Hi everyone,
I have a 3 year old son who loves music so I decided to introduce him piano. Since I can’t afford pricy things right now, I was thinking to teach him myself (it is kinda difficult though that I have to learn too). That’s when I found this “Rainbow Piano Technique” on line.
I’m wondering if anybody knows about it or has tried it.
Thanks
I started the rainbow piano with my son who is 17 months old. He doesn’t do it on his own yet but I move his fingers and have taught him other things such as notes, and symbols so he watches and I believe he is learning everything even if he can’t tell me yet. He was drawn to the keyboard as soon as I put the colors on. I think it is wonderful and am excited to see how it helps him play piano. I think 3 years old is the perfect age to start himself! Good luck!
Brittany
Thank you Brittany, I’ll order it tomorrow. Can’t wait to see how it works with my son.
Hi Brittany,
What is the difference between Soft Mozart and the Rainbow Piano Technique?
For a cheaper version if you’re willing to put in a little leg-work, Musescore.org has a free program (it’s open source), and one of the things that you can do is make a song and then go to “plugins” in the file menu, and click “color notes”. These colors are the same as the boomwhackers. With a little bit of digging on musescore’s site, I was able to figure out how to make my own plug-in with custom colors to match my own color scheme. That may be more work than you want to do, but I just thought I’d throw that option out there because I’ve had a lot of fun with it.
Your welcome, I’d love to hear how it works out!
Dr. Mommy the soft mozart I think is am awesome program as well and like the rainbow technique really fun for the child. I would like to start them both but I have not yet worked out the computer with the keyboard yet. The difference is the rainbow technique goes right to sheet music and is wonderful to understand how a piece fits together. The rainbow technique you will need to give lessons along with because it is really just colors you cut out and tape on each note. Each color is than matched to a note which The rainbow technique book is all colored in for you! Save lots of time and mistakes. Now the Soft Mozart is great to use along side of the rainbow one I believe because it can give more of a lesson in a game form in case you don’t feel like you can. However soft mozart also has stickers you need to put on each key until you feel the can do it without. So, maybe you could have a keyboard with the rainbow technique and the soft mozart on another perhaps by the computer. Or just watch videos online for both and see what you think will work best for you. Both are great and the child in his/her brillant mind will pick up perfect pitch and notes using these both or one or the other. However soft mozart will teach the notes by sound and the notes name and the rainbow technique you need to make such you teach what we call the notes outside of playing the fun songs with reading notes on sheet music with colored keys. on both techniques you will take the colors or stickers off when they can play it without looking. Hope that helps.
I never heard on that site. musescore seems really neat.
I had never heard of this technique, but did a homemade experiment of this technique today and my 4 yr old son was soooo proud of himself that he could play the abc song and sing along. what an easy way to get them playing without frustration. i think i may pay the 10 dollars for the downloadable version and print each piece off as needed. thanks for posting about this technique!
I have found this website which has free sheet music and colour keyboard tabs which you can use as an alternative to the Rainbow Piano book.
When I first found rainbow music I thought it was a great idea but then I realized my children know their abc’s so I wondered what the advantage of colours would be. Sheet music is just circles named by letters corresponding to keys on a piano so why complicate it with colours too? However My daughters piano teacher has told me not to be so hung up on her learning the names of the notes and just to learn which note is which key on the piano for now (she is doing her 2nd year of piano now) I am now thinking that if your kids don’t know their alphabet then rainbow music would be great but if they do perhaps sheet music with the actual letters written in the music stave would be better in the long run. But I have no idea if anyone make this sheet music. I can see the merit of rainbow colours making music fun and interesting, I have a daughter who is much more likely to be interested if the piano was multi coloured!
In my studio, I have found that colors are most helpful is they are used interactively. For example, I made my own little color code, printed off an insert to go behind the piano keys, and then I have the children color the notes themselves in their books using crayons. It really helps them internalize it. You can also integrate this into any music curriculum, so whether they use Bastian or Thompson, or whatever, they can color the notes to help them out. Most of my younger students loved it at first, and after a few months they only colored the tricky notes in the song, and then they left it off altogether. It takes a little more effort upfront, but the results were worth it. I wrote a blog post about it, with the printouts I made, here: http://www.teaching-children-music.com/2011/02/using-color-to-teach-music.html
I love the idea of having the kids color in the notes themselves! I am going to borrow that one. 