Please, answer my concrete questions! http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-music/piano-wizard/15/
Thank you!
This is to HH above. Somehow my web page did not load the videos you posted until after I had posted, but I wanted to respond to your video and post about language. First of all, I loved the video, it illustrates well some of the different approaches and pros and cons, also that we need to take things in steps. I would go a little further in this exploration of how we learn, and list some common pathways.
- Trauma. This is obviously built into our DNA to ensure survival, but of course not the preferred way to teach or learn! In fact Post Traumatic Stress Disorder shows how our complex nervous systems can be damaged and cross wired, and how deep and permanent this kind of learning is. Hopefully no piano teachers use this, though it is the stereotype.
- Association. We have all used association to remember things, this is a technique that is very natural for us, and in fact we need to leverage it often. Association gives memorable context that we can often revive later to remember the rest.
- Metaphor or analogy. We use metaphors constantly to explain and understand things. For example, we talk about currents of electricity, but it really has nothing to do with water currents, it is an analogy that helps us make sense of something. Myths, and whole sciences use this constantly to explain results in a way the makes sense to us.
- Modeling. This is one of our primary modes of learning, by imitation, and a large part of the logic of Suzuki method, or any parent based learning. “Kids will do nothing you say and everything you do.” It is in our DNA as well, as almost every learning animal does this.
- Play. This is a higher mode of learning, again we see this in many forms, sports, games, improvisation, imitation, it is how we “test out” ideas in a safe environment. Some kinds of play translate into the real world better than others, but the attraction of play is probably because those who play learn more and faster. Play should be safe, a place to make mistakes and learn from them without condemnation or shame, which was my point about how embarrassed Japanese speakers were to make mistakes, hindering their ability to learn. We learn by doing.
- Chunking. This is addressed a little in the video above, but let me be clearer. We “chunk” information into “units” to better handle it. One example is a phone number. Put the ten digits together without dashes or spaces and it is almost impossible to read let alone remember. Break it down into chunks and no problem. We don’t read or hear words letter by letter or sound by sound, we break it into words, and then phrases (“on the porch” rather than “on” “the” “porch”). We do this with music as well, taking notes into motifs into phrases into melodies into movements, etc. So breaking information down into manageable “chunks” and then adding them up and connecting them is critical for creative use of the information we gain.
- Repetition. One of the mainstays, but here is some color on how to make that much less boring. First, repetition through variation, in other words, learn the same thing different ways, through colors, singing, movement, names, fingering, etc. Second is “Practice doesn’t make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect.” (Vince Lombardi). Real attention to the quality of the repetition is important, so you don’t have to unlearn things.
- The proportion of new to old, as in the video above. She points out that Portuguese and English are both related languages (Indo-European) and so share many cognates (different or differente?) that English and Japanese do not. Very true, though my focus in the classes was on pronunciation, and the differences there between English and Portuguese and English and Japanese are about the same, i.e, there is mostly overlap in the sound sets, with some key differences like “L” and “R” for Japanese speakers, but “TH” and “R” for Portuguese speakers. The point is, moving from known to unknown should be broken down into bite size pieces (chunks) and use of metaphors (known process like how water currents work to unknown theory about how electricity works) . But taking kids from A to Z doesn’t work, they need the letters in between, and a lot of times we need to back up and rephrase so they can absorb it. When we do that, they catch on very fast.
I for one am enjoying these conversations and think HH is also fascinated with how people learn and how we can leverage different modalities to teach and learn better. Thanks again for the video.
Chris
Even though I am currently set up to get the e-mail updates on learning music though BrillKids I find myself checking the website to see if it has come out at least once a week! I can’t wait!
For now we are just using a key board to get familiar with the keys. I have little ABCDEFG stickers on the keys and my 2 year old will find all the A’s etc. I’m so excited!
What’s a great idea!
When I only just started learning, I found a treasure: a small knick on one of the keys of my piano. Thank you, whoever it was that put it there! It served me as a loyal and honest hint for several years, before I completely memorized the keys of the piano. The knick was very close to Do; it was on Re! When learning new pieces, I looked to it like a ship’s captain looks for a lighthouse. Even now, I think of this tiny little scratch with appreciation and fondness. It saved me like a life vest saves a man overboard!
