Non-traditional font for dressage letters?

[atlatl]

@Wanderosa

Lordie, I can tell a lot of you don’t play the piano!! No, it’s not that simple. I’m talking about teaching them to find the correlating keys on the keyboard itself. A lot of people have trouble with that. Especially because the high contrast blck/white keys give people depth perseption issues. I didn’t invent the style of teaching that uses the black keys to orient the player on the keyboard. Franz Liszt did. And if it worked for him…

There are 7 or 8 octaves of each letter name on the keyboard. The first thing you must do as a piano teacher is help the student see the pattern of the keyboard. Each occurance of a given note (A, for example) is notated differently in written sheet music. So, each of the 7 A’s has it’s own symbol in written music. Because the piano has so many notes, we use a grand staff where both the treble and bass clef are read simultaneously. For notes at the upper and lower extremes, ledger lines are used to extend the staves up or down. When you’re reading along and see a note 5+ ledger lines below the staff (not uncommon in condensed orchestra scores for opera) chances are even a professional concert player is going to have to stop and count ledger lines and them write the note name next to it in the score. Now, I can make a good guess what the note might be on the fly if necessary thanks to a technique called intervalic reading. But for a piece I’m learning for my repertoire where it must be 100% perfect, I’m going to count, because it could make a difference in the voicing of the chord.

Apparently, there are more than a couple of people that do play the piano and think it is that simple; well at least for them.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I always struggled with bass clef so was never great at piano; much better at organ when I could just use chords, coronet, French Horn and classical guitar. Treble clef on a piano is light-years easier than on a guitar, IME, where it’s also not unusual to see notes ledger lines above or below the staff. Obviously, the piano has a larger range.

I think what you’re poking at is probably the correlation between being good at math (which includes pattern recognition) and good at music. That, and people just learn differently.

[endlessclimb]

@LilyandBaron

Lol. No worries on the derail:) I wasn’t doing this to help me find the letters - my memory isn’t that far gone yet, and I ride the “pattern” a bit, like a hunter round - outside line, diagonal, outside line, sort of. I just want to mark off the dimensions in my ring, instead of guessing at where V is in relation to M.

With the letters I painted - I was talking to a friend - I like the current color and how it complements the background right now, but willing to go darker if it bothers me when it’s put up. I was sort of inspired by illuminated letters in old manuscripts, and most are gold/gilt.

I am kind of surprised there aren’t more personalized arenas - I get not doing it in competition, but so many options to have fun with private arenas! I’m not at all affiliated with this etsy thing, but as an idea - can’t you see some decadent arena at a Tuscan-inspired Wellington farm, with like, a hedge outside rail, with these beautifully mounted as the letters??? You could stain the letter lighter or something, but if I could carve wood, this would be next on my list!

For me, I like plain bold letters because if I need to quick orient myself, I pretty well want to do it out of the corner of my eye and not have to actually focus on the letter wholly. I think yours are gorgeous!

[Wanderosa]

@endlessclimb

I’ve played the piano for about 23 years. Have been to nashville to assist with a friend’s recording, played the silly hymns in church (not religious, so that was fun), accompanied for many choirs, have an inherited baby grand at home. I can play by ear, and I can read sheet music extremely quickly. Favorite to play is Vivaldi. Favorite current is Einaudi. I don’t play as much as I should anymore, as I’m always crunched for time.

It goes ABCDEFG ABCDEFG over and over again. There is a pattern to the black keys that allows you to orient where you are on the white keys. Why one would need to orient themselves to any more than ONE of the white keys totally escapes my mind. Saying this letter is left and this letter is right is ridiculous because it’s alphabetical. The group of two black keys, go down a half step from the one on the left and voila that’s C - and from there, you are within hands reach of where you wanted to be.

Reading sheet music is a totally different animal. Beginners don’t need to know all the instances of A on the keyboard - they’re always playing a melody around middle C, in C major. By the time they exercise the entire keyboard, they should have already learned the pattern by heart/memory/feel.

