You CAN Be A Musician - Defence of Music

Hellene Hiner, Nikolai Kurdyumov
Translation and editing by Valery Pinchuk

Illustrations by Nikolai Krutikov
You Can be a Musician: A Defense of

Music
The Problems with Music Lessons Today, and How We Can Fix Them
“Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth”

-Archimedes
Prepared exclusively for Transaction: 0012818453

The Beginning
When I was seven years old, I experienced my very first and most bitter
disappointment. I absolutely loved music. So much so, that I even dreamed of going to
music school and learning to play the piano. How joyful I was when I found out that I’d
get to go there! With eager anticipation, I savored the image of my favorite preludes
and waltzes simply flowing out of my fingers. But things didn’t turn out so easily at all…
Music school turned out to be a total nightmare.
For hours, I was tormented by merciless sheet music, trudging through the notes
as if I were stumbling through dense jungles. My fingers refused to do what I wished;
music wasn’t being made. My teacher didn’t notice all of this and commanded that I
play with “expression and beauty!” Oh, is that all there is to it? Where the heck was the

beauty that she was talking about? How could I hear the music I was playing when I
was just trying to make my fingers hit the right keys on time?
On the other hand, in the school for general studies, I was a star in music class!
We got to dance, clapped to all sorts of rhythms, and even sang our favorite songs.
There wasn’t any sheet music, plus, it was all super easy. These were two different
types of “Music”: one was fun and easy, and the other was demanding and boring.
Both of them taught me poorly. Actually, neither of them taught me at all.
At home, Mom struggled right along with me, but she wasn’t much help; she
didn’t know the notes any better than I. It came to such a point that she got a piece of
paper and wrote out the entire song with the Russian names for each note, marking
each word-note with the corresponding number for which finger I needed to play it with.
Afterwards, she’d stoop over me at a breath’s distance and compare my every move to
what was written in her ‘note’ book. In this way, we trampled along together like
puppies in a ditch. Interest in such an education simply withered in front of your eyes. I
don’t remember this method helping me out very much, but at least it gave my mom
some comfort. For the most part, to me, piano became an instrument of torture. It is a
miracle that I didn’t come to hate music.
In spite of all of this, I still managed to complete my music education. In order to
fully understand how I outsmarted the system and managed to finish music school,
music prep school, and then the music conservatory all with outstanding marks, one
must be familiar with an old anecdote:
“Sir, how did you become a millionaire?”
“Oh, it was a long and painful process! On one street I found apples on sale for
ten cents, and on the other they were thirty cents. I bought the apples for one price and
sold them for the other, carefully pocketing the difference.”
“And then what?”
“Well, after that my rich uncle died and left me his inheritance.”
My unexpected inheritance came to me as a miracle. At some point, I was
suddenly given a golden ticket: the perfect pitch, the natural ability to identify notes by
their pitch vibration. I suddenly just knew what note I was hearing, as if I were
recognizing colors that I saw. It was like gaining eyesight after a lifetime of blindness!
Unexpectedly, I was provided with a key, and a beautiful world of music was suddenly
opened up to me. I could write down melodies that I was hearing on paper without
pause. And after writing down a multitude of different songs, I saw how all of this music
stuff is really put together. It turns out that everything in music is actually quite simple
and logical! All one needs is a foothold to see this, and to understand. I started feeling
very sorry for those that continued to think that serious music is boring and
complicated. More than anything, it made me want to show every person what music
really is – to see, and to want to learn. That is when I decided to become a music
teacher.

At the beginning, I had a harder time with this than the average music prodigy. I
collected an entire store of obstacles in music education and inspected them carefully.
This became my hobby – an investigation of what teaches how to teach. After learning
what I could about teaching and putting theory into practice, I could no longer believe
in the accepted methods of pedagogy. I realized that without thinking about what we’re
doing, in just a half-hour we can deprive a student of his ‘key to music’ for the rest of
his life. Also, even if we might find a way to alleviate some of our hardship during the
lesson, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the student will be so lucky!
My difficult childhood with music helped me to find the right questions. What and
how are we teaching, and what is the final result of our efforts? Why do we teach in
one way, and not in a different one? How is it possible to give a person both the
abilities of hearing and play? Of course, I understood perfectly well that not everyone
gets the perfect pitch dropped into his or her head from the clouds… but anyone can
learn to play music! This means that it’s necessary to seek out many different ‘keys,’
one for every person.
Between The Devil and the Deep Sea

For the majority of my time in music school, I had the lowest grades in my class.
It’s better not to even think about some of the things I endured there. My perfect pitch
changed the situation at the very core: instead of ordinary, I suddenly became gifted
and extraordinary. This doesn’t mean that all of the problems disappeared, but for the
first time in my life, my teachers began to take me seriously – what a difference that
can make!
Then, at last, our music school had its final exams. One by one, my classmates,
whom I had always seen as unreachable, rose to the stage to perform. They always
had an easy time learning, and every year at the final, they performed with “excellent”
marks1. Never in my wildest dreams had I ever envisioned myself as becoming one of
them. This time, though, I played well enough to get an “excellent” mark as well! This
was my very first “5” in seven years. I was finally victorious! My eyes filled with tears, I
promised myself that I would definitely find a way to teach every child to hear,
understand, and make music.
After that fateful day, three decades passed. I expected to find many comrades-
in-arms, hoping as I did for a better system of music education. This turned out to be a
very naïve assumption. No matter what my accomplishments were, I was treated as a
stranger, both in the music school and at the conservatory. I never forgot what it was
like to be a “2” student, something that most of my classmates never experienced. This
very difference affected the fate of my profession. More than anything else, I just
wanted to find out more about music teaching. For some reason, this didn’t call forth
the enthusiasm of my professors. Pedagogy, psychology, and methodology weren’t
subjects that were received with respect by students, nor professors. The most popular
subjects were in specialization: piano, music theory, music literature and criticism.
Music schools specialized in producing concert performers or musicologists that wrote
knowledgeable, lengthy theses. But ironically, most of these graduates ended up
teaching in the beginners’ music schools. And of course, they taught the small kids just
as they were taught in the conservatories!
It turns out that an ironic disrespect, even an attitude of hatred towards pedagogy
is embedded in the very heart of music education. Graduates finish college and have
trouble finding work, and eventually resort to teaching children as if it were an
inescapable evil. Moreover, working for a music degree in education is not considered
to be a good career move. Thus, most teachers rush to find ‘talents’ and polish them,
so that they can show off the final ‘result’ without much trouble. There is barely anyone
that is interested in finding ways to create musical abilities such as hearing, sight-
reading, playing, and composition in students that don’t have them. This isn’t even
thought to be possible!
1
The grades one could earn in school in the Soviet Union ranged from 1: “Very Poor” to 5: “Excellent.”

