures that are the aforementioned using a colored marker or highlighter. This is a quick and easy way to see how the music is organized, recognize phrase structure, and understand how the patterns fit together.

Similarly, y'all might cull to color-code a short rhythmic design, even if the pitches are dissimilar OR a short melodic pattern, even if the rhythm is different.

I recommend choosing 1-2 colors for this blazon of project. Keep it simple and uncluttered so the important element (repeated patterns and motives) remains prominent.

Creative resource ideas:

• Erasable pens

• Highlighters

• Colored marking ready

Colour-Lawmaking Dynamic Markings

This is a fun way to notice dynamic markings in the score.

I don't know about you, but my students don't ofttimes pay attending to dynamic markings in a new piece (and sometimes even in a piece nosotros've been working on for a few weeks!).

I like to encourage my students to play with dynamic expression from the beginning of learning a piece, rather than thinking of dynamics as something to add during the polishing phase. As such, sometimes we'll have a minute early on on in the process to study the score and colour-lawmaking the dynamics using something like this:

piano = blue
mezzo piano = purple
mezzo forte = pink
forte = orange

Hither'southward a piddling insight into the psychology of these color choices:

Orange is a brilliant, vibrant color, though not every bit dominant equally red. When used to highlight something, orange may help learners retain information. Similarly, "blue ink, or blue highlighting can be used to assistance improve reading comprehension." (source)

Creative resource ideas:

• Colored pencils - great for circling or outlining the dynamic markings, highlighting crescendi and decrescendi, and adding in some of your own dynamic markings.

• Erasable pens - circle or trace dynamic markings and use for score-study, but then erase your markings when the dynamics are ingrained or the colored markings are no longer needed then you can play from a clean score.

• Washi tape - easy to add and remove, plus about of the time, information technology'south semi-transparent and then you tin tape right over the dynamic markings in the score and still see it show through.

Do yous use color-coding in your music-instruction? What are your favorite strategies?

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Source: https://www.ashleydanyew.com/posts/how-to-use-color-to-teach-music

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