I think another way to get your brain activated when sight reading is playing through the scale a few times. Once the student get in the right mind set and understand how the scale moves up and down from the natural notes to the accidentals they will be more than ready to look at the notes. Also try playing the major and minor triads.

Sometimes I will even let my student do a little bit of improvising on the scale before they start. That is just an extra way of learning how the mallets need to moved on the “X-axis”

One of the things I experimented with was using an electric piano in my classes (having the student buy a Casio instead of a bell kit). That worked pretty well – other than the constant playing of the demo songs which as as annoying as hell.. But I did have a problem with the transition to ‘real mallet keyboard instruments’. I think the kids liked it because the sound quality was so much better than the dinky bell sets.

I don’t know if there’s an answer. Most kids want to play drums when they sign up, not keyboard. Kind of hard to get around that fact. The only thing you can do is make the class time on keyboard more fun — lots of ‘fun activities’ like contests, speed reading, awards. Hey, I’m not above bribing kids into liking to play the bells! :0)

Anyone else have real world solutions that have worked? Other than requiring the kids to have 5 years of piano lessons so you don’t have to teach them how to read?

One problem I have with beginners though is getting them excited about the mallets early on. They can move so much faster on the drums at the beginning that I find that it fosters a sort of resentment of the keyboard instruments for beginners.

Do you have any suggestions?

P.S. – One thing that would be awesome is if someone would combine some sort of fresh approach to both instruments so that the lessons coincided and maybe even used one cd.
Hint, Hint