What if we could redesign music education?
A designer’s goal is to make experiences simple, intuitive and accessible. It’s all about creating an effective user experience. In many first lessons, teachers start with a symbolic language of staff, treble clef, whole notes, half...
How a stay-at-home Dad stumbled across a new way of teaching music.
The story of how I developed the Musicolor Method.
Because I am a naturally curious person, my path in life has led me on a strange magical journey. In particular, three events have brought me a new view of teaching music:
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Years ago I began to notice a problem with some of my students: Some of them would only retain the last one or two songs we were working on in the music lessons.
No matter how many times I tried to explain that it was important to retain a "repertoire" of pieces they could...
What is the most important factor in a student? Many people would say it's talent, or effort, or persistence, or luck or some combination of these.
Behind all of this is something that is more important - the proper mindset. Recent research (Blackwell, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007)...
Soft Skills Vs Hard Skills
There's been a lot of talk in the education world of late about the value of the soft skills, emotional and psychological. These are the skills that are traditionally not tested. Unlike math or reading or science, these skills are more nuanced.
Because I'm a...
Teaching young kids to read music is quite a challenge. I approach through a long process of micro-steps. It's the reverse of peeling an onion. It's a layering technique of building up from tiny kernels of understanding, expanding outwards.
The first lessons are always...
Many of you are struggling with playing cleanly and smoothly. This simple technique can help you to relax your fingers to pay more fluidly. Developed by Glenn Gould's mentor and longtime teacher Chilean pianist Alberto Guerrero, it aims to retain a relaxed muscle memory.
You can learn more about...
When teaching to read traditional music notation, We highly recommend separating the elements. Pitch can be taught separately from rhythm. By teaching rhythm using stick notation, our students can focus on a single element without overwhelm.
1. Try Using Stick Notation
Stick notation...
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