Because of this, I made some stickers that can be applied to every key. This is like a map of the entire space. It gives a beginner all of the information he needs. On each key, I placed its name, whether it is on a line or space (depending on its color), and in confluence with sheet music, I added the lines of the treble (green) and bass (brown) clefs. The keys, the grand staff, and the keyboard’s sound are united by stickers into a single entity.
Oh thank you Chris , I read your blog on tips for parents with little or no experience: :mellow:
I am one of those parents when I sing or attempt to teaching singing BIRDS DROP OUT OF THE SKY, poor things :wub:
I want to help my children develop a ear for tone not be tone deaf like myself :wacko:
I do have 2 questions though: I did sign my daugher (5) up for singing lessons. How do I know if she is picking up the correct tones, and ihow can I tell one music teacher from another? Does that make sense?
Thanks Ana
Ana,
Singing is actually a fairly subtle art. It involves tiny muscles in your voice box, that we are rarely trained to use correctly. You have heard of voice lessons, and even gotten some for you daughter, but you have accepted and even embraced a fundamental attitude and belief, that YOU cannot sing in tune. Perhaps right now you are not able to NOW, but you can learn to as sure as you can learn to tango. Will it take work, practice and will you feel like a fool? Yes. Do you need expert guidance and feedback? Yes. Can you learn this skill and become competent and enjoy this and share in this with your daughter? Yes.
So, first off, your attitude must shift. Then you must embrace a long (life long) and initially frustrating and embarrassing process as the cost of learning this. However, once you stop worrying and apologizing over what you don’t know and can’t do yet, you can begin to learn.
I will give yo a few tips to get started, but you will need a teacher for feedback and guidance most of all.
First of all, find your range, that is the lowest note on the piano you can sing, and then highest. That can expand with practice, but it will be where you start. Sing every half step, (all the black and white keys between the lowest and highest). If you have an organ sound or flute sound on your keyboard, those longer non-percussive sounds are better targets because they continue to sound and you can hone in or tune into them without it dying away. Also, try just being conscious of moving down and up in a continuous glide, occasionally stopping at the “stairs” of the notes on the keyboard. You need to be able to consciously move up or down at will so when people give you feedback (higher) you can move in the right direction. Again, like riding a bike, easy if you know, but you can learn the basics once you get out of your own way.
Second, sing long tones to each of them, working on the micromuscles in your voicebox to try and tune into each note. Some will be easier than others, there will be a patch of notes where your voice needs to shift to another mode (sometimes this is called a falsetto, but I think of it as the way your body needs to shift and adjust to lift heavier weights with your legs whereas simply lifting with your arms is enough for lighter weights.
Third, the most challenging part, where you need feedback to learn what is “right”, is learning not only to figure out when you ARE in tune, but to memorize (sense memory) what that feels like so you can do that with each note. The paradox is that no matter what note you hit, it has some harmonic relationship with the target note, and so you will feel (subtly, in your throat, ears and chest perhaps) SOMETHING. When you have tired to sing in tune before, perhaps as a child, you were guessing at the correct note, and probably got it wrong, without ANY instruction as to how to adjust up or down, or what was “right”. You were probably told “you have no talent” or “you are tone deaf” by an adult, or peer, and YOU TOOK THAT TO HEART. The truth is this is very tricky, and not “visual” or obvious, and so getting it “wrong” was normal, like a baby speaks “wrong” and is corrected, hopefully lovingly and repeatedly. The big difference is that most speech sounds have a strong visual component (think the letters “b” and “th”, and how you can watch where to place your lips, tongue and teeth). Vowel sounds and vowel like sounds (“r” and “l”) are the hardest and longest to learn. Tone is far more subtle, and with almost NO visual cues, so naturally more difficult. We also practice it MUCH LESS than we do language, so we reduce the time, and should we have some elitist, impatient or just ignorant feedback, we are not encouraged but completely humiliated.
Here also is how confusing the “right” (unison, or same tone) can be. You could be singing an octave above or below and it will feel in tune, very similar to the exact same note. OR, you could sing one of the notes that harmonizes with that note, a third, a fifth or sixth away from the notes, and it will “resonate” in some distinct way as “something”. Worse, the most dramatic feeling (and most "noticeable) is when you sing the note CLOSEST to the one you are aiming for, the half step or whole step above or below the target note is the MOST DISSONANT, and it “resonates” weirdly and dramatically in your ears, throat and chest, and you think (floundering with no feedback) “there, I feel something, that must be it”. And you are close, but harmonically completely dissonant, and no one helped you find how to move JUST A LITTLE up or down to “tune in” and then to REMEMBER that “tuned in feeling” so you could replicate it again.
