Teach them this. They will learn.

um... okay

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha and ha

I've had the same problem. During marching season I'm the pit section leader, and I have to teach some of them the music note by note, and it gets annoying. I've found that the ones that want to learn to read notes do, you just give them lots of easy stuff to read and practice and they get it eventually, or at least they get better at it. Everyone else that doesn't care won't improve, especially if they have an "easier" method (asking someone).

It's mostly a personal issue, you can't really solve it for them, but I think it has its roots in beginner band. Everyone else learns to read, so why not percussionists? Maybe it's because they spend a good deal of time learning other, non-melodic instruments (snare, cymbals, triangle, etc.) and don't spend enough time dealing with mallet instruments.

I think it could be beneficial for beginner percussionists to first learn a woodwind, (as previously mentioned) even a simple one like the recorder. Unfortunately, that might not be a practical solution for non-reading, high school percussionists.

Too bad you cant just stick a note reading chip in their brains...

Maybe you could try teaching them Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge insted of Earnie Gave Bert Dead Fish.It was way easier for me!!!!
good luck

yeah, i already tried that.
They finally just got the "face" thing for the spaces.

okay thats good they got that.keep trying they will get it one day!!!

I am the section leader for my school band, and I have been working with people on learning how to read for about a year now. Almost everyone can read now, even if it isn't up to speed, but it just takes time and patience as everyone else has said. Give them time and encourage them and they will be more likely to try and learn.

I don't want to sound like I'm giving up or anything... but within this week, I just relized my section dosen't want to try. We are site reading a tone of Christmas music and, being the section leader, I dicided to hand out the parts and not let the section chose what they play. I worked with a kid on a simple (about 6th grade level) mallet part for only about ten minutes and I could already see him making loads of improvement.

Within ten minutes this percussionist went from "I know for a fact that there is not way that I can site read this" to "ya know, this isn't that bad". Maybe as a section leader I need to push (not force) them to try.

I was thinking that when we site read, I should give different people the mallet part and work with them on it.

Is this a good idea?

That's a wonderful idea. Most people who don't play mallets don't have any interest in them until they have to play them. I started forcing people to switch parts, and now we have a well rounded percussion section.

If anyone gives you any trouble about playing mallets, show them an advanced piece and play it for them. This normally makes people realize that you have to have skill to play mallets and that it is an instrument "worthy" of their time.

A few tips.

Make them practice. As it was said before, those who want to learn will because they put the tim and effort into it. They need to undersand that they need to put something in to get something out.

It seems like they need some type of really firm structure. They can't simply just learn all of this stuff, they need a strong base that all of the things they learn later can rest on. What is it? Scales. All music is based on scales, and scales present to us all forms of intervals and musical flow. Scales are something they can figure out themselves and practice for hours with much headway. Some things are hard to practice because we fell like we will never get them. If you have everyone get a strong base in scales they will recognise chord, melodic, and harmonic patterns easily without having to laboriously write uot every note. It's going to suck but they need to go back to the very beginning and learn every single smajor and minor scale (harmonic and melodic). With such a firm base in music they can't go wrong.

Again. They need to practice daily.