Karen Beecher

Phone: (602) 300-9385

Email: karenbeechermusic@gmail.com

Book I Summary - The Maison System of Music

The Maison System Book I begins by teaching a child how to develop a mental image of the keyboard in order to identify the letters rapidly. For example, the group of two black keys is called the dog house. Doggy D is the white key inside the doghouse. Now it is very simple for the student to learn where D is on the keyboard using a visual or tactile method of identification.

Next, color and body parts are used to instruct a student how to identify the blue bass clef line notes and pink bass clef space notes. The higher the body part, the higher the note. For instance, blue line four is your elbows or the note F. Whereas, blue line 5 is your ears or the note A. Instead of using traditional acronyms to learn the notes, tactile learning makes it possible to learn the notes out of sequence instantly. In addition, the different colors used for the lines and spaces insures that a child will distinguish between a line and space note. The student plays a bean bag game to reinforce the notes he or she just learned.


Thirdly, color is used to locate intervals, (the distance between two notes). For example, notes D to E are stepping because they are next door neighbors and different colors. Unlike notes B to D, which are skipping because they leap frog over the letter C and are the same color. A scrabble game is used to strengthen a child's ability to identify intervals.

The last unit introduces rhythm, (the duration of sound and silence), using terms such as "TA" to represent a quarter note or "TA-AH" as a half note to assist a child in clapping and saying rhythm accurately, while maintaining a steady tempo. The student plays matching games to learn the names of rhythmic symbols and how many beats, (units of rhythm), each symbol receives.

The back of the book contains a question and answer section, (where each unit of Book I is reviewed), along with games that are to be laminated, cut out and used on a regular basis.