Finally, if someone knowledgeable, with awareness, technique and patience, LOVINGLY showed you the way, you COULD learn to sing, enough to enjoy it, and to please yourself your whole life long, and who knows, after a few years or even months of practice, someone else will say, “my, you have TALENT”. What you will have though is not talent, but persistence, courage and faith, and a good teacher. And the birth right of music and the right to sing.
Above all, find that kind of LOVING teacher for your daughter.
Good luck
Chris
WOW :biggrin:
OK, I will take baby steps
Thank you for the detailed response I will read it over and over to help guide myself.
As for my daughter I do feel she has a caring music teacher so we will go on her guidance as I learn to adjust to my own music talent 
As a matter of fact I did buy a book series with song/cd by Dr. Jean, www.teachertube.com and we did it today.
My kids love music as my husband and I do.
I did sign up and received the book with I read and now l look forward to your newsletters. 
:biggrin: Thank you again,
Anna
Chris, as a musicologist with major in ear training and voice development, I should say: Bravo! Great answer!
BTW, do you know, where the do tone-deaf people come from? I did my research on that: http://softmozart.on.ufanet.ru/smbookeng/music11.htm
Hellene,
Thanks for the link to the great article, that sounds like an interesting approach. My response was based on my own efforts to learn to sing in tune, so I sympathize with Ana and anyone else who feels left out. I also know it can be done, you just need to be a bit stubborn and thick skinned, and patient with yourself. But what a joy to be able to sing, especially in a choir, where you can feel the other voices move in and out of harmony with you. Bach’s mass in B minor, the opening Kyrie, where the bass sings the long notes and the sopranos and altos shift through passing notes, I could feel them “moving” away in my chest and coming back. Amazing and profound. I wish that joy for everyone, and it is an infinite pool to play in.
Thanks
Chris
Hi Chris,
I am very interested in the piano wizard academy not just for my daughter and baby but also for myself. I was wondering if it would be avaliable for purchase through a payment plan or on layby. I think in America it is called lay-away.
The Aussie dollar is so good at the moment against the American dollar. I would hate to miss out on it but it is hard for me to find $550 plus shipping this close to xmas. Is there a way around this?
I totally understand if there is not.
Kind Regards,
Kimba15
Kimber,
We are working on a payment plan and a discount for BrillKids members, plus some cool bonuses, but I want it to be the best package we can do, and easy for the members. Working on it every day to get the package together, please be al little more patient.
Thanks
Chris
We have had some spirited discussion in this forum, with lots of curiosity and different points of view. We don’t shrink from that, we hope to learn from it and take the best ideas and bring those tools to our homes to help our children grow.
With that in mind, we shared a free report on “Is Music a Birthright?” that gives some perspective the challenges of learning music, and their roots, some of which was brought out in our discussions. SoftMozart has some similar, more in depth articles on the origins and challenges of traditional music notation as well. What I also added, to try and give some perspective of the range of approaches and choices, is a series of posts about the four common approaches to learning piano (up to now). Both Hellene of SoftMozart and I believe that our methods begin to shape a “fifth way”, but they were both developed in the context of the limitations of the others, trying to compensate for those gaps and yet leverage their strengths. Though each method has its advocates and champions, including Hellene and I for our own, and those advocates can be as we have seen quite passionate and compelling, NONE OF THESE APPROACHES IS PERFECT. We do strive to honestly “perfect” our process every day, with more and more knowledge, and this forum has been I think very fruitful in its exploration of the options. Here is my latest contribution to that conversation.
Below is the link to that section of the forum.
Hi Chris
I am really impressed by the Piano Wizard Academy method of teaching. I have started my son on keyboard at 3 years old. He is now (4yrs 1 mth old) trying to learn In the Hall of the Mountain King by Edvard Grieg. He really loves the song … But getting a 3 year old to practise (esp when the learning gets tough) can be quite demanding … 
I usually bribe him with a short pink panther cartoon should he be able to focus and concentrate.
