minim-crotchet in 3/4 time, Why do some pupils find this so difficult? Options

[agricola]

Quite a few players 'read' the spacing between the notes rather than the actual note values. In 3/4 minim / crotchet the space between the notes can look equal so that's what they play. Others just read one note at a time-- and to get this rhythm right you have to read the crotchet with the following minim. If it's piano the left hand usually has a note or chord at this point which can cause a further hold up. One thing I try is to sing along and tap the note I'm singing with a pencil to show how the eye should be scanning.

Similar problems are stopping on the last of a group of quavers, and playing notes closer together than they should be if they're either slurred, staccato or a repeated note.

[dacapo]

If they are really stuck with 3/4 then I do the bouncing ball thingy that Cyrilla told us about once.

I must have missed that one. Please could someone provide a link?

I talk about beats of different strengths, in 3 time strong, less, least, and the idea of the light third beat leading to the strong first one. When I'm working on ABRSM aural test A differentiating between 2 and 3 beats in a bar I get the candidate (usually someone else's pupil that I'm accompanying) to march on the spot. I play chords on the beat in 2 or 3 time and ask them to notice which foot the strong beats come on. Even very small children know that they only have 2 feet (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) so if the strong beats always come on the same foot it must be in 2 time.

A barline takes up space, but is only like a signpost saying "here comes a strong beat".

Something I haven't tried, but which might be helpful, would be to write a completely unbarred random series of minims and crotchets on a single line and get the pupil to play them. They could either play on one note or perhaps choose a different pitch for each type of note. Well laid out music indicates relative note lengths with horizontal space, but these notes could be equally spaced to encourage pupils to notice the difference between white and black heads more carefully. Early printed music offered no barlines and no help at all from horizontal spacing. I assume paper was so expensive that as much music as possible was crammed onto a single sheet!

[VH2]

"minim-crotchet in 3/4 time, Why do some pupils find this so difficult?"

I have not come across any pupils that find this any more difficuilt than other common rhythms.

But if I did I would try to figure out why THAT PARTICULAR PUPIL had a problem, because I expect that different students would struggle for diffferent reasons.