I used I Can Read Music for 20 years because I was going crazy trying to work with musically- illiterate students of the Suzuki world, in lessons and orchestra. We published I LOVE to Read Music! Music Reading Primer to correct the weak areas of ICRM and to start earlier and go more advanced than Joanne Martin did.
In addition to the Music Reading Primer, you will be extremely interested in the ILTRM Complete Flash Cards. They preface the primer. See our site for quotes from Monte Belknap, (professor of violin at BYU; Barbara Barber, Ramona Stirling, and others. www.ILoveToReadMusic.com.
You will love the flash cards for your college students too, as Monte wrote me, unsolicited. They have ledger line notes up to c4, notes in other clefs for viola and cello, double sharps and flats, hundreds of signs and terms, (repeat measure signs, sul ponticello, I can’t even begin) intervals over middle C but also in other places on the fingerboard. They have elementary theory, too.
You might also look into our book: ILTRM Sight Reading for Strings. It’s some old Wohlfahrt etudes from my childhood which we have all set up to teach the skill of actual sight reading, especially to Suzuki students who have started to read, but need practice at sight reading. These products have revolutionized the orchestra programs around here. And the Suzuki teachers are ecstatic to finally have a complete program to catch up their students to the 21st Century.
We just published a paperback book, Easy Steps to Music Reading Handbook, a manual for parents and teachers. It comes complete with a free DVD (while supplies last) of how to teach music literacy, and the video clips of student demonstrations of flash cards, key signatures, sight reading, rhythms, scales, everything. There is one little girl who clips off intervals, minor 2nd through major 10th, complete with solgege hand signs that will knock your socks off. A 12-year-old boy goes through 30 major and minor key signatures almost w/o taking a breath it’s so fast. There’s a tiny boy who reads rhythms like he was born w/ a baton in his hand. The DVD also has my lecture which I’ve presented at dozens of national ASTA & Suzuki National Conferences, teacher training, teacher conventions, institutes, etc
In addition, we just finished one of four Advanced Reading Etude books, (bass,) which has intermediate etudes selected for their reading skill development, not for their technique development. We’ll have Violin, Viola, and Cello by the end of this spring. Furthermore, we’ve got an Advanced Reading Rhythms book which should be out at the same time. Plans are for an elementary theory workbook next summer. The books are colorful, well-conceived and designed, and best of all, they work, and work well.
The products are carried by: Summerhays Music 1800 662 6666; Day Murray Music 1866 329 1946; Riverton Music, Best in Music, The Music Room; just about all of them around here carry it. The new website has them all. www.ILoveToReadMusic.com. Day Murray Music will send them up to you the very next day if you give him a credit card number.
Catch my seminar at the National ASTA Conference in Atlanta next March. DW