Yet, why is work so hard to find? The field of performance is over saturated, as
there isn’t much of a demand for it. Without educated listeners, musical art isn’t worth
much. This means that making effective music education available to more people is
even more important than preparing performers. Yet, most of the people on our planet
are musically illiterate. Most people aren’t even capable of memorizing more than the
simplest of melodies. Because of this, mass media is saturated with pop music, which,
it must be acknowledged, isn’t very advanced. Worst of all, few professional musicians
feel any personal responsibility for this. “The people are getting what they want, right?”
they might say with a shrug.
When I chose to examine how best to teach children to listen to and understand
symphony music as the topic for my thesis, there arose a scandal in the department of
my Alma Mater. I was called into the office and asked to think my choice over very
carefully. It was explained to me that such a subject wasn’t suitable for a person like
me, and that a career in musicology might as well have a gravestone over it. This
seemed extremely unfair! I was sure that a single work of this nature would be worth
thousands of those others, which were deeply “scientific” simply for the sake of
seeming “scientific.” My work was actually invested in making music more accessible
to “average” people! Without much regard to the protests, I wrote and successfully
defended my thesis. Even now, I can’t shake the anxiety I’ve gotten for the future of the
language of music.
Yet, even these difficulties came to use. In the conservatory, I learned the most
valuable lesson: I wouldn’t be able to count on others to make any changes. It would
be up to me to not only fix the problems of education, but to also circumvent my
colleagues, who either can’t see any problems, or more likely do not want to see them.
When I immigrated to the Unites States, I learned another lesson: the devaluation of
music pedagogy is a worldwide phenomenon. Both in the former USSR and here, have
I noticed a marked disinterest in public music education. Neither organizations, nor
performance groups, nor government structures, nor even the majority of my
colleagues understand that we can teach music to everyone!
At the core of music education lies a very sly axiom: there isn’t any sense in
teaching the language of music to a wide population of people, because it is only for
those that are “gifted.” Haven’t we teachers gotten quite comfortable? If our students
can’t learn to play, then it is their own fault; they simply aren’t talented enough! We
aren’t held responsible for the results, and there is no motivation to seek out the most
productive means of teaching. But these means already exist! There is a real solution
to music illiteracy. The elementary inability to educate all people, no matter how
‘untalented’ they might be, can easily be remedied!
So, what’s the problem? It’s extremely hard to teach music. Most kids give up
quickly. If they somehow make it through music school, they abandon the piano upon
graduation and don’t play anymore. Some kids just don’t have the ear for it, not to

mention the patience and perseverance necessary for years of practice. Music isn’t for
everyone. Yet, if it really isn’t for everyone, then why do people enjoy hearing music so
much? In grade school, we are often told that if there’s a will, there’s a way. But when it
comes to piano lessons, it is said that a desire to learn simply isn’t enough. How can
we consider this acceptable? People without an ear for music live all around us, but it
is a fact that it can be developed like any other skill.
Is it really impossible to teach music to every person?

To better understand, I looked for answers everywhere: in the theory and history
of music, in the psychology of music perception, in neurology, in social and musical
methodology, general and music pedagogy, and even in linguistics. The more I found
out, the more clearly I understood that our methods of teaching are only hindering
music education! It isn’t as if a big bear has roared into the ears of a large part of the
world’s population and ruined their music ear, or that God has sprinkled ‘talent’ onto
the heads of some people, and not others. We are the ones responsible for our own
musical impotence – or, to be more precise, we, the music educators.
As it turns out, from day to day, from lesson to lesson, we thoughtlessly disrupt
the gradualness of learning, irresponsibly overload the student’s perception,
systematically ignore his established skills, and demand that which is impossible.
Unable to do everything that we want, the child gets lost and confused, and then we,
frustrated to tears, tie blame to him, instilling an inability to learn and a disappointment
in music. Instead of giving children a “key,” we assiduously deprive them of this
support. Then, we say, “Well, not everyone is born with it!”
How we managed to secure this level of success is a topic that I will address in
this book. My most sincere plea to other educators that might read it to the end is: don’t
torment yourself and your students anymore! Please, try to look at the work you’ve
been doing objectively. Of course, it is convenient not to change anything, and to cling
to the usual excuses. But there is a sensible idea in what I have written, and it can be
proven. My work with students of all ages constantly confirms this.
The Hardworking Janitor

There was an old woman from Chorzów
Whose grandkids were awful to know
So day after day their rear ends she flayed
To whip the young brats into shape.2
Almost every time that I see a traditional piano lesson, I’m reminded of this
stubborn old granny. The work with the student seems diligent enough, the teacher
exerts all of his effort and nerves, but the result, if there is one, is based not on
gratitude, but rather spite of his exertions!
Training involves a very precise sequence of the acquisition skills. Some skills
must be mastered before others. In turn, the skills depend on one another for
development. Before you learn to stand, you can’t learn to walk. Before you learn to
walk, you won’t be able to run. The traditional method of teaching music continuously
confuses and disrupts this gradualness, and the work of the teacher is much like that of
a housekeeper that constantly spills the garbage across the floor only to clean it up
again. And of course, the blame for all of the extra work is on garbage!
Whenever I openly speak of the fact that we live in a musically illiterate world, my
words incite a storm of impatience among my colleagues. I know that they work hard
without rest, and try their best to make their lessons as interesting and productive as
possible. But the self-defeating cleaner tries even harder! The problem is not in the
2
An old Russian limerick

effort. It isn’t the amount of patience and diligence. What is most important is the
achieved result.
A musically illiterate person is anyone that can’t play a musical instrument with
confidence, can’t reliably read the notes of the treble and bass clefs, sing from note
books nor write in music notation. It is a fact that only with rare exceptions, our
generation is musically illiterate. In public schools, music classes don’t even remotely
concern themselves with music literacy. In the music schools, strange as it is, things
aren’t much better. It’s very unlikely that every student that finishes 5-7 years of music
school can actually play and easily read notes! No matter how many teachers try their
best, the world of musical sounds continues to be a closed book to an overwhelming
majority. Worst of all, these deprived people believe that in order to understand music,
one must have a mysterious and innate talent, and that without it, pursuing music is
pointless.
The true misfortune is that even the educators fall into this belief. Teachers, as a
rule, tend to be bright and markedly gifted from the very beginning. Perhaps someone
lucked out with good hearing, while someone else may have had a particularly talented
teacher himself. And of course, those that have had piano lessons remember how they
had to practice hours and hours at a time. These same educators are now convinced
that an inborn music aptitude, assiduity, and a talented teacher are essential to
success. This is how it was, is, and always will be, unless something is changed.
But, why don’t we ask a few taboo questions?
• What if it’s possible to teach music to every person, even though he
might be untalented and impatient?
• What if all children in public schools can successfully be taught to play
piano, read notes, and to write down music while listening to what is
played?
• Isn’t it a necessity to create a performer in every child? Could it be that
the most important thing in music education is the ability to hear
and understand music? What if the personal fulfillment of performance
is at the very foundation this ability?
• How should one work, if the ability to hear and understand music can
only be achieved through music literacy?
• What if the teacher’s presence is important, though not essential in
music education?
• Isn’t it our duty, then, to create a painless and effective system of self-
education in which we could be temporary assistants?
• What if obsession with the personality of the teacher is an indicator of
the weakness of the very system of education?

