Truth: The white keys on the piano are in alphabetical order, starting with A as the bottom key. The music alphabet, A B C D E F G, repeats seven times up the piano keyboard. Also, the white keys should be learned individually by their position in the black keys. For example, C is to the left of the two black keys.

Untruth: In an attempt to simplify music for beginners, piano methods and teachers have come up with some of the silliest of ideas. This first example is no joke! To explain the white keys, one teacher advises to imagine the two black keys as a pair of chopsticks, and the three black keys as tines of a fork. Then, the student is to remember the key to the left of the chopsticks is C because chopsticks starts with the letter C, and to the key to left of the fork is F because fork starts with the letter F. Are you confused? I am. What student young enough for this trick would  know that chopstick starts with C and fork starts with F? 

Just as silly is this trick that a ten year old transfer student once told me. He said his former teacher told him to remember dog begins with D and the white key D is in the dog house between the two black keys. Really? This simplicity is literately insulting for a ten year old.

Less offensive to our sensibilities is putting labels on the piano keys to name them. Some electronic keyboards and even some published methods for beginners come with letters that you can put above the keys or paste on the keys for help. This little game takes away from the student's ability to memorize simple facts.

Truth: Reading is primary. Anyone old enough to read the alphabet is old enough to read music notation on a staff because the staff is read alphabetically, line to space with the letters, A B C D E F G. Did you know that the majority of students coming out of private lessons, classroom music at school, choir, band, or orchestra do not know this most simple fact? 

Untruth: Many methods and teachers take the staff out of alphabetical order to memorize the lines and spaces with sayings such as, "Every Good Boy Does Fine" for the lines and "F A C E" for the spaces. To be accurate, the staff should be taught alphabetically from the beginning. For example if you put a letter between the sayings, you will see the alphabetical order of the staff: E f G a B c D e F. What could be easier than this? No one learns to read music by memorizing sayings. 

It is important to realize that the sayings for memorizing the staff were invented in America in the 1930's, and are only used in America. Nowhere else in the world is reading music taught this way. It is wrong, confusing, and easily forgotten. Those taught by them mix up the sayings and usually never realize that the staff is alphabetical. 

To help: Our young students are not stupid! They can easily memorize the order of lines, E G B D F to help them quickly name unfamiliar notes on the staff.

Truth: The term hand position is correctly used to describe the shape of the hand in "closed" position and "open" position, but not on any particular key. 

Untruth: Most popular American piano methods teach students to play in hand positions that place the hand on a key such as C position, G position, etc. Most teachers were taught from books in hand positions as children. In hand positions, students play with five-fingers locked in position over five keys. 

Naming positions in this way is wrong and has no historic credibility. Playing in five-finger position over five keys exists in piano study for the purpose of training finger strength and dexterity, but not as a starting point for reading. Naming positions is harmful to the developing musical mind, as heard by the questions students will inevitably ask, "What hand position am I in?" This dependency to a position does not teach reading because piano music is not written in positions. To avoid this barrier stay away from any books that refer to positions in the text and stay away from naming positions yourself to help students place their hands on the keys. 

To help: The correct way to teach students how to read is to have them name the first note and fingering and place their hand ready in closed or open position over the keys before starting, without hints or help; and then play with fingering in note-groups, moving over the keys, reaching, jumping, crossing, and exchanging.

Truth: The first and most important job of the teacher is to prevent students from looking up and down at the keyboard while reading. Key-to-note relationships are developed by reading and playing simultaneously and, just as in typing, the piano keyboard is memorized by spatial relationships and tactile sense, not sight. The temptation to look up and down at the keys while playing is great but will result in disorientation, hesitating, and frequent mistakes. Poor readers will have this bad habit. 

Untruth: Student will naturally want to look down at the keys to find them, but it doesn't seem that most teachers feel this is not such an important skill to prevent. At the most, they will correct students after they look down and say, "Don't look." They don't realize that one quick glance with the eyes cheats the sense of touch and prevents students from playing tactilely. 

Worse yet are students who look up and down all the time or more their head to look. Try it sometime. Read a book looking up and down on every word, and you will understand the disorientation and comprehension problems that students experience when they look up and down as they play!

To help: To help students look up, point note-by-note to keep their eyes focused on the line of notation. If students still can't avoid the temptation to look down at the keys, cover their hands while playing. Immediately you will notice a higher level of concentration and more accuracy.

Truth: Just as in school, the first lessons in music should be learning to read. Reading is primary to communicating musical ideas, for learning new things, and for becoming independent. - Which is the goal of all education. Teach reading music as if reading any language. Point along to help the students shift their eyes note-by-note. Then read gradually faster to comprehend the sentence.

Untruth: Due to poor teaching tactics, many published methods write in answers that duplicate the musical notation. Many teachers write reminders by the notes or circle certain notes or terms to draw the student's attention to them. However, later on when students are asked what these marks mean, they will say, " I don't know." Worse yet, if they are actually looking at the reminders, the musical notation becomes invisible. Either way, reminders that duplicate notation will not help students learn to read and are a band aid to cover up a ineffective system for teaching reading.

To help: To help students read the notes point note by note on the first reading to help them notice the note as they play, and insist that they look up and never down at their hands. This trains the brain and reflexes to coordinate and eventually students will learn to read. 

Other ways to help are to play the fingers heavy on the fingertips to stimulate feeling recall and to play connected to feel relationships from one key to the other. Students are tempted to play light or release the keys prematurely to avoid finger action. Also, coach an occasional note name or fingering as students play, don't coach by steps, skips, intervals or chords. These terms are appropriate for analysis, but become hints for beginning students to read superficially. Finally, students cannot read what their fingers will not do. Play once slow for accuracy, but then gradually faster for comprehension. 

Other musical signs for expression and dynamics are incidental and should not be emphasized at the beginning stages of learning to read. These signs can be learned in an instant at any time, but learning to read notes is a long and complicated process.

Truth: The learning gap widens very quickly for those children, teachers, or parents seeking recreation from lessons and those seeking an education. Education, by its very purpose is the means to learn in a very short time collected and preserved experiences that took centuries to discover. Education opens up a vast world of new ideas to the student. For those seeking to have fun lose out on knowledge. Learning is fun and opens the door to more than you can imagine on your own. It does not need to be made fun by playing familiar songs that are popular in today's culture and already familiar.

Untruth: So many music teachers think music should be made fun to keep the student's interest, implying that learning music is not fun! In thinking this way, they have created a system of music education that is truly not education at all and testing to evaluate knowledge has no meaning. Especially students taking private lessons are frequently guided by their own instincts and are in charge of their own education.