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Pyng-Na Lee
To cite this article: Pyng-Na Lee (2013) Self-invented notation systems created by young
children, Music Education Research, 15:4, 392-405, DOI: 10.1080/14613808.2013.829429
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Music Education Research, 2013
Vol. 15, No. 4, 392405, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14613808.2013.829429
Early Childhood Education, National University of Tainan, 33, Sec. 2, Shu-Lin St., Tainan city
70005, Taiwan
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1. Introduction
Young children create music spontaneously. Five-year-olds use timbral contrasts,
sequence, augmentation and diminution to create music (Gluschankof 2002).
Together as a small instrumental ensemble, they can naturally play a beat, ostinato
or rhythm (Lee 2007). A case study found that a four-year-old explored musical
content in an environmental context to shape her songs through extensions and
elaboration (Barrett 2006). Although young children have rich, spontaneous musical
behaviour, it is crucial to know how to show pre-literate children how to record their
music and represent their musical thoughts.
Notation is an intermediary for memorising, coding, storing and retrieving
music. Through spontaneous play, a three-year-old was able to adopt the colours
from instruments as a musical notation to represent pitch (Lau and Grieshaber
2010). Children extended ideas from visual aids in a classroom or used drawings such
*Email: pyngna@mail.nutn.edu.tw
# 2013 Taylor & Francis
Music Education Research 393
as the sun and smiley faces, from their personal experiences, to invent notations.
They also employed traditional rhythmic notations to indicate pitch (Lee and Lin
2013). These representations are part of a constructive, self-directed intentional
process of thinking in action. Children form visual graphic signs in their drawings as
a semiotic mode to communicate their ideas. These drawings can be seen as a
meaningful process in which they create signs to express their thinking. Conse-
quently, children tend to think that they can write before they can read; according to
a study that found 90% of six-year-olds thought they could write, while only 10%
thought they could read (Graves 1983). Upitis (1987a) also found that young
children could write music before they could read it, and they invented notations
to indicate the number of events, moods, pitches, rhythms, registers and tempos.
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Children not only invent their own symbols but also borrow various symbols from
their surroundings, such as Arabic numerals, English letters or Chinese characters to
notate music (Lee 2007). Childrens picturesque writing is like drawing. While they
are drawing, they assume multiple roles such as an artist, composer, performer or
narrator, and combine various media, such as drawing, writing, speaking, singing,
sound effects and body movements to express their thoughts (Wright 2007).
Moreover, the childrens ability to use invented notations in writing and reading is
related to their aural perception of sound and their musical understanding (Gromko
1994; Gromko and Poorman 1998).
A study of a five-year-old boys verbal explanation, of an invented notation,
found that he employed different strategies, depending on the nature of the task, to
record features of his composition that were significant to him (Barrett 2001). From
speaking with children, it is evident that they not only able to express their musical
thinking but also reflect on their notational strategies. Children refined these
strategies through interaction with their peers and teacher, while they shared their
recordings of songs learned in class (Carroll 2007). As community learners, social
context has a strong influence on children making music notations (McCusker 2001).
Social interaction helps childrens notational learning, and through sharing, they
learn the existence of conventional notations naturally. Eventually, through
manipulation of representational symbols, they gradually move from self-invented
notations towards the conventional (Upitis 1987a, 1992). Since notations function as
a communication medium to transmit musical thoughts through interactions, in a
social context, children mutually shape their notational strategies to acquire this
form of communication. Therefore, it is necessary to use a longitudinal study to
understand and investigate what systems children construct by providing them with
opportunities to refine their notational strategies through peer interaction.
elaboration featured the simultaneous use of abstract symbols and words to represent
the text and musical aspect.
Barrett (1997, 1999) categorised childrens invented notations as an exploratory
style; instrumental representations; instrumental representations with reference to
musical elements; a representation of gestures and symbolic representation. Children
tend to develop their notations, going from pictorial drawings to abstract symbols.
Their invented notations are relative to age, and their experiences with language
literacy and motor coordination (McCusker 2001). Furthermore, Hargreaves (1996)
classified childrens notations into four hierarchical stages: graphic, figural, figural
metric and formal-metric. These stages indicate the childrens various levels of
musical ability.