• What if our methods are malfunctioning not because of a lack of ability in
our students, but rather because of a lack of ability in the methods
themselves?
If you can seriously consider these questions as you continue reading, you will
see that I have tried to address them in as detailed a way as possible. To me, it is
absolutely obvious: traditional music education relies on false successions, goes
against the fundamental laws of perception, psychology and physiology, and ignores
the very path to the formation and strengthening of skills. Learning, an activity that
should be a natural and joyous process, is currently shackled with pointless and
vacuous activities. The result of such conditions is much worse than it could be. Trust
me, there is no reason to teach this way!
Is Additional Funding Really Necessary?
New music studios and organizations are formed every day. In the articles
released within any music pedagogy-related community you will first and foremost find
words about the importance of a music education and the preservation of music as an

art. Yet, with this aside, the majority of people in our world continue to be musically
illiterate. They can’t play a single instrument, read music notation, sing from notes, nor
write music down on paper.
In actuality, it isn’t hard to teach music literacy even in public schools. It would be
enough to simply introduce more effective methods of teaching into school practice.
However, the schools see it differently. It is believed that in order to save music, more
books about music and instruments must be sold, and more lessons must be held, not
to mention that the parents must be convinced, as well as those in the administration
and governmental sects, that music education is important. As for the question of why
it is that music education that needs saving does not actually educate, well, that is
considered to be an indecent and offensive topic.
Hundreds of thousands of educators are currently caught in a storm of activity:
they spend millions of hours with students, gather at conventions, send out colorful
brochures about the positive influence of music on the brain, publish sheet music and
books, and organize protests in defense of music education. This has been going on
for almost a century! It would seem that these efforts are bound to push music
education into the spotlight. Yet, the situation remains the same: we’ve still got a
musically illiterate society.
Our children are growing up without live music. Parents can’t play them a single
lullaby, instructors at daycares can’t play even the most simple of nursery songs, and
adolescents can’t write down a simple melody they might have thought up on a piece
of paper. The result is a widespread inability to listen to advanced forms of good music.
The most simple and uninteresting forms of music dominate what’s on the radio,
albums released by major record labels, and live performances. It’s been a long time
since our society has produced new Mozarts and Beethovens, and people are
gradually losing all interest in serious music.
At this point you might be asking, “But is it really necessary that everyone learns
music at the same level as a pupil of a music academy?” The answer is that not only is
it necessary, but it is completely possible. You don’t find it surprising that 99% of
Americans can read and write, do you? I assure you that that learning to play or sing
from sheet music can be much easier than learning to read!
The question of an effective education is one of the sorest spots for educators. If
it is worth bringing it up, the conversation quickly turns to the topic of subsidies for
music programs. “Look,” one might say, “before, there was more money, and we
taught better. But now, they completely cut our funding!” Yet, if that is the case, why is
it that when we were getting paid more, we didn’t pass music literacy on to the next
generation? After all, it was from this very generation that the musically illiterate,
apathetic policy makers came from.
If it really were all about the money, the teacher’s success would depend strictly
on his salary. In actuality, it depends on the methods and abilities of the teacher.

Amidst us are the ‘pioneers,’ those that are willing to get creative. They are more
productive than the others, but still earn the same money! Of course, the educator
should be compensated for a high success rate. Yet, if there isn’t a productive method,
results can’t just be squeezed out of thin air! Subsidies are just a type of ‘fertilizer,’
meant to encourage results. We can’t expect the sprouts pop out of the ground if we
never sowed any seeds.
It could be that my idea seems like blasphemy, but we music educators have been
getting what we deserve. Music education will continue to grow poorer and shrivel until
we learn to teach kids effectively. There exists such a law on “fairness” in the
marketplace: ineffective work costs just as much. Thus, if music still hasn’t been
stubbed out completely from school programs, then we can only be grateful for
people’s trust in the importance of music education.
Chemistry is based on the table of elements, not medieval alchemy. Math is
based on the multiplication table rather than Roman Numerals. But the fundamentals
of music education are still in disarray. Educators are still arguing over how best to
name the notes: Solfedggio, as in Do, Re, Mi, or The Alphabet System: C, D, E. It still
hasn’t been decided what music is exactly. Is it a language, or a form of art? And what
constitutes a music education: lectures about music, or the making of it? On top of that,
for some reason it’s been decided that music pedagogy has long since been fully
developed, and all that’s left for the teachers to do is to pick the best course of
teaching and to follow it effortlessly without any more thought.
I got to thinking, and can say with authority that our system of music education is
at the same level as medieval literacy education, when only a select few knew how to
read and write. To prove my point, here is a quote from the book “Education in the
Netherlands: History and Contemporaneity,” by the well-known historian Nan Dodde:
“The early stage of education in the parish schools for boys and girls from
the age of 7 to 10 years old was entirely based on memorization. Books were
extremely expensive, and reading was accessible to few. The majority of
students couldn’t read after three years of education. Reading… was taught
letter by letter, word by word. Teachers showed cards with letters, syllables and
words… The students mentally connected the sounds and letters and named
them out loud.
…The rule of medieval education was to first memorize texts, then later to
understand them. This didn’t only affect reading by words and elementary
reading, but also advanced reading. The evidence of the ability to read was
expressed in the reading of works of classical authors such as Cicero.
Fragments of the works of these authors were also supposed to be committed to
memory. The memory of a pupil served him as his own personal library.”

Several centuries have passed. Much has changed in civilization. Everyone,
regardless of ‘talent’, studies the fundamentals of mathematics and chemistry. Yet the
basics of music are still not any more accessible by anyone but the chosen few. I don’t
know of a single contemporary course that is capable of teaching music literacy to any
person. Our society can’t even imagine what could be otherwise. One can only lose
that which one once had. While a person isn’t educated about music, he will never
sound the alarm about music literacy! Until our children start reading and writing in the
language of music, the music educators will continue to be dismissed and forced out of
schools.
To Teach or To Supply?
After years of preparation, my methodology has been worked out and polished.
Entire classes can play freely on the piano, read notes, sing from sheet music and

