Page 20 - 2018-BMR-December

Teaching Mallet Instruments: Let’s start differently!

Knowing the layout and intervals between keys is especially essential to a mallet instrument player since the player
does not physically touch the instrument with his fingers but uses mallets instead. When students learn to move from
one note to the next in a stepwise motion, they develop a sense of physical realization of the keyboard and improve
accuracy with peripheral vision ability.
The stepwise motion method may seem like a slow process in the beginning but with time and practice, it gets easier.
Once a student recognizes the initial pitch, he can then identify following notes by using letters, either forwards or
backwards depending on the direction of the melody, and move his hands in the correct direction on the keyboard. Once
students know what a stepwise melody looks like and how to move in a stepwise motion on the keyboard, they can apply
this logic to any grouping of a stepwise-motion melody.

2. Skips
Reading notes that move in skips is more difficult than reading notes in stepwise motion. Since the proportion of
lines and spaces of a staff is set, each interval has a distinguished image on a staff that generally corresponds to a relative
distance on the instrument (Example 2).
Example 2
Example 2 4 ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
˙
& 4 ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
˙
˙
˙
˙
˙
2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th
(Stepwise)
(Octave)
The distances seen in the score are relative to the actual distance between the hands. Although stepwise and skips have
different distances, there is one easy rule to follow (most of the time): the farther the distances between notes look on the
page, the farther the distances between the hands are positioned.
Here, students can start learning the skip of third then move on to other intervals. When they are familiar with reading
and playing some scalar patterns, skip of thirds can be added to exercises (Example 3). Then, the visual patterns of
“arpeggio” or “broken chord” can be examined.

Example 3

Bandmasters Review • December 2018 18 Texas Bandmasters Association