What follows is a rough-edit of the episode, so please forgive typos and/or formatting errors.

All content is my own; requests to use this material – with proper citation – can be sent to [email protected]

Episode 244: Cheers to Building Better Music Readers

Well hello there, studio teacher friends!  Welcome to the Beyond Measure Podcast, your weekly dose of piano teacher solidarity. If we haven’t met, my name is Christina Whitlock, and I am coming at you this FIRST Monday of 2026 with ALL KINDS optimistic New Year’s energy.  For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved Mondays. I love the possibility of a new week,  and that is NEVER more true than the first Monday of the new year.

I’ve had the best kind of holiday break: lots of rest AND lots of projects accomplished.  We’ve enjoyed a lot of family time, we’ve cleaned out closets… it’s been the best.

And I’m here bringing YOU my most optimistic self today, determined more than ever that we WILL level up our teaching together this year.  You and me? We’re already pretty great, but we’re going to end 2026 even more effective teachers than we’re starting today.  I’m declaring it for both of us!  And today, we’re starting with a few thoughts about how we teach students to READ on the staff. Yep, it’s a big one. We’d better get to it, friends.

You are listening to episode 244 of the Beyond Measure Podcast.

OKAY FRIENDS: I’m not going to bury the lead here… I’m going to tell you right now, I’m launching a new resource today for teachers and it’s called Building Better Music Readers. I’m saying this upfront so you don’t think I’m trying to swindle you into buying something from me when I mention it later.

This is not a sales-driven episode; there’s plenty of content here you will find useful, whether you purchase Building Better Music Readers or not. So please just bear with me for just one second while I tell you why I’m so excited about this.

I have been promising teachers this content for YEARS. Actual years. It’s taken me awhile to figure out what format I wanted to use to deliver this information, and I’m really excited about where I’ve landed. I’m going to run a trial group to start, and see how it goes.

Building Better Music Readers is a 12-week instructional series that will send you a video, a printable resource, and one specific activity to try with your students every Monday Morning for 12 weeks.

All activities are designed to help prepare students to read music on the staff. The beauty of these activities is this:  Yes, they are designed for students who are NOT yet reading on the staff… but, most of them are still applicable to students who are. Meaning, you can still try these activities with students who are reading on the staff. You might even be surprised by who struggles with some seemingly-simple requests.

Anyway, like I said – this isn’t a sales episode – but I did want to let you know I’m taking a limited number of teachers on a trial run of this 12-week journey, starting NEXT Monday – January 12^th. After that, I’ll close registration until we make it through the entire 12-week cycle so I can collect feedback and evaluate if it’s something I want to continue offering. If you are up for being a guinea pig and helping me shape this resource with your feedback, I’m offering a steeply-discounted pre-sale price of $72 for all 12 weeks of materials. If you happen to be a SuperFriend over on Patreon, you have a coupon code waiting for you over there so make sure you check that out, too.

The link to sign up is in the shownotes, or you can head to ChristinaWhitlock.com/readers for all the info. Registration is open now and closes again on Sunday, January 11^th.

OKAY: Let’s talk about READING MUSIC, shall we?

In the world of Piano Teaching, there are a handful of subjects that get me really stirred up. The first one is the fact that, there are teachers among us who can’t seem to separate the idea of playing the piano with the idea of reading music. It’s like those two skills are inextricably linked.

What breaks my heart about this situation is the fact that these teachers assess their students’ musical potential based on their ability to read music in front of them.

I’m not throwing stones here; as always, I’ve been there. I didn’t know better. I thought my students who read well were my most successful students. End of story.

Of course, I *do* want my students to read well. It’s a high priority for me as a teacher. Being a good sight-reader gives you flexibility in how you use your skills, and it connects you with an enormous amount of repertoire. You can never be at a loss for something to play if you have solid reading skills.

Plus – let’s face it – many times, our best readers really ARE our top-performing students.

But the thing about this that crushes my soul is the fact that TEACHING students how to read music is drastically UNDER-studied in our profession. There are far too many of us out there who rely on whatever system our method book uses and we call it a day.