write down melodies! Yet it’s much harder to peak people’s interest in this than I
expected. It took a colossal effort to entice the press to publicize my accomplishments!
In the end, they barely understood what was happening. Naturally, these journalists
are graduates of the schools that didn’t provide effective music lessons. To them,
music education is an empty note. They don’t know much about music, and material
about it is intimidating and uninteresting to them.
It came to such a point that I had to do ‘circus tricks:’ teach a child to play with
both hands in 15 minutes on a live broadcast, or exhibit my three-year-old, even two-
year-old students playing Bach! Yet, I couldn’t manage to gain much interest even from
music professionals. I didn’t get a single phone call from a music educator! The
conviction that music is only for the gifted and that only the chosen are to be worked
with has become second nature to educators. To them, the idea of universal music
literacy isn’t more than a pretty dream.
Nowadays, in acknowledgement of its own methodological weakness, music
pedagogy has taken a stake in hardware and all types of material goods: instruments,
equipment, and music accessories. They are allegedly capable of bringing music to the
masses. Well, I can’t argue with one thing: tinkering with them is certainly pleasant. But
even if you buy the most expensive grand piano for yourself and add all of the
instruments of a symphonic orchestra to it, there is no guarantee that you’ll get music
from them. Only a rare person with an inborn talent can play a thing or two without any
sheet music. For the rest of us, it is essential to be able to read notes!
The musical literacy of people is the single indispensable force in the progress of
music. At the same time, even if you buy an armful of textbooks and literature, your
music competence won’t increase. Literacy comes from an effective method before
anything else.
Millions of dollars could be spent on the newest equipment and instruments for
schools, and for thousands of conventions and presentations. Six hours of music
lessons could be held in school every week, and the school grounds could be piled up
with tambourines and drums. But until we can teach every child to sing by notes and
read from sheet music, to play songs with both hands, all of this money will be lost in
the wind, just as it has been and continues to be. If money is to be invested, then it
should be used for an effective method of teaching music not as an art, but as a
language. And this should especially be done in public schools.
Music Lessons and Lessons About Music

A son of an acquaintance of mine composes pop songs. Recently she proudly
exclaimed, “I just don’t understand how he managed to become such a great
composer! He’s never studied music and can’t read a single note!” Another
acquaintance of mine is a disk jockey and is sincerely convinced that he is a musician
and performs no worse than conductors and concert performers. Both of them have
been fooled by our system of music education. There was nothing close to music,
nothing that introduced them to the language of music, in what is called “music
lessons” at school. Since the early days, we’ve been lying to kids, telling them that
“music” is sing-alongs, rhythmic movement, playing with noisy instruments, and stories
about composers. And now, people who are capable of thinking up and singing a few
simple tunes suddenly become “great composers.” Then DJs, later juggling these
flapdoodles around, are called “great musicians.”
My reader, let us finally address this certainty: the emperor has no clothes! The
disk jockey isn’t at all making music. Call the classes what you will, but please don’t
call them “music lessons!”
Music lessons should teach the student:
• To fluently read notes on the Treble and Bass Clefs at the same time
• To write down musical dictations
• To sing the notes from music notation out loud
• To play from sheet music with both hands on the piano
The final result of a proper music education is a musically oriented mind: the ability to
not only make music, but to write it down and compose it as well. Just as an English
lesson teaches the English language, so should a music lesson teach the music

language. This means that one must be able to thoughtfully express one’s ideas in this
language in a grammatical and articulate way.
In the United States, primarily private teachers teach beginners music. The
government, for the most part, does not support them, nor regulate their activities. All
responsibility for the quality of lessons is on their shoulders. The selection of students
is limitedly simple: those who can pay get to learn. This group makes up less than 7%
of all families in the country. And this number is rapidly decreasing – people are getting
sick of the constant problems associated with music education. Most children don’t get
to learn music at all – their parents aren’t in the financial position to afford lessons. The
entire system simply casts them away, including those that might be gifted. In this way,
we are discriminating against our children, and the music culture of the future
generations.
In less than perfect circumstances, even the teachers of music, the
professionals, aren’t fully educated. According to the census of 2000, part-time
educators made up 40% of the total number of music pedagogues. Their average
salary is less than $20,000 a year3. The teaching of music to beginners is one of the
most thankless ways of earning money: the workload is at its maximum while the fruits
of the labor are at their minimum. Teachers are forced to get a 2nd job to supplement
their income, often not even in the music sphere. Furthermore, music performers have
very little understanding of the methodology, psychology, and pedagogy of the music
discipline. Having been taught with the alphabetic names of the notes, most educators
in the U.S. can’t even express themselves in Solfeggio.
All of this is the result of public school lessons about music.
Lessons about music include everything that can’t teach the language of music:
singing songs, clapping in rhythm, playing in noise orchestras, lectures about music
and the learning of various theoretical rules. Their goal is not to teach, but to introduce,
and to give general information about music as an art form. Lessons about music are
given in all schools for free, and manage to catch a large portion of the population’s
student body. If there is a pioneer in the school, he might found and ensemble or
orchestra, giving an optional opportunity for those that wish to learn to play certain
instruments.
The salary of those that teach about music isn’t very high, but a little more stable
at an average $50,4624 a year. These educators are supported by the government,
receiving paid vacations and other work-related privileges.
It is believed that lessons about music encourage appreciation for the art of
music and awaken an interest in learning to read and play. Unfortunately, this only
3
According to the Occupational Outlook Handbook of the Bureau of Labor Statistics
4
Cited from the BLS

happens with the most passionate and bright teachers, whose number is few. Lessons
about music don’t add anything to anyone’s ability to make it, and they certainly can’t
awaken nor inoculate much of anything, except maybe boredom.
We are falling down in steep, slippery spirals. The less people there are that can
really grasp the music language, the less interest there is in private lessons, and the
less demand there is for teachers. Institutionalized music illiteracy, supported in the
form of lessons about music, is gradually squeezing the true professionals, whom are
the only ones capable of developing the art, out of the discipline completely. The circle
is drawing tight. There is only one escape – a complete overhaul of music education. In
the public sector, it is essential to give music lessons, and to supplement them with
lessons about music.
Let us examine what is currently happening in the classrooms of most of our
schools.
How We Aren’t Teaching the Language of Music
Composition and Improvisation
“GRADES K-2 OVERVIEW: Over the three lessons, the Concept

Areas of Rhythm, Melody, Harmony, Form, and Tone Color are used. Skills

developed are Singing, Moving, Listening, Playing Instruments, Creating, and
Analyzing/Relating music to other subject areas such as history and literature.”5
The Texas Education Code outlines the creative requirements of a beginner’s

(Kindergarten) music class to be as such:
“Through creative performance, students apply the expressive technical
skills of music and critical-thinking skills to evaluate multiple forms of problem
solving… The student is expected to: sing or play classroom instruments
independently or in a group; and sing songs from diverse cultures and styles to
play such songs on musical instruments.6”
During this period, students are not introduced to any type of music notation and
are expected to ‘Compose and Improvise.’
If you place a little monkey in front of a piano, you will see how ‘composition’ and
‘improvisation’ is conducted in public schools, and what you get when you put a cart in
front of a horse. Composition and improvisation should be the most complicated,
highest forms of musical work. This independent creation of music is at the base of a
sure understanding of the music language. Composition involves the conscious
operation of music logic and the ability to think in music characters, plus the ability to
transfer all of that into the voice, instrument or music notation. Improvisation is that and
more: a great ability to master an instrument. Singing, playing, and writing down the
notation of numerous pieces from memory and from sheet music, as well as a mass of
hearing and coordination training is at the foundation of such serious music work.
If thought about in a different way, a monkey that bangs on the keys and doesn’t
realize that it’s a musical instrument could be said to be ‘composing’ and ‘improvising’
in a typical classroom in a public school. The ‘composition’ and ‘improvisation’ that is
featured in beginners’ classes isn’t any more useful than an orchestra of monkeys.
Kids could be passing their time much more productively. What does the instructor
accomplish in teaching ‘composition’ and ‘improvisation to those that have the tiniest
control over their actions? What were the founders of the program thinking, making
children compose and improvise before they’ve even learned the notes of the first
octave?
Imagine that in an elementary school where children haven’t yet learned their
letters, a teacher gives an assignment to write an essay. Thank God that in reality, they
first teach children to read and write! Where is the common sense of music pedagogy?
5
http://www.classicsforkids.com/teachers/lessonplans/. Editor bolded for emphasis.
6
From Section 117.3 of the Texas Education Code, adopted to be effective Sep 1,1998