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(1) What systems do young children invent to document and help them recall
pitch?
(2) What systems do young children invent to document and help them recall
rhythm?
(3) What systems do young children invent to document pitch and rhythm
simultaneously and help them recall the music?
2. Research method
This study was designed as a qualitative study, over a one-year period to examine the
invented notations of pre-literate kindergarteners, aged four to six.
and music appreciation to feel the musics pitch and rhythm. However, the researcher
did not introduce any written notations in class except when children shared their
own notations.
3. Findings
The idea of children developing a notation system is based on their ability to read their
own notations to recall the music precisely. After the children wrote the music down,
they played or sang back what they had notated, and the researcher recorded it. After
1 or 2 weeks, the researcher showed them their notations to check if they could play or
sing it back. If they could do it precisely from their self-invented notations, it meant
that the children had developed a system to organise the symbols and help them recall
the music. After analysis, the childrens recording systems for pitches or rhythms
included quantitative size, graphic patterns and literal symbols. Their recording
systems for the combination of pitches and rhythms included a system with
indications and combination of two systems. The following will illustrate what
systems the young children developed to write the respective pitches and rhythms.
Music Education Research 397
ones, so the researcher had the child reexamine the two. He said, the two notes must
be Mi (E) because I used to write Do (C) very small, see, and he indicated the first two
notes in Figure 2 (181110). Children used the size of their graphic drawings to create
their system, although they were still lacking in fine motor control.
Figure 1. CGCE.
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Figure 2. CCEEGGGEEG.
Figure 3. CDCEF.
Figure 4. DCDEFCDDGDGC?C.
Figure 5. CEG.
Children who have more advanced phonic skills used spelling to notate pitches, and
Chinese phonetic symbols to spell out the pitches solfeggios. The phonetic symbols in
Figure 8 are pronounced as Sol Mi Sol Sol Mi Sol Mi Sol and represent GEGGEGEG.
Figure 6. CDEDC.
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Figure 7. CEGGC.
Figure 8. GEGGEGEG.
Figure 9.
Figure 10.
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Figure 11.
note and 2 represented the eighth note (Figure 12). However, while children circled
numerals (Figure 13), there was a different meaning to those that were not circled
(Figure 12). Each circle represents one beat, 1 inside a circle means tapping once in
a beat to represent a quarter note and 2 inside a circle means tapping twice in a beat
to represent two eighth notes (021210). Some children learned conventional
notations from the piano books in the music centre, and some used the conventional
notations correctly, but some reversed them, where two eighth notes represented a
quarter-note rhythm and a quarter note represented an eighth note (Figure 14).
However, the real-time intervals were shown as underlined lengths, where longer lines
were the quarter notes and the shorter ones were eighth notes.
Figure 12.
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Figure 13.
Figure 14.
lower level as one dot on a stick, represents a quarter note and two dots represents
the eighth notes. Figure 19 shows a combination of the graphic pattern and literal
symbol systems. The pitches notated on the upper layer shows that the system is the
same as Figure 5, and the numerals on the lower layer indicate the rhythm. An eighth
note is represented by 2, and 1 represents the quarter note. Figure 20 shows a
combination of the graphic pattern system and conventional notations. The pitches
used sticks: one stick for C, two sticks for D and so on. However, pitch G was written
with new symbols, ? rather than five sticks because drawing five sticks easily causes
overlapping when the child crossed out the sticks and then adopted a new symbol to
replace it. The rhythm was indicated with a conventional notation. Figure 21
represents the combination of literal symbols (Arabic numerals) and conventional
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notations. Arabic numerals were employed to represent pitches, as in Figure 15, and
conventional notations were employed to write the rhythms.
Notes on contributor
Pyng-Na Lee is a professor in the department of Early Childhood Education, National
University of Tainan, Taiwan. Her research interests encompass free music play and teacher
intervention, music teaching in cross-culture and music education in aborigines.
References
Bamberger, J. 1982. Revisiting Childrens Drawings of Simple Rhythms: A Function of
Reflection-in Action. In U-Shaped Behavioral Growth, edited by S. Strauss, 191226. New
York: Academic Press.
Bamberger, J. 1994. Coming to Hear in a New Way. In Musical Perception, edited by
R. Aiello, 131151. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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