If a student struggles to learn how to read the staff based on whatever sequence is presented in the method book, we quietly assume music is not their thing. They’re never going to get it. It’s not their “talent”  (ugh. Gross word, I know)

I’ve received a lot of transfer students over the years who are in this exact boat. They struggled to learn to read through whatever method series their teacher was using and they came to me discouraged and desperate. Desperate because they wanted to play the piano; discouraged because they were thoroughly convinced they were never going to learn this skill.

There are two important things to do right away with these students: First of all, we need to connect them to playing music they will enjoy playing, regardless of how they learn it.  It might be improv, it might be pre-reading pieces, it might be chords, it might be rote pieces, it might be composing their own pieces. Somewhere in that list of five things is SOMETHING they will enjoy doing. That’s thing number one. Because very few students are going to be willing to put up with the nitty-gritty work of learning to read if they aren’t connected with the joy of making music in one way or another. Find something they love to play. It’s worth it.

Thing number two? We completely deconstruct the reading process.

Here’s the thing: The skill of reading notation is full of conflation. Multiple concepts that are tied together in ways that we forget because we’ve been reading music for most of our lives.

We’ve got pitch. Like, actual frequencies of sound that get classified as high, low, up, down, and right to left. We have alphabet letters that correspond to piano keys, but also to specific lines and spaces on two different staves. We have note heads and note stems – that face multiple directions, mind you. We have finger numbers that come in different directions across two hands. Modern day methods seem to spend a lot of time labeling line notes and space notes. There are interval numbers that don’t match up with finger numbers… let alone all the other numbers: counting numbers, chord numbers, measure numbers, so many numbers….

When you pull it all apart, the number of concepts at play at any one time is completely overwhelming.

Of course, strong sight readers know how to filter that information and distill it down to what really matters. Namely, intervallic movement… but that’s another topic for another day.

What slays me is this: some students are wired to assimilate all this information fluidly. We love students like this. But they spoil us a little as teachers.

It’s like when my daughters were young and learning to read actual words. As in – not music reading, but reading reading. These kids of mine? They came wired to read. My oldest was reading fluently when she started kindergarten, with very little effort on our part. Her younger sister was reading fluently before she entered Preschool and that was with pretty much ZERO effort on our part.  Aside from reading a lot with them, they were not fluent due to some incredible learning sequence we put them through; they just got it.

So I’m two for two on kids who learned to read fluently at early ages. But I don’t get to go around and tell people I’ve cracked the code on teaching kids to read. They just got it. Which is GREAT for all of us, but it wasn’t because of informed teaching on our part as their parents.

I say this in great love for all of us in this profession – but I think there are a lot of teachers out there who consider themselves great at teaching students to read music simply because they’ve had a lot of students who can read music.

So when you’re in a position where you’re like, “2/3^rrs of my studio can read well and I just don’t know what’s going on with the other 1/3^rd” … or if you’re of the opinion that some students just never get it?  I’d like to (gently) challenge you on that.

When students struggle to read, it’s possible there are learning exceptionalities at play. Maybe there IS something tricky happening in their cognitive process… but it’s also entirely possible they are having trouble connecting the number of dots they’re being asked to connect at the same time.

I credit my success in teaching students to read music to the fact that I’ve settled on a specific set of exercises that dissect every element of staff notation. It doesn’t matter what method series I’m starting them in; we do the same kinds of exercises regardless of their books.

I’m not claiming to have invented these exercises. But I have settled on a specific series of drills that allow students to experience ALL those elements that get pulled together when they start seeing staff notation in their method series.

And I begin these sequences, laying the foundation for fluid reading, at a student’s very first lesson.

Through their first few weeks with me, students are practicing alphabet fluency. We slowly… sneakiliy…without any sense of intimidation… start dissecting how note heads move on the staff. We learn what stepping up and down FEELS LIKE in the fingers before we attach it to letter names or staff notes. We master the topography of the keyboard so there are no lingering questions there.

Students go home practicing pre-reading and rote pieces because they offer more opportunities for musical interest and foundational technique. But during the lesson itself, we take a handful of minutes to work ahead so no one is surprised.