I’d like to underscore my position. Undoubtedly, live music can be composed in a
way that sounds free, or restrained. Jazz, folklore, and narrative song are all highly
serious genres where being musically literate isn’t a necessary condition to mastering
them. First of all, extremely talented people who have the natural gift of composition
and improvisation are the ones that uphold these genres. Secondly, we are talking
here about the proper way to teach music to everyone, regardless of talent.
Furthermore, it’s a fact that not a single successful jazzman or bard would have trouble
mastering the music language from childhood, if given the chance.
The Theory of Music
Section 117.12 Music, Grade 3. ...The student is expected to: ..use music
terminology in explaining sound, music, music notation, musical instruments and
voices, and musical performances; and identify music forms presented aurally
such as AB, ABA, and rondo.”

We don’t like spam, and wave away any useless piece of information. This is
especially true when it is information that we didn’t even ask for. Above the door into
our conscious perception hangs a sign saying “No solicitation!” However, we educators
tend to forget about that. We become aggressive spammers, though we don’t want to
admit it. We tie the theory of music around the student’s neck, and don’t even bother to
make it more desirable to the student.
It’s obvious that our calling is most noble. They say that the student will
undoubtedly need theoretical understanding in the future! But you see, the child’s
perception doesn’t share this view. It only wants what is needed at the moment. You
don’t believe me?
Imagine that you are about to go on a long and complicated trip. You are of
course waiting for the day of the trip to purchase a map. But the guide gathers
everybody a week in advance instead and spends an hour reading a lecture about the
route you need to take. After that, he demands that you commit the directions to
memory! I have no doubts that you won’t remember much. Your attention is a fickle
thing – after all, the lecture isn’t of any use to you at the moment. You aren’t going
anywhere anytime soon, are confused and disappointed with the guide, and besides,
it’s lunchtime, and your stomach’s starting to rumble. Later on, when you will get lost,
you’ll naturally think of that cursed guide and wonder why he didn’t simply just give you
a map!
This is exactly how theory is taught – teachers explain the route during music
lessons. Not taking a single step on the path (as children only learn to play by
‘composing and improvising’), they keep the map out of the student’s hands. Instead
they read long, imaginative lectures, and test the children by playing short recordings
that they are asked to identify. The perception has no idea why it needs this
information yet! It resists. This makes it necessary to stuff the lessons with as much
information as possible, which is what occupies the majority of teachers’ time.
Isn’t it about time to quit battling with our students? It’s a lot easier to make
arrangements so that the student himself will want to find out what the Treble Clef is,
and what differentiates it from the Bass Clef. This isn’t hard at all. All you have to do is
‘fill the pool with water’ and teach your pupil to swim. In other words, begin with the
development of skills. The most important skills are reading notes from sheet
music and singing by notes. Here, in reality, with the growth of possibility, the
perception won’t only ask for more information, but will pray for it, will catch at every
word as if it were manna falling from heaven!
We have been taught that knowledge of the terminology is the very
personification of musical literacy. It seems that this is why we love theory so much.
The ability to pronounce smart words on the spot is much more important to some than
the ability to sit with an instrument and play something worthwhile. But let’s face the

facts: If a person can’t play a simple piece from sheet music, is it really important for
him to know what Andate sostenuto is?
I am reminded of my first flight to the U.S. I came to America as a “literate”
person. I had mulled over tons of books about English grammar, and even knew the
different types of verbs and the correct structures of sentences. Yet, when I very
properly asked one lady, “What time is it?” her answer confused me. I didn’t
understand a single word in the stream that came forth from her mouth. It was an
important lesson: Knowledge of the rules isn’t the same as the ability to talk and
understand! It is important to properly communicate in the language of music and to
understand it, not delight in familiar names for abstract musical terms.
Rhythm
Why teach rhythm? There is no reason! What exactly does rhythm teach?
Absolutely nothing!

Many argue that rhythm is in fact is very useful: it teaches to move to music, and
to do it in a rhythmic way. I understand kids need more opportunities to move around.
And it’s great if it can be done to music – there’s more pleasure in that. But what
exactly does general movement to music teach? Many people think that these lessons
help to develop one’s ‘music ear.’ This isn’t so. An ear for music is the ability to hear
and comprehend sounds. If this ability isn’t present from birth, it is developed
specifically with the help of one’s voice, and by reading notes and writing in music
notation. As for the movement of one’s hands and legs, these are skills of general
coordination, specifically of dancing. They have absolutely no relationship to the
understanding of the language of music.
There lies a channel of perception behind every type of activity, tied to the
neurons of the brain. If a child learns to march to music, this barely gets him any closer
to understanding the language of the music of this same march. Clapping hands might
improve some necessary muscle skills for playing a select few instruments, such as
percussion, xylophones, and rhythm guitar. With keyed instruments, it doesn’t help at
all. The muscles and neuron paths that are responsible for clapping in rhythm don’t
have any control over the work of the individual fingers of the hands! To play a song on
the piano that has just been clapped out in rhythm involves a completely different
process. Rhythm is much more simple for hands, and in order to play the full melody, it
takes an incomparably more complicated amount of coordination. As a rule, often
music lessons start with rhythm, as it is easiest. This is the same as hoping to learn to
drive by playing car-racing videogames, since it is much easier and less risky than
actually driving a car.
When using rhythm during lessons, we try to rely on the music memory of the
student. Yet, in essence, he doesn’t have one yet. For most beginners, it’s only started
to form! Only a person with a developed music perception can play a clapped-out
rhythm on the piano, or write down the notation of a stamped-out march. Few people
have this talent!
If a person wants to learn to swim, he should swim, not wave his arms while he
stands next to the pool! In order to learn to properly use utensils, one must use them
constantly. Going the roundabout way when it comes to the development of skills is
useless, and takes a long time.
Clapping in rhythm, singing songs, hitting drums, marching to music – all
exclusively teach to clap rhythm, to sing songs, to hit drums and to march to music.
These activities have little to do with a real music education. When school is over,
these skills are absolutely useless. Have you ever heard someone brag about how well
he can march to music and clap in rhythm? Yet even now, teachers waste a lot of
energy on this. And we all pay millions of dollars for these lessons and think that this
money is being spent to save the art of music.

