These beautifully designed piano books dropped through my letterbox when my niece was having a playdate with my daughter. There was an immediate disagreement over who got to keep the adorable penguin sticker that came with them. (Of course I could not possibly choose between the two girls… so I kept it for myself!) The books use the Musicolor Method – a system of coloured notation – and are aimed at pre-school children as their first experience of playing the piano.
While coloured notation is nothing new, this particular method is unique in requiring the child's fingernails to be painted (with washable marker) in different colours. Corresponding coloured stickers are then placed on notes C-G of the piano (for each hand) and then cross-referenced with the coloured notation in the book.
The method encourages children to play two-handed from the outset, which is an impressive feat. However, as the children's fingernails are colour coded to the five corresponding notes, they cannot play a whole scale, which limits the repertoire possibilities. I wonder how successfully one could then incorporate the idea of different fingering at a later stage of learning? I particularly worry about the understanding of tonality, which might be limited by always playing in C major, and by developing the idea that to play a different key note with the thumb would be ‘wrong’.
I can't help thinking that the fingernail-key-notation colour combination might in fact involve one step too many, as it requires the child to note the colour of their finger, and the colour of the key, and the colour of the notation in order to play. In effect this makes the method potentially more complex than learning through a traditional method, where the note names would be displayed on or above the keys and this would then correspond to the music, in only a two-step process. However, this is a system aimed at pre-literate children, hence, presumably, the avoidance of letter names.
Working through the books, I wondered if this method, while beautifully presented and engaging for children of this age group, might actually be superfluous. Children at that stage of development are having to ‘decode’ anything put in front of them, whether words, colours or notation. One could teach aurally first, to develop the ear, muscle memory and musicality, and then introduce the traditional staff notation, following the ‘sound before symbol’ approach, with a similar degree of success.
Keen to test my opinions, I discussed the books with my teaching students at Leeds College of Music, as part of our annual Methodologies of Music Teaching lecture. Interestingly a number of the students had started out using similar coloured notation systems, but all felt strongly that it caused them problems in the long run as their technique outstripped their reading ability, rendering them frustrated when preparing for exams or attempting to audition for ensembles (the latter not, admittedly, much of a concern for a beginner pianist!).
Research carried out into coloured notation systems seems to bear out my students’ experiences, in that there is evidence to suggest that students who learn through coloured staff notation perform worse on traditional sight-reading tests than students who learn through standard notation. The reason for this is suggested to be that the students have memorised the colours rather than the positioning of the notes, which would account for the experience of my students who felt that they had to ‘relearn’ how to read music in order to progress. Given that the Musicolor system begins only with coloured blocks, I wonder if rather than a magic bullet that helps children to ‘read’ music, it is actually just pushing the problem of notation reading into a later stage of learning?
It seems that these kind of systems, while initially helpful, may set young musicians up for problems later. However, it is important to remember that not every young pianist will aspire to take grades, and even fewer will wish to progress to a professional career. They may never get to the stage where they have to switch over to ‘real’ notation, and therefore wouldn't experience the kind of problems that my Leeds College students seem to have done.
Where I do see a use for this method is as a non-specialist, parent or generalist teacher-led approach to piano teaching. The books would have value to a non-music reader who wanted to teach piano to their own or others’ children, provided that they knew the songs contained within, to help with decoding the rhythmic aspect of the notation (sheet music is provided in an appendix, but no accompanying CD or audio downloads). As a first introduction to the piano under these circumstances, this would be a stimulating and enjoyable experience for the very youngest pupils.
