Should music be a birthright? Is music education for everyone?

Early Learning Teaching Your Child Music
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Should [size=28pt]music be a birthright?[/size]

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[td]Music is emotional.
It inspires awe, love, and beauty. It can lift our moods, making us smile amidst sorrow. It can make us cry, with words that touch our hearts and melodies that move our souls. Remember the songs that marked those special moments in your life? The first hymn you learned? Songs from your childhood? Or how about that special wedding song? Or those special moments, like singing “Silent Night" with family and close friends on Christmas Eve? Music has the amazing power to bring back memories from years past in an instant.

Music is a part of our soul.
It reaches us on some kind of primary vibratory level, like a radio frequency beacon to always help us find our way “home." We’ve all had almost miraculous experiences where music brought us back to ourselves, and calmed us or inspired us to be our best fullest selves. Music is in the very fiber of our being, even before birth. It is said that we are sensitive to music right from the womb.

But imagine, for a minute, our world without music. No songs, no instruments, no dancing. What would life be like devoid of this gift of music? Is it even possible? A scary thought.

But the reality is…

To most people, music is a dead language.
How can that be? Why such a bold statement? Can music really help your children’s mental development? Is playing music made for everyone, or just the “born gifted”?
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Read more about this very interesting topic by downloading the FREE eBOOK from our friends at Music Wizard!
Should Music Be a Birthright?
The Challenges of Music Education:
Is It For Everyone Or Just Those Born Gifted?

Download your free eBook here

After you’ve read the eBook, don’t forget to share your opinions here – we’d love to know what you think! :happy:

Have you signed up for our Music mailing list yet?

We and our friends at Music Wizard are cooking up something special for all of you who want to teach your kids music, so we’re inviting you to sign up for our Music mailing list!

Sign up for the Music mailing list now!

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I love music and my kids too.

Thanks a lot for ebook.

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Yes to both - a birthright and education for everyone. Music is all around us and some is harmful. We need to be sure that our chidlren are exposed to the best classical music. It wires their brains for the rest of their education. Most scientists in Silicon Valley are practising musicians. www.classicalmusicmagic.com Music and the Brain

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Reposting this from another section of the forum

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

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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

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-Cost saving option for overseas members-

[i]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

7

I have mentioned these things before, but I thought this summed it up better.

Monkey see, monkey jam.

My background is in music and linguistics, but I am fascinated by how people learn, and convinced that music can and should be a birthright to all people. Here is the first of a few essays on different modes and styles of learning.

Modeling is one of the primary ways we learn, and being able to mimic in real time is a huge help, so any videos that let you play, sing or dance in sync help because you can anticipate and coordinate with the visual cues to play on time. This is a very natural pathway to learning. When I did my thesis work in Brazil, I studied very complex sacred African rhythms, and only by watching and mimicking (modeling) could I learn these complicated pieces.

I found anticipation to be the most vital clue, I could see the beginning of the movement and time my hitting the drum more exactly with theirs. In fact, visual cues abound in music making when you look for them. Think about the mirrors in dance classes, they are not just there for form but for people to be able to visually track the timing of the others and coordinate the rhythm of their movements.

Dance is the mother of rhythm in most cultures, the first experience most people have coordinating and timing rhythmic movements. The great piano player Professor Longhair started out tap dancing as a child, kids in Brazil samba in their diapers, it is a great place to start, and so pay attention to the visual cues.

Most people look at music as primarily auditory, but the visual is obviously extremely helpful in the learning phase. There are several reasons that make sense to me for this.

A) Many people are visual learners, either partly or predominantly.

B) You cannot hear a sound coming, in other words, by the time you hear the sound you are too late to join. Same with smell, taste, touch, all are senses that don’'t have a sense of anticipation. Only sight lets you see something coming or be able to “visually entrain” on a beat, dance move, target, etc.

C) Visual information is much more complete, for example how someone plays the congas, with the palm, on the edge, bouncing off or slapping to dampen, etc. So in addition to when, we see how, and usually we can see the context as well.

Given all these advantages, it is surprising that people do not leverage the visual cues more when learning music. Even a deaf person can learn to play music just using visual cues. The only area they would really be challenged is dynamics, but even that they could detect from hand movement.

While Beethoven did not learn music while he was deaf, he did conduct and continue to teach well after that, relying no doubt on visual cues primarily to keep track and correct.

Open your eyes and see the music all around you, then just follow the leader. You will see an instant burst in competence.

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music is somewhat a communication and can give you different feeling…i love it and my nephew which i take care off, much easily get to understand things through music…he get really hooked with little einstein dvd, mainly because of the song and how encouraging its music

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Different music may affect different listeners in different ways since we all have our own emotions, memories, likes, dislikes, etc. You can make an argument that all music is emotional.