I have had a 14 year old girl learning piano with me for a year now and I am absolutely beat in my attempts at learning her to read music. She previously has attempted the violin but found it too difficult, and has also dabbled with the harp under her own steam, but not sure if this is ongoing. She is intelligent and does well at school. I have tried many approaches including learning pieces with only a left hand, writing on notes and playing by ear for a time. The only method that has worked so far is writing on the note names, but even this leads to her getting muddled and playing right hand notes with the left hand and vice versa. Don't know what else to try as we have made very little progress in the year and it is becoming frustrating all round. She also can loose her placing half way through a line, move up several notes and not even notice that she's playing a different melody altogether. I had initially thought she might be dyslexic like her brother but the mother assures me she has been tested and is not. Any suggestions?

The tests for dyslexia are not infallible. My sister's dyslexia was not recognised when she was first tested, so she was tested again and it proved she was dyslexic. Maybe you could try some of the things you would use for dyslexic people and see if it helps anyway. You could try, for example, coloured overlays. These might help her in keeping her place in the music. If it doesn't work, at least you tried!

I did actually wonder about scanning some music and then printing it out in blue ink but I'm not sure if that might be a long shot!

It does sound as though there may be some learning difficulty there, especially if you have tried one hand (single stave presumably) and she still can't manage it. There are some books with different coloured notes in (sorry can't remember what they are called - someone will no doubt remind me).

Perhaps try getting her to move some notes around on a big stave (You could use buttons or cut out cardboard notes) - some kids learn better by doing rather than looking - counting notes up from the bottom line.

I hate to say it, but it sounds as though you've tried pretty hard - you can't win every time. How badly does she really want to carry on? It sounds as though her aural skills are pretty weak if she doesn't even recognise when she is going wrong - perhaps some work on that might help.

Good luck!

If this girl's brother is dyslexic, they may have some coloured overlays at home. You could suggest that she bring them to a lesson, and you could see if it has any effect on her playing.

Has to be worth a try...