A Comparison of the Middle C and the Mixed Intervallic Reading Approaches on Music Reading Among Beginner Piano Students

Abstract

For many piano teachers, developing proficient reading skills in their young beginner students is one of the important aspects of weekly lessons yet it can also be one of the most frustrating tasks to undertake. To assist in this process, teachers look to method books to provide structure and an approach to music reading. Two reading approaches are prevalent in the current marketplace and widely used by teachers; the mixed intervallic approach and the middle C approach. The mixed intervallic approach, which stresses reading by interval, pattern and direction, is favoured and endorsed by current pedagogy and is adopted by many method books. This study compared the reading skills of young beginner piano students (ages 7-11) using either the mixed intervallic approach or the middle C approach to see which approach produced more reliable reading skills. Participants performed several music reading tasks to test keyboard identification (verbal), note identification in treble and bass clef (verbal), single note identification in C and G position (playing), broken and solid intervals in C and G position (playing), 3 note patterns and non-patterns in C and G position (playing), and sight reading. I hypothesized that the middle C students would perform better at single note identification while the mixed intervallic students would perform better in interval recognition, pattern recognition and sight reading. The results showed that the middle C students outperformed the mixed intervallic students in all tests except for keyboard identification and 3 note patterns in G position. These findings are surprising as they may indicate that the middle C approach, which is often criticized, is generating reliable reading skills among beginner piano students.