I often ask my high school band students, "What's more important - right notes or right rhythms?" The first time they hear the question, brass and woodwind students almost always choose right notes, probably because in the early stages of learning to play those instruments there is usually much more time devoted to learning how to play all those different pitches.  My stock answer - "Aren't right notes at the wrong time still wrong notes?" comes as a surprising revelation... except for the percussion students, who finally feel vindicated in their belief that they've had it right all along.

There's a fundamental difference in the way we learn language and music, and, while it seems like a dichotomy, there's a fundamental similarity between the way we read our written language and the way we should read musical notation. When we learn our native language, sound comes before symbols - a five year old will understand about 13,000 words, even though they can't spell, read or write very many if any of them. As that child begins to learn to read, they are presented with the symbols (letters) and the basic sound those letters create, the sounds created by different combinations of letters to create syllables and then words. They soon grasp the way similar combinations with subtle differences change the sound created by the combination of letters; one need only to look at the difference between ant, grant, slant and want, or above, grove, love, move, and wove to see that changing one letter can change the entire sound. Because the child already knows the sound of the word, they quickly associate that sound with that combination of symbols. Students quickly progress from reading letter-by-letter to recognizing syllables and words. There will still be times that words will be encountered that have to be phonetically "sounded out" until the word becomes recognizable, but it quickly becomes a word instead of a collection of letters and is incorporated into the written vocabulary as well as the spoken vocabulary.  

When we begin to learn music, we generally approach it from the other direction, first learning what the symbols (notes) mean, and then associating those meanings with sounds.  The next step, understanding the sounds created by combinations of note values, is often very slow in developing. Even with basic rhythm patterns, students will try to give each note its correct value before even beginning to consider the next note, and they don't see the relationships between the notes and the creation of a rhythmic flow.  This would be very much like a student always reading by using the primary sound of each letter and never learning the differences for various combinations of letters. It is perhaps an over-simplification, but a student who reads that way might think that a sign announcing the HOMECOMING DANCE is actually an advertisement for something called the HOE-MEE-COE-MIN-GUH DAN-KEE.

In over 20 years of teaching I had tried just about everything available to teach students to read complete patterns or full measures instead of trying to decipher each rhythm grouping a note at a time - using words for frequently seen patterns (like grasshopper for a quarter and two eighths,) rhythmic method books, flash cards, slides, and even computer slideshows.  Each method has validity, but with almost all there was a drawback - often students weren't compelled to read a pattern or measure all at once, as with the method books, because their eyes COULD stay on the measure until they had played it all, still reading one note at a time.  With slides and even the computer slideshow, I had to be accurate in changing the slides on time with the metronome - I would get distracted because the students missed a rhythm and did not advance to the next measure accurately. It was also cumbersome to use in rehearsal, having either the computer or the slide projector set up in the rehearsal hall, and always seemed to take more time than I really wanted to give in rehearsal. None of these methods was really suitable for a student to work on this critical skill away from the ensemble rehearsal, either. This led to the beginnings of the concept for FLASHTRAX.
 

By incorporating DVD technology, I believe I have resolved most of the difficulties I was having with teaching rhythmic reading with these various methods.  The exercises automatically advance the rhythms, perfectly in time with the recorded metronome track, so there is no chance for operator error during the exercise. Each measure disappears before the end of the bar; the next measure appears, requiring students to perform from memory the end of one measure as they read the beginning of the next. Students develop the ability to recognize patterns of note groupings and complete measures as they improve their ability to read ahead.  It is easy to use, as TV's and DVD players become more and more common in our classrooms, and more readily accessible for those that don't already have them.  The longest exercises will take just over a minute - after the students are familiar with the process, 1-3 exercises per day would be very feasible without using up a large block of rehearsal time. The system works with almost any size group, instrumental or vocal, and individuals can use it as effectively as ensembles.