Performance
Can a bunch of recorders and drums save music? That’s the question.
Recorders and noise instruments are extremely popular in schools. Specifically
these instruments are used to teach performance, and of course, ‘composition’ and
‘improvisation.’ How exactly is this done? It seems like the writers of this curriculum
know, but I can’t think of how they can! These instruments are the least suitable of all
for teaching music and its language.
I’m not at all against the development of a sense of rhythm, and I’m not against
drums. In fact, I’m very much for them! But let’s, once and for all, separate that which is
important from that which acts as accompaniment. The ability to translate sounds into
music notes and vice versa is what is essential to an effective musical development.
Rhythm is only part of the music context, and shouldn’t be taught out of context. The
development of rhythm within a noise orchestra develops rhythm in a noise orchestra,
and nothing more!
As for recorders, they are useful in only two ways: they are simple and cost very
little. Even though playing an instrument like the recorder can teach memory and even
to read a melody, it is only in the most primitive and one-voiced way, only in the Treble
Clef and in a tiny range. You won’t learn much about reading notes here. Also, while
playing to sheet music on the recorder, the student can’t sing along with the melody
and develop a clean voice that can sing in tune. And who continues to play the

recorder after graduation? Only the rare few – those that have a special interest in the
instrument and were likely not in need of much musical development, being born with a
‘gift.’
Learning Songs
Learning to sing songs is pleasant, though also useless for music education.
Just like orchestras of noisy instruments, singing songs is included as an
important part of public school curriculum. But I know a huge number of people that
were stars in their choir class but are still ignoramuses when it comes to music. Singing
is necessary and useful, but only if first the music notation is sung. Without doing this,
it has nothing to do with music literacy, and therefore nothing to do with learning music.
Of course, when you go to a school event and hear a multitude of songs
performed by your little pumpkin, you might be moved to tears. However, the entire
semester has been wasted on the musically illiterate cramming of these songs while it
could have been spent much more productively; they could have sung the songs out
by notes and written them down in notation. It is possible that every now and then the
children might remember how they sang in the choir, but they will never be able to play
or write down that same melody again.

Learning to sing songs during music lessons is the same as learning poems by
listening to the voice of a teacher during literature lessons. The auditory memory might
get developed in this way, but the ability to read, write and think in the language of
music isn’t helped at all.
Music Appreciation
The language of music passes on information just like human speech does. In
just the same way, we perceive it and process it with our sensory organs. The shorter
and simpler that it is, the easier it is to memorize, and the more quickly it gets on our
nerves after hearing it repeatedly.
Hearing and appreciating a complicated work of music isn’t simple work. One
must understand the separate fragments, which are more easily grasped by the
perception. And it isn’t as simple as knowing the main themes - one must be able to
mentally recreate them, or to sing them with one’s voice in order to truly appreciate
them. To be able to do this, the melody should be listened to many different times so
that it can be memorized. Each new turn of the musical thought-process, each nuance

finds its place within the consciousness. The most sophisticated form appreciation can
be achieved if you can learn to play the work on the piano. It must become a part of
you. And finally, you begin to sense and understand the composer – the state that he
is in, his feelings, his hopes. It’s as if you are communicating with the composer
himself! Then, the work is finally heard.
At school, each composer is allotted about an hour or two of class time. From the
very beginning the lectures wander into beautiful tales about the epoch of his life and
music in general, and then the students are allowed to listen to a few fragments of his
work. These fragments aren’t memorized, or ever played again for the students. Could
it be that these lessons might awaken his interest in serious music, and that he will go
and buy some more recordings? With the exception of rare occasions, this is unlikely.
If people have never been taught to hear serious music, then they won’t teach
themselves to do it on their own. Hearing and understanding music involves the same
effort from a person’s consciousness as reading a good book. But abstract talks about
books won’t teach anyone to read them!
A work of music is an entire theatre of live images. The composer doesn’t simply
combine a few melodies; he develops them, transforms them, sometimes clashes them
against one another, and even has them interact with each other like actors in a play.
In order to derive pleasure from listening to music, the person must catch the twists
and turns of the plot. Without a good sense of hearing, memory, and understanding of
music language, you can’t adequately perceive complex music, much like a child can’t
listen to a lecture full of unknown words.
Teaching to conscientiously listen to music should take up a serious portion of a
musical upbringing. The work that is selected for listening should be studied deeply. Its
main themes should be either sung out or played. If this doesn’t happen, then
lessons about music are just babble, useless for any sort of musical development. If a
person isn’t given a proper education in music, we can’t teach him to understand it, nor
truly appreciate it.
The Pros and Cons of Group Playing

School is the place where children are socialized. What can a teacher do when
he needs to instruct an entire class at once? This is what playing in orchestras or
singing in choirs is for. It’s not that bad, but we’re forgetting what’s important: each one
of us, before anything else, is an individual. Our relationship to music, then, is very
personal. Choirs and orchestras are convenient and easily accessible to educators.
But if we’re talking about music education for the students’ sakes, we will need to think
of something more productive.
Each person should develop at his own pace, at the level of his own abilities and
desire to work. The worst thing for development is to hinder it by the collective. More
importantly, the gradual processes of development should be observed. Playing in an
orchestra in order to learn the language of music is like acting in plays in order to learn
to read and write! It’s nonsensical! Children should first be taught to read and write,
then can read the roles and music pieces aloud, and only after that can they play as a
group.
The personal ability to play, to read a piece by notes or pick out a harmony for a
melody is the reason that people study music in the first place. This is incomparably
more important than participating in an orchestra. The most modest personal

achievements in getting familiar with the language of music stay with a person for the
rest of his life, being the crucial step for a motivated continuation of music study.
Playing in a group is the icing on the cake, the result of constant individual work.
It is a setting in which a person can endorse his ability to play and hear everybody
else. He is already using mastered skills, and can derive pleasure from this. Likewise,
choir or orchestra is a result of individual development. By nature, the participants
have to be skilled by default. Otherwise, a collective cacophony would be produced!
This type of collective music education definitely inhibits the development of children
with good musical gifts, and nothing is given to those that still need to hone their skills.
For this reason, nowadays the electronic keyboard (EK from this point on) can
become the single acceptable music instrument in public schools. For group lessons,
they are much more effective than singing in a choir of or playing a single-voiced
instrument in an orchestra. They are quite suitable for teaching children the language
of music. Headphones can be used, regulating the volume and timbre of the sound,
making individual practice in a group setting possible. Never before have we had such
an excellent opportunity to teach a group of children the skills of reading, playing on
the piano and singing from notes. But this is all small fish. If an EK is connected to a
computer, then there is the potential for effectiveness that the average educator
couldn’t imagine in his wildest dreams!
Piano is the Foundation for Music Education

Piano is the universal, fundamental, and most accessible multi-octave instrument
for learning the music language. The keys’ layout presents an obvious representation
of the Grand Staff, making it much easier for a beginner to understand music grammar.
Being a melodic and percussive instrument at the same time, the EK is the ideal
training device for the development of hearing and rhythm. Playing doesn’t require any
special physical exertion, like stringed and wind instruments do. While playing, a child
can simultaneously sing, developing his voice and mastering proper intonation.
The EK can’t be played out of tune; when a key is pressed, a clean, even note is
sounded, allowing the hearing to develop without obstacle. While playing, the student
receives the melody, harmony, and rhythm all at once. Reproduction of both the
melody and accompaniment develops the melodic and harmonious ear. When we
teach our fingers to ‘walk’ smoothly (legato) or stomp (staccato), we are developing
everything at once – the depth of hearing, control of the voice, and the subtle nuances
of motor movement.

