Here you can find teaching resources, lesson ideas and stationary. Please share them as you wish and drop we an email if you have feedback.

 

 The Technique of Teaching Interval Recognition

  • Do you struggle with interval recognition?
  • Are you a teacher looking for a way to help your students with of interval recognition?

The downloadable documents here outline a teaching method for interval recognition. I have developed this over a number of years working with students at The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Please help yourself to the documents, copy and share them as much as you like and give me your feedback.

The Technique of Teaching Interval Recognition 

Empty Interval Flow Chart

Complete Interval Flow Chart 1

Complete Interval Flow Chart 2

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Myfanwy

This is a beautiful Welsh folk song arranged for single-line melody with chords.

Click here for a pdf file of Myfanwy.

It can be used as an excellent fingerboard-knowledge exercise for players of about grade 4-5 standard. I ask the student to play the melody at sight. They will naturally do this using open strings. As a homework exercise, ask him/her to work out the first half out the melody in 4th position, avoiding open strings. This usually takes a couple of weeks to master. Then, as they will know the tune aurally at this point, explain that the second half is exactly the same melody one octave higher. Ask them to work it out, again in their own time, remaining in the 7th position throughout. This is great to use in the run up to an exam, when your student may need a break from their pieces, and they can refine those aural and sight reading skills.

Learning outcomes include improved sight reading (through improved fingerboard knowledge) and aural awareness. You could also teach the student the chords.

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Chord Boxes

Click here for guitarist's chord boxes (pdf).

Simple and ideal for making a note of chord shapes. I've designed these with a patterned left-hand vertical line to remind students that this represents the lowest-pitched, wound E string.

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Stave and TAB paper - guitar

Click here for stave and tab paper (pdf).

Electric guitar teachers, here's special manuscript paper with a music staff (with the correct clef!) and TAB lines.

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Stave and TAB paper - bass

Click here for the bass version (pdf).

Can't leave the bass players out can we?