Question on mental visualization of notes on staff, and music visualization techniques in general

[sellyoursoul]

Maybe you saw the other thread that I started here in the music theory part of the forum asking for good resources for independent learning. In thinking about this kind of stuff, it came to me that a good exercise for learning notes on the staff might be mental visualization. It might go something like this:

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Visualize middle C on the staff for treble clef.
Now add B below C and D above C to the mental visualization.
Visualize C...
D...
B...
D...
C...
Continue visualizing, jumping around among these notes in a random fashion.
Become comfortable with this before moving on.

Add A below B and E above D.
Proceed as above.

Continue adding notes in this way until the grandstaff is covered.
If at any point it feels stressful to mentally visualize the given notes, remove a note or two for a while.

Or, it might be done separately for treble, bass, etc.

It might also be done in conjunction with singing the notes, or the singing aspect might be appended after learning to visualize the notes on the staff well.

After becoming good at visualizing notes and hearing them in your head, it should be easy enough to imagine taking this further; visualing intervals, scales, chords, rhythms, melodies, progressions, whole pieces of music.

A side note, which might be helpful for the singing aspect, is to use a self-made sign language for intervals. It goes like this:

Use a sound reference for middle C, or whichever pitch that you want to start with. Sing the note, and on one hand, raise your index finger, as to count '1'. Proceed as follows for going through the intervals of the major scale:

1 - index finger
2 - index and middle
3 - index, middle, and ring
4 - index, middle, ring, and pinky
5 - index, middle, ring, pinky, and thumb
6 - thumb (fist and thumb up, looks like a 6)
7 - thumb and index (looks like a 7)

I'm sure that someone has thought of this idea before or has thought of something similar.

The way that I have used it (not extensively) is start with a few intervals of the major scale, in sequence, backward, then at random. Then add another interval, continuing as before. Eventually, you should be able to jump around from any interval to any other interval. I didn't quite take it far enough to get really good at that. It was a thought that I tinkered with here and there.

So instead of using this hand business, I was thinking that it could maybe be more useful to replace the hand signs with mental visaualization of intervals on the staff, as outlined above.

One aspect of it that I'm thinking about is that mental visualization is much more immediate (faster) than say, using hand signs, flashcards, or some other physical means. Maybe a con of this is that you are the source of notes being generated.

I guess I'm lookng for any input on the above, as well as any thoughts and techniques on mental visualization in general. Do you think that mental visualization would be a good tool for applying to music learning?

[sellyoursoul]

A continued thought on the above...

If you think that mental visualization of notes on the staff might be useful to you, one way to practice it might be to think of it in groups as follows:

[For reference, a link to an image of the grand staff]

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Where is middle C?  Where is C an octave above?  Where is C an octave below?
Burn these positions into your brain through repetitive visualization, saying to yourself:
Ledger line, between treble and bass clefs.
Third space, treble clef.
Second space, bass clef.

Visualize middle C on the staff, B below it, and D above it.
Visualize C an octave higher on the staff, B below it, and D above it.
Visualize C an octave lower on the staff, B below it, and D above it.
After getting comfortable with the above, add two new notes (A and E).
And so on...

So, you would be beginning with 3 notes (C, B, D), adding two more (A, E), then adding the final two (G, F). And that's all the notes for a few octaves. Maybe after that, add a higher octave to the exercise, then a lower octave, continuing until you have covered as much of the staff as you want to learn.

Any thoughts?

[sellyoursoul]

A pro of mental visualization is that you can do it anywhere at anytime without the need for any physical materials or an instrument. I don't know that it would serve as a replacement for exercises involving using phystical materials. But at the very least, I think that it would be good a useful addition to other exercises.

Also, I should mention that it may be worth thinking about the end goal and what is being visualized, specifically. In the case of visualizing for the purpose of reading notes on the staff, it would be more useful to visualize dots on the staff than letters on the staff. And I'm thinking that it might be more useful to visualize notes in succession on the staff (from left to right) rather than each individual note. Or maybe start with individual notes and graduate to visualizing notes in succession, as in visualing bars of whole notes, then half notes, then quarters, etc. Stuff to think about...

[sellyoursoul]

Also, I should mention that it may be worth thinking about the end goal and what is being visualized, specifically. In the case of visualizing for the purpose of reading notes on the staff, it would be more useful to visualize dots on the staff than letters on the staff. And I'm thinking that it might be more useful to visualize notes in succession on the staff (from left to right) rather than each individual note. Or maybe start with individual notes and graduate to visualizing notes in succession, as in visualing bars of whole notes, then half notes, then quarters, etc. Stuff to think about...

For myself, this is initially difficult to do. When I try to visualize dots or noteheads on the staff, it's a struggle not to visualize letters. And visualizing sequences of notes is much more difficult than one note at a time. It may be helpful to first write out some note sequences on a staff, read through them, and then visualize them.

[jancivil]

"it may be worth thinking about the end goal"

Ya think?

I don't know quite what to do with someone at the beginning of understanding the mechanics of music.
I'm tempted to elaborate, but no. Learn reading music in the doing.

[KBSoundSmith]

Hey there, quick thing on this: the more parts a system has, the greater a chance it has of breaking down. What I mentioned in the other thread is comprehensive -- however, it doesn't have excess parts. Don't overcomplicate things.

As jancivil said, "Learn reading music in the doing."

Remember, you learned to write the letters of the alphabet by rote -- by writing them down, over and over again. The idea is simple: just keep doing it until you no longer need to. Do the same thing with music notation. If you keep doing it, you'll get to the point where you just know it.

Visualization techniques certainly have their place -- but I think that's overkill in this context. Remember the part where I said doing this would be obnoxious? It's going to be -- but stick with it, and don't overcomplicate things. Flash cards, copying by hand -- those are the two things you're allowed to do, for now. You'll get past this faster than you'd imagine, so be patient and grind it out.

[sellyoursoul]

Ok, I am journaling on this visualization stuff, as a separate endeavor from reading and writing for now, along with some other alternative approaches.