I really hope music would be his motivation and not have to resort to Pink Panther cartoon! Will you be offering this system to Brillkids member at discounted price? Thanks …
Dear parents,
As promised we have been busy working on a few special bonuses for Brillkids parents. One that is very special is my mentor Don Beattie and his wife Delayna, the team that helped create the Piano Wizard Academy have agreed to join this forum. Let me give you some background on them, both general and specific.
Don and Delayna Beattie
During the course of their careers, Don and Delayna Beattie have touched the lives of hundreds of thousands with their enthusiastic love of music and young people, gift for piano teaching and special devotion to Beethoven. Individually and together, they have appeared in music programs, performances and festivals in all fifty of the United States, Canada, Germany and Austria. In June of this year, Don retired after 30 years as Director of Piano Pedagogy in the School of Music at Southern Illinois University Carbondale while Delayna has enjoyed a thirty year professional career as an independent music teacher. They are parents of four children and proud grandparents of Emma Elizabeth.
They have been blessed with countless opportunities to share their love of music and people as founder and directors of the Beethoven Society for Pianists, published authors and composers with Edition HAS and Warner Bros. with their compositions performed at the White House and throughout the world, teachers and performing artists for school children throughout the country, church music performers, master of ceremonies for World Piano Pedagogy Conferences, featured clinicians in Music Teacher National Association Conventions and for G. Henle music publishers and as founders and directors of Piano Wizard Academy and authors of the Piano Wizard Academy's music curriculum and 50 DVD piano lesson series for Music Wizard Group. Currently, they are “house parents†to 300 college students in an apartment community in Carbondale, Illinois where human kindness, music, food and friendship mix to create one of the most outstanding living experiences for young people in their community.
On a personal note, Don’s work as a new group piano teacher at Carbondale over 30 years ago changed my life profoundly. Through his work I learned not only to play piano but to play things like Back fugues, Chopin Preludes, Beethoven Sonatas and works of Debussey, Bartok and more. I not only learned about piano but about music, and education and bringing love and spirit into the classroom. I ended up with a double major in music and linguistics though I had no prior music experience before college, his teaching and influence were that profound and effective. Years later when I developed the Piano Wizard game I shared it with my old friend and he made several suggestions, and then offered to develop the curriculum for it. That "research and development took about 18 months or so, and then he came to my son’s school and did a “boot camp” for the kids for a week, and blew us all away with the impact and excitement of that magic combination of the game, his and Delayna’s curriculum, and their hands on teaching. I realized that they could bring all the elements of music to the game that it was missing, and make it a profound vehicle for true musical enrichment and learning. We all invested another 18 months or more into creating a 50 lesson video series, and extending even further the original curriculum, and thus was born the Piano Wizard Academy. While not perfect, and always complemented by great music teacher, it is a breakthrough in music learning, even more powerful because it empowers the parents to coach their children in music without having to do all the heavy training and lifting normally required.
Don is the greatest teacher of any subject I ever had, and it is my blessing and privilege to share he and Delayna and their work with Brillkids parents and the world. He changed my life, and I hope he can help you change your children’s lives for the better as well.
Thanks
Chris
More free music games online
http://69.93.17.74/Music/Games-Demos/Welcome/Memory/index.cfm
This one is a great memory game for ear training.
Here are some more.
http://69.93.17.74/Music/Games-Demos/Welcome/index.cfm
Enjoy,
Thanks
Chris
[i]-Cost saving option for overseas members-
Hi Chris
I was so excited when I saw that the offer had come out to brillkids members - have been waiting and watching for it. I have over the last few weeks managed to convince my husband that it would be worth the expense - helped by your posts etc. So I went to order it this morning to find that the post and packing was another £90.82 (GBP) which has meant that the cost has now become prohibitive for us.
Is there anyway of obtaining this in the UK to reduce the costs - for example have you got enough brillkids members from the UK who want this that you could send out a mass order to 1 of us so we could then help each other distribute between ourselves? Dont know just an idea but Im so disappointed - and I know all the arguments around the cost - its just the hidden cost of post and taxes has rather blown us away.