Devotees of violins, accordions, flutes and harps, will of course object to this.
They will say that other instruments are much more ‘articulate,’ better convey emotions
and the subtle interrelations of tones, that furthermore diversity is important, and an
instrument should be a matter of one’s taste. Undoubtedly, this is true. But we’re
talking about the ability to teach at an elementary stage of music development. In
this, the piano has no competitors. Moreover, the EK is even more effective than
ordinary pianos!
If only Mozart could have seen an electronic keyboard…
Many classically trained pianists have a scornful view towards electronic

instruments. “One must learn on a respectable acoustic piano, or not at all!” is their
opinion. And what do we get in the end? It seems that the public is clearly inclined to
take the second option. There are so many pianos out there, but few people can

actually put them to good use. Even owners of expensive grand pianos more often
than not use them for nothing more than dust collectors.
The matter of acoustics is a delicate one. To most people, it doesn’t even occur
that their piano needs to be tuned every six months, as is recommended. Open up one
of these prized instruments and take a look inside – it’s a disaster in there! Half year of
such out of tune ‘lessons,’ and your music ear will be ruined anyway! Furthermore, the
quality of the sound of contemporary EKs isn’t much worse than their acoustic
counterparts. They don’t need to be tuned, and the sound is always ideal. Their price
varies, and there is always something available for one’s budget. A 5-octave
instrument that costs $100 is more than adequate for a beginner. What is most
important is that a spirit of music appears in your school or at your home – an
instrument that can be a good teacher for your students, your children, and yourself.
It is often said that the EK ruins the student’s “technique.” This is not true. If you
have a developed coordination of all of your fingers and can freely control both hands,
you will easily get used to the piano keys’ increased tension. For that matter, little
Mozart learned to play on a harpsichord, which has a ‘soft touch’ just like an EK. Even
if there were a Steinway in his house, his father Leopold would never have sat his frail,
three-year-old boy behind it, expecting him to play freely with his thin little fingers.
Piano technique starts from the development of the hand’s reach, the familiarization of
the ‘territory of the instrument,’ and with the strengthening of one’s coordination in
general. Only after that, when the instrument becomes a part of yourself, when your
coordination becomes your fulcrum, can you sit at any instrument and fine tune the
strength with which you press on the keys and can polish the quality of the sound
produced.
Contemporary EKs are a treasure for music education. In each of these
instruments exists an entire orchestra. They contain hundreds of tones, beats, and
songs that are like bright ‘picture books,’ irreplaceable to a beginner at the start of a
long and exciting journey. And when playing from sheet music becomes an ordinary
business to him, he will understand that he has outgrown ‘picture books.’ Then he will
be ready for a piano, a violin, or even a different instrument! And only then will the
grand piano be put to good use, rather than collecting dust in the living room.
Piano Lessons in Public Schools? Of course!

Only public education can save the music.
Those that are illiterate think that they know everything, and have nothing to
strive towards. But the more that a person knows and can do, the more possibilities he
discovers, and the more tempting it is to better his results. If every child knew how to
read notes with certainty and to play on the keys of the piano, then more able-bodied
students would want to study other instruments than ever before in the history of music
education.
Any realm of human activity is like a tree. The general public comprises its roots,
educated specialists make the trunk, and the masters are the branches. And the
further the roots spread, the stronger and more magnificent the trunk and crown
become. Art is the communication of the masters with the public. When there are more
educated listeners, the creations of the masters become increasingly heavenly and
sophisticated. It is because of this that we haven’t produced new Beethovens and
Mozarts in centuries! If only the talented musicians had an educated public, they could
polish their masterpieces with enthusiasm and take music to completely new heights.
As things stand now, they are more likely to spend that time working a second job so
that they can afford to feed themselves and their families.
Universal music literacy is the only way that music can flourish and develop as
an art. We musicians have no other option. The time has come to put our fears of
universal literacy aside and to pass it on to everybody!
If we want to survive in today’s world, and we want the art of music to flourish, we
must do everything we can to put a stop to systemized music illiteracy. The salvation of
music no longer depends on our masterful performances, on brand new masterpieces,
interesting films and clever articles. The salvation of music can be found in the
classrooms in public schools, specifically those that contain our future connoisseurs
and audience, performers and conductors, and close to them, future presidents and
senators on whom the fate of music education depends.
Each year that music education doesn’t help children to really learn music, the art
of it is pushed further into obscurity. Only if taught to sing and play from notes can a
person understand the value of the creations of other musicians. And only such a
person can realize the importance of a music education.
THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS OF MUSIC PEDAGOGY