If you can’t tell, I’m rather proud of the fact that I have a reputation in my community for rehabbing struggling readers. I’m always sad to find students in such a discouraged state, but there are few things more satisfying in Music Teacher Life than seeing the TANGIBLE RESULTS of helping someone realize they can, indeed, read music.

So, you’re a smart audience… you can probably guess that my new resource: Building Better Music Readers, is an overview to all these exercises designed to deconstruct the music-reading process.

It’s worth noting that I’m sure you could come up with similar drills to mine. You can probably find someone divvying them out on YouTube and you could build your own sequence that works for you for free. I did not design this resource with delusions that I’ve cracked some secret code.

BUT. I also know how overwhelming that piece-meal process can be, and how much time, trial, and error it takes to do that.

I’ve walked many, many teacher consult clients through these sequences and I know they work. The problem is, when I sit and unload ALL these strategies on teachers in a one hour consult appointment, it does often translate to information overload. It’s too much to take in during a single hour and ends up feeling like a lot of work to implement.

I’m REALLY excited about the 12-week format of Building Better Music Readers because it SHOULD – in theory – give teachers an opportunity to focus on one exercise each week. You can spend a few minutes each week practicing these drills with your students, find your groove, and then move onto the next the following week.

Again – these are drills you can use with students BEFORE they’re reading on the staff, but they’re also beneficial for those who are already reading notation. If they breeze right through them, great. That’s confirmation they know what you need them to know.  If not, well, you’ve found a gap in their understanding, and that is important to know, too.

So, friends…here’s the takeaway from today: We NEVER want to leave our students feeling like lesser musicians just because they struggle to read music.  Reading music is only one component of musicianship. But since most of us DO see it as a high-priority skill, we would be wise to give more thought to how we introduce these ideas.

And here is a hill I am willing to die on: If you are not preparing your student with introductory exercises for the staff before they encounter it in their method book?  And all of a sudden, you turn the page and you’re both staring down a picture of a gigantic grand staff with 23 notes labeled on it from bottom to top and your students’ eyeballs want to pop out of their head?  You’re missing important opportunities, friend.

If we’re not careful, EVERYTHING about our students’ musical experience changes when the staff is introduced and that is a TRAGEDY. If they’re playing music that sounds like music and then all of a sudden they’re relegated to playing, “C C C… C C C… C… C… C……”?  That’s not our best work, friends. That’s not the way to get anyone excited about making music.  It’s not even a good way to teach students how to read C, but I won’t get rolling on that right now.

If you’re interested in learning more about my personal approach to preparing students for the staff, I’d love for you to check out Building Better Music Readers. I’m providing 12 weeks of exercises and corresponding printables to get all the concepts spinning in the right direction.

And if you’re not interested in purchasing the resource, I hope I’ve inspired you today to get more serious about preparing important concepts ahead of time. I know I’m harping on the staff today, but this idea of working ahead is a hallmark of my teaching and something I feel very passionately about.

Oooohkay – before I just spin all the way out of control here, let’s have a toast, shall we?

Studio music teacher friends from all over the world:  I’m so grateful for you today. I’ve learned so much from you over the last five years of Beyond Measure and I’m honored to have been part of your learning process, too. May we all take a moment to give ourselves some credit today: Teaching music is… a lot. We’re tasked with teaching students how to read, how to make music, how to be resilient, how to work, how to perform, how to be patient in the learning process… just SO MANY THINGS. So when we come to the realization that there’s room for improvement in our teaching?  That is not an attack or something to feel badly about: it’s a universal truth for all teachers. We can’t know everything about everything. I mean, we come closer than other people… but… you know.  Haha! I meant what I said at the top of this episode. Let’s end this new year as better-informed teachers than when we started. Are you with me?  Cheers to all of us on the teacher journey. Hear, hear.

Okay, friends!  That’s a wrap on Episode 244.  Check out today’s shownotes for links to Building Better Music Readers and more. I can’t WAIT to start that journey with some of you. Until next week, onward and upward we go!