Look forward to hearing from you
Kind regards
Brillkids Mom[/i]
Brillkids Mom,
Where most of the challenge is is with the keyboard. I don’t know if you noticed but we offered a version without a keyboard included, that saves about $100 US, but also drops the shipping cost pretty dramatically. (http://www.AutomatedSalesMachine.com/app/?Clk=3973986, then just log in and then scroll down on the exclusive offer page to the actual offer and choose the unit WITHOUT keyboard on the right)
By purchasing a keyboard locally you often save quite a bit on postage, as the weight of the package drops dramatically. ANY MIDI compatible keyboard will work with the game, but we do like the M-Audio line of KeyRig 49, which has a street price of around $100, mainly because it is simple, lightweight, and powered by the USB. (http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/KeyRig49.html) If you follow this link you can track down and contact their international distributors and find resellers in your area. Here in the US Apple stores carry them, and they are popular in music stores as well.
Taxes of course are beyond our control, but we have found that for international customers the option of getting the bundle without keyboard included and finding that locally saves them quite a bit.
I also just got confirmation that Don and Delayna Beattie will conduct the monthly teleconferences starting in January to guide people through the coursework and help make sure people have the best possible results with the Piano Wizard Academy.
I hope this helps, we actually recently had to raise our regular price $50 to $599 without any bonuses, because of increasing wholesale expenses on keyboards, but worked out this special bundle for Brillkids members, and offer the option of purchasing the keyboard locally to save more money as well. We actually are worried about internal availability of the keyboards for our domestic customers this Christmas, so we encourage Brillkids members to order early or even domestic customers may have to source the keyboards themselves.
Finally, let me share this letter we just got, it was addressed to Don and Delayna, but I think you can see, that if you can swing it, it will be more than worth it.
[i][b]"Hi Don,
Thanks for taking your time to reply my email.
We really appreciate the Premier mode in Piano Wizard.
My 8 years old son enjoys so much playing the accompany for many songs from Academy 1 to 5.
It’s a joy to see my 5 years old daughter played the main melody of Jolly Old Saint Nicolas and my son played the Harp accompany with her. (My 5 years old daughter has finished Academy 1 and is having a lot of fun with Academy 2.)
My son also loved playing the string assemble for Morning in Colorado. (He wanted to make sure that I mentioned this to you.)
It made the piano learning so much fun to him.
He used to have a lot of power struggle with me for practicing piano and taking the private piano lessons before we got Piano Wizard.
Now, he just practices all by himself and have a lot of fun to try all different accompany.
He even tried step 3 & step 4 for those accompany.
I was very pleased with your program.
Thank you for developing such a fun and educational program.
One thing makes piano wizard so attractive to him is he can challenge me on playing the accompaniment.
He always gets higher scores than I do and gets to 100% faster than I do.
He is very proud of himself. He can finally beat Mom in piano.
That is an important motivation for him to keep going on.
I will for sure find a private teacher after he finishes number 80. But for now, he doesn’t need a private teacher. You guys and the program have been his teachers.
Piano Wizard has enriched our family’s piano experience so much. My son’s private lessons have never been so much fun and rich. It’s not how much money we have saved through this program. It’s HOW MUCH we have learned from this program that attracts us. (Of course, we did save a lot of money through this program.)
–We also appreciated you mentioned a lot of music masters in your DVDs (not just techniques). It’s such a great introduction for the kids to the wonders of music.
Again, thank you so much!! May God bless you richly.
Thanks,
Michelle
God bless you!"
[/b][/i]
Brillkids Mom, a lot of other people overseas have the same concerns as you, so I will be reposting this without your name so they can also look at this option.
Thanks
Chris
No offense, but the same material is copied into 4 different threads. It’s kind of “spammy”
Yeah, not sure how these things work, they seem like separate threads, for example I get an email when someone responds to some thread I responded to, so I know something is new, but when someone starts a new conversation or responds to a thread I may have read but not responded to, I don’t get any notice. It has also spawned about 40 different threads, so easy to get lost in it all. I decided to post it where I had ongoing conversations with people. Also, each group might have some overlap, but often there were completely different people in each thread, so I felt like I was leaving some people out. Don and Delayna are for me a major benefit to this forum, so I wanted to share that, and lots of people are overseas, so when I answered that concern I felt a lot of other people might want that option too.
Thinking better, perhaps I should have just posted a link or reference back to the new thread I created introducing them.
Thanks for the feedback!
Chris
:dry:
Check out http://www.classicalmusicmagic.com/MusicandBrain.html - There are many ideas about educating children via classical music as well as a bibliography of resources that are very helpful. Your mum had the right idea. Cheers, Marjorie
Hi Chris,
My daughter is 15 month old. Is it too early to try out the piano wizard program?
Thanks,
Grace