Did Music Encourage Technological Progress?
I have been developing a certain hypothesis for many years. It is very logical,
though it can’t be proved by concrete evidence. It is as follows: the development of
musical thought stimulated the general innovative progress of humanity. The
technological revolution of the 20th century didn’t follow the mighty splash of musical
creativity of the 18th and 19th centuries by mere coincidence. Musical literacy
developed the general musical thought processes, and musical thought, in turn,
defined a new level of scientific and engineering consciousness. The language of
music is an abstraction of the highest class! The ability to memorize complicated
musical works was also reflected in the technical sphere. The languages of
communication, both scientific and musical, developed symbiotically just like two
knives sharpening each other, releasing sparks of potential. Each influenced the other,
creating a harmonious balance of logic and feeling, time and space, the concrete and
the figurative.
What came first: music or creative thinking? Which flows from the other? It is
hard to say. But initially there was a huge flourish of musical art (Baroque, Classical,
Romantic, Modernism) and only after that came the Industrial Revolution. And now we
are warned: technological progress continues to prosper to this day, while musical art
is in a deep depression. If music was the foundation of creative work, the next stage is
entirely logical: the human thought process, no longer strengthened by musical
progress, will be extinguished. And the person that is deprived of creative thought will
be doomed to decay.
Humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years, but didn’t
achieve a developed and rich musical language all at once. The first works appeared
long before music literacy. They passed from one rule to another, and were very
simple and not too thought-out. History hasn’t accurately preserved a single melodic
saga or score that accompanied the Greek Tragedies. From the epoch before musical
literacy, only folklore has been preserved – short compositions, limited in volume and
plain in substance. Think, for example, of the holiday song “Carol of the Bells.” It is
likely that this melody is several thousand years old, derived from an ancient Ukrainian
folk chant, “Shchedryk.” The four-note melody was made simple for the sake of
repetition, and has thus survived in the villages of Ukraine for ages.
Because it couldn’t be written down, it wasn’t possible to preserve more complex
pieces with accuracy; they changed and slipped away, like sand through the fingers.
People constantly tried to find ways to record musical notation. They came up with all
sorts of lines and symbols. Ancient Greeks used letters to write out the sounds of
music, Russian monks used names and hooks, and European Monks used neumes,
which are individual signs that are representative of different sounds. Yet all of these
symbols only gave a general idea of the melody. They couldn’t communicate the exact
notes, the clear correlation of the melody, nor the concrete tune or rhythms to be sung.
Finally, in the 10th century, a Benedictine monk named Guido d’Arezzo invented
a music stave of four lines, placed the neumes onto it, and marked off note duration.
This was a true revolution! If not for this genius invention, symphonies, sonatas,
operas, and ballets wouldn’t have been a possibility. In just this way, our
consciousness is built on the appearance of a written language from which thought can
develop. Language is the capture of human thought. After a person writes down an
idea, he can examine it, rethink it, complete it, develop it, and, most importantly, pass it
on to others.
Literacy is the focal point for the development of any idea. When we pass it along
vocally, a centrifugal force prevails; one wants to preserve the source, the original idea.
Writing develops the centripetal force, helping to better the original and to attain new
results.
Having learned to write down music, people began to study and develop the
language further. The first schools were established in monasteries and churches.
There, the best tunes were examined, worked out, and painstakingly recorded. Music
compositions became more complex and improved. Descendants read the music of
their fathers and added something of their own to it. In this way, from the Gregorian
chants of monks, European music came to Bach’s fugues, cantatas, and masses, and
then the sonatas and symphonies of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.
Advanced musical thought has nothing to do with simple repetitive melodies, and
is extraordinarily dynamic in its own development and imagination. Working with an
advanced musical language demands a huge amount of intellect. One needs a
developed memory, creative mind, concentration, the ability to focus one’s attention, a
balance of the emotional and abstract perceptions, developed logic, and a sense of
balance between the right and left hemispheres of the brain. Because of this, the idea
that the music revolution heralded the technological revolution doesn’t at all seem
unlikely to me.
Society’s relationship to music can be used as a barometer of its intellectual
development. The ability to listen, understand, and appreciate symphonic or opera
music is an indication that the intellectual development of people has reached the
highest level, and immaculate balance. This occurred during the “Silver Age,” of
culture, during the second half of the 19th century. At that time, almost every country in
Europe produced genius composers. From that point on, their music has been the very
embodiment of perfection, and even now, nobody has created a new form of classical
music. And of course, this is hardly possible: currently, musical culture is wilting before
our eyes.
After the Second World War, the popularity of serious musical genres began its
descent. Classical swiftly started getting substituted by operettas, musicals, and dance
music. Nowadays, it has completely lost its former popularity. Contemporary classical
composers are rare, and the wide listening base isn’t familiar with Schnittke and
Shinberg. Nowadays, pop and rock music is what’s on everyone’s mind. Symphony
and opera are the lot of the elite few, whose circle continues to shrink. The music of
the masses has again returned to the pre-literate age. The musically illiterate majority
can only listen to primitive, simple melodies and obsessively repetitive songs. As for
the lyrics that are accompanied by such soundtracks – it’d be better not to talk about
them at all.
I can propose a test of the perception of serious music, indicative of the
intellectual remainder of contemporary society. Even the songs of The Beatles were
more advanced and refined than popular contemporary rock and pop. During those
same years, from the start of the 70’s until midway through the 80’s, some musicians
tried to lift rock to the level of opera (Jesus Christ Superstar) and symphony (Pink
Floyd, King Crimson).
Audio recordings have become more accessible than ever, now that digital
players have been invented. Each person can reproduce any sound while driving a car
or riding a bicycle. The demand for musical literacy has almost completely
disappeared. Popular music is increasingly simplified, and its rhythmic 2-3 note songs
are in essence proof of a return to the pre-literate era. The more progressive and
complex genres of music, such as sonatas and symphonies, have for almost a century
been written by the thin circle of aesthetes, and make no sense to most people.
Many are convinced that contemporary pop music is at a higher level than music
of the past. It seems that they’re making a judgment based on the quality of the
recording, abilities of the electronic instruments, and sound effects. But we’re talking
about music here – not its technical and acoustic entourage. Take away the electronic
wrapper from the majority of popular songs, and see what’s inside. Absolutely
primitive, uninteresting material. Don’t believe me? Try to play these songs on the
piano. Especially rap songs.
With the rare exception, popular music is like Sunday comics, where the text is
simply a supplement to the drawings. It doesn’t help the development of musical
hearing, nor the enrichment of the spirituality, nor the growth of creativity and intellect.
Our kids are growing up on comics.
MUSICAL EDUCATION AND “THE TONE-DEAF”
Either Ideally, or Not at All!

A few videos in which my 3 year old students play several challenging pieces
from sheet music with both hands were placed onto our website. What response
did I receive from my colleagues? A bunch of irate reviews! They were indignant: the
children didn’t have “proper hand positioning,” had rhythm and tempo inconsistencies,
didn’t articulate the phrasing artistically and did not follow the dynamics. But please tell
me, why should any of these things be relevant to a three year old!? Toddlers that
haven’t learned to speak clearly yet are able to read sheet music and play on the piano
using all ten fingers of both hands. Not only that, but they feel confident and
comfortable doing this, as if they’re playing with their toys! It appears that the
educators and professionals didn’t understand exactly what they were seeing.
In order to learn to walk and run, at first the child crawls and falls, and it doesn’t
occur to anyone to criticize him for it. Where do teachers get the idea that in the very
first steps the student must move with the grace of a ballet dancer? Where did this
completely unnatural notion about the development of skills come from? In their
opinion, kids don’t have the right to develop a skill gradually, but must be born with a
complete understanding of sheet music and rounded hands. And if a three-year-old
toddler can’t follow the rhythm and phrase, they think that he is being taught
incorrectly! Either he needs to play ideally, or not at all!
What is the result of such a frame of mind? The overwhelming majority of
children do not play at all. I’d already decided: so what if my toddlers can’t play
ideally? What’s more important is that many of them can play, and with enjoyment. And
once they develop their coordination, the language of music will become as accessible
to them as their own thoughts.
It later turned out that my colleagues couldn’t have reacted differently. Digging
around in the history of the development of the art of music, I discovered that music
pedagogy is one of the oldest and most dogmatic relics of the past. At the time, live
performance of music was an important part of peoples’ recreational activities. Every
self-respecting person hoped to attain at least some type of music education, and to
learn to play some type of music instrument. During those faraway times, a person that
couldn’t play anything was simply considered to be uneducated! Music geniuses were
the measure of success in music education. Little Beethoven was tormented as a child
just because he couldn’t be the “second Mozart”; he received merciless spankings
when he made mistakes!
Half a century has passed, and the world has long since changed, but music
education remains as it was. People have progressed to automobiles, contrived a
worldwide satellite network, cyber space, and global business. In the schools,
computer programs and games have long been used as aids in teaching. Yet, music
education has remained as the prim and proper old lady, persistently nagging,
“Practice makes perfect!” and waving her cane at the student’s hands.
This is how I gained a serious interest in the influence of musical art on technical
progress, and especially the role of pedagogy in this process. The dear, conservative
manners