After graduating from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and completing a PGCE, my first job was working for Surrey Music Service as a peripatetic teacher. At the end of my first year in this rewarding post, I met my husband. Three years into our marriage we adopted a little boy, aged almost three, with Cerebral Palsy, and six years later, a baby girl who was then diagnosed with 22q11.2 Distal Deletion Syndrome. Both our children would be described as neurodivergent as well as physically disabled.
We were thrown into the world of special educational needs as we sought support for our children's development. From the outset we encountered obstacles, sadly, from professionals within education as well as the government in terms of trying to get the appropriate help. On several occasions we had to fight for our children's acceptance and right to non-judgemental support.
On reflection, I can see how facing these issues fed into my development as a teacher, and to the creation of the Stringbabies series of books that I began developing when my children were still very young.
The Stringbabies approach
By the time I was developing Stringbabies, I had amassed quite a bit of experience of teaching cello to young children as young as three. I was comfortable using a play-based approach with soft toys in my lessons, and this helped create a safe environment that young children thrived in and wanted to return to. However, I was not sure how to teach musical comprehension or musicianship to this age-group using the materials available at that time – everything seemed aimed at seven- to ten-year-olds. Therefore, I decided to experiment with breaking down the core elements of reading notation and teaching aural skills.
When our son first arrived, he was confused by the frequent change of foster homes and carers, and this manifested itself through attention-seeking behaviour and delayed development. We found that routine and being consistent helped him to settle and make progress.
As part of his musical activities, I created the routine of a ‘Hello’ song (which would establish the concept of the perfect fifth, aurally) and a ‘Goodbye’ song. I then composed a collection of short songs based on the intervals of the fifth, the third and the second. Before long, my youngest students, including my son, were beginning to recognise when their cellos were out of tune.
I then took the basic symbols of pitch and rhythm and broke them down into shapes for noteheads and simple sticks for rhythms. In my teaching, I was careful to introduce each element slowly and gradually. Instead of starting with the five-line stave, as is typical for beginners' material, my emerging Stringbabies books began with shapes and rhythm sticks, introduced separately.
'Kanagaroo' from Stringbabies for Violin
The first page of Stringbabies for Cello, showing shapes for A, D, G and C strings
Wider endorsement
Susan Hallam (2006) has a good phrase for this strategy: ‘Reduction of degrees of freedom’ or, in other words, breaking down the task into smaller and more manageable components. The cellist Elizabeth Morrow (2023), in her paper on teaching students with learning disabilities, expands on this by stating that it is of the upmost importance that students learn to read music one concept at a time, in a logical order, and that rhythm and pitch are taught separately until these are mastered.
At school, both of our children fell behind quickly with reading and writing. My husband and I would spend time with them playing games at home and breaking down the practical exercises sent home from school into component parts, to help make progress. The principle of breaking down tasks in this manner enabled both youngsters to establish a solid foundation on which they could begin to build their knowledge and skills. It also fed directly into the approach for Stringbabies.
Before our daughter started school, she exhibited significant developmental and language issues. As a result, she was assigned sessions with a speech and language therapist, accompanied by a parent. The therapist's approach was to observe the parent and make suggestions for supporting the child at home. As it turned out, I was already performing the techniques that were going to be suggested; namely, getting down to my daughter's physical level and listening to her responses without talking at her. The therapist was quite surprised by this and suggested that the only thing I could add was to delay slightly the last word in my sentence.
This certainly influenced the way I would go on to work with very young children. I am now used to getting down to their level (often on my knees), establishing a good two-way communication through eye contact, and paying close attention to what they have to say.
Additional advantages for SEN students
Once I had self-published my books, starting in 2006, I was pleasantly surprised to start receiving reports from colleagues who found the approach of Stringbabies effective with students with myriad special needs, and of all ages.
Several teachers recalled how their pupils who had been identified with SEN were able to engage with music for the first time, and that this was having a profound impact on their self-esteem. For example, a colleague who taught children with Downs Syndrome said that her pupils were able to access standard beginner repertoire (copied out in Stringbabies notation) and that this was having a positive impact on their general development and language, particularly compared to their non-musical peers.
I was also surprised to hear that adults who had never learned to read music were preferring to use Stringbabies as a way of comprehending notation. I was reminded, too, of my own experience in being able to pick up symptoms of dyslexia-type issues before the school professionals identified these.
Figurenotes
Figurenotes is another approach offering an alternative form of notation that gradually leads to fluency with stave notation. I first heard of Figurenotes through Paul Wood, who, during his time as head of East Ayrshire Music Service, set up a class music project in Greenmill Primary School, Cumnock. Using Figurenotes, he reported how most students became better able to grasp conventional notation later.
Figurenotes was developed in the 1990s by Kaarlo Uusitalo and Markku Kaikkonen at the Resonaari Centre in Helsinki, Finland. It was developed as a music tool for people with learning disabilities, but is used increasingly by a wide range of learners and as a route to reading conventional notation.
Figurenotes is not an instrumental method but an alternative form of notation, as explained in an article by Kivijärvi (2019). Pitch is represented by colour (for example, all Cs are red, and Fs are blue), and the shape of the note determines the octave in which it sits. The notes are presented on a simple grid of squares with bar lines. Each square represents one beat, and a coloured shape is placed in the square as required. The absence of a shape indicates an absence of sound, and if a note is intended to last longer, then a tail is added to the shape to extend it for the requisite length. Conversely, a beat which is divided in half (crochets into quavers) appears squashed by comparison.
Drake Music Scotland brought Figurenotes to the UK in 2010 and developed it further, creating software and printed materials (see link below).
Closing thoughts
My daughter, now grown up, has asked me to teach her the cello. She had played the violin for many years, and, although well set-up technically to play the cello, she struggled with comprehending music and could not learn pieces by herself.
I decided to take the music-making back to scratch, and introduced her to Stringbabies for Cello. I was delighted to find her able to comprehend traditional notation because of the work we did using Stringbabies.
Over the years, I have continued to welcome a range of students – neurotypical and students with all sorts of special needs – and honestly believe that there are ways and means of enabling them all to become musicians who are also independent learners.
Currently, I have a mature adult pupil who presented with undiagnosed dyslexia and had found a way of becoming a successful businesswoman in spite of this challenge. In using Stringbabies, we have been able to find strategies that enable her to get to grips with comprehending notation and learning music for herself, by her own means.
If there is one principle I have taken away from my experience of bringing up children with SEND, it is this: no student of any age or ability need experience barriers to becoming successful and well-rounded musicians; it is up to us as teachers to enable them to find their way.
Links and references
- Hallam, S. (2006) Music Psychology in Education. University of London: Institute of Education.
- Kivijärvi, S. (2019) ‘Applicability of an Applied Music Notation System: a case study of Figurenotes’. International Journal of Music Education, 37(4)
- Morrow, E. (2023) ‘Music Reading for Students with Learning Disabilities’. American String Teacher, 73(4)
- stringbabies.com
- drakemusicscotland.org/figurenotes