Talking about dogs and cats and houses and this this way and that that way. Oi. My brain is bleeding. But hey, if it works for you and yours…

Why not teach them how to identify all the keys if it takes all of 10 minutes? Middle C methodology of teaching has all but disappeared in the past 20 years except for the John Tomlinson books that are pretty much unchanged from first publication in the early 20th century. Middle C method could suit someone who plays primarily church music where the voicings are limited and the tonal structure traditional. Most of my students are typically working towards admission to college degree programs for composition, recording, and performance where they’re required to be proficient on multiple instruments and work in genres with atypical tonal structrures. My kids that go on to get their degree in Applied Organ/Sacred Music are required to audition for these program on the piano despite the differences between the two.

No one has to do it my way. I explained myself further when you called me into question quite rudely. I just wonder why you felt the need to attack me in the first place when I was cheerfully responding to something that reminded me of something fun I share with students?

[x-halt-salute]

@Sticky Situation

Maybe dressage should adopt the Phonetic Alphabet

I’m guessing you meant the NATO alphabet, but given how many of those get used as barn names, I’m imagining chaos if an instructor used them in an arena with others schooling. :lol:

Charlie, track left. No, not Charlie, at Charlie.
Bravo, 10 m circle. Oops, not you Bravo.
You need to be aiming at Victor. Ah! Sorry, Victor!
Don’t lose your impulsion before you hit Romeo. Uh oh. Is Romeo ok?

Perhaps International Phonetic letters would provide sufficient disambiguation for calling movements?

Ash: enter working trot
Chi: halt, salute. proceed working trot
Schwa: circle left 20 m

I am the sort of learner who finds learning a lexical mnemonic to be more complex and cumbersome than just committing the facts to memory, whether that’s placement of dressage letters or piano keys. With the dressage arena, I’m rarely moving around the perimeter in a linear fashion, so a device to learn the order of the letters wouldn’t have helped me to get oriented. But I could imagine a visual/spatial mnemonic (like the memory palace technique) being potentially useful for learning new tests.

OP, nice job with the letters!

[Somantu]

@x-halt-salute

Charlie, track left. No, not Charlie, at Charlie.
Bravo, 10 m circle. Oops, not you Bravo.
You need to be aiming at Victor. Ah! Sorry, Victor!
Don’t lose your impulsion before you hit Romeo. Uh oh. Is Romeo ok?

:lol:

[endlessclimb]

@Wanderosa

Why not teach them how to identify all the keys if it takes all of 10 minutes? Middle C methodology of teaching has all but disappeared in the past 20 years except for the John Tomlinson books that are pretty much unchanged from first publication in the early 20th century. Middle C method could suit someone who plays primarily church music where the voicings are limited and the tonal structure traditional. Most of my students are typically working towards admission to college degree programs for composition, recording, and performance where they’re required to be proficient on multiple instruments and work in genres with atypical tonal structrures. My kids that go on to get their degree in Applied Organ/Sacred Music are required to audition for these program on the piano despite the differences between the two.

No one has to do it my way. I explained myself further when you called me into question quite rudely. I just wonder why you felt the need to attack me in the first place when I was cheerfully responding to something that reminded me of something fun I share with students?

My apologies, I didn’t intend to offend. And lol on the primarily church music (last I checked, that’s not the genre Vivaldi falls into - nor jazz which is my second favorite because you can make mistakes all day long and just roll with them)… just like lol on the assumption that the people questioning you, obviously didn’t play the piano. Easy on the broad brushing.

I feel similarly to how they’re teaching math these days with “common core” - my thoughts being, in a nutshell, why overcomplicate it? Why reinvent something that worked for ages, and worked well?

If I’m teaching someone to rebuild a T5 transmission, I don’t make a song or mnemonic for them to learn it - they just need to knuckle down and memorize it. If they want to make their own song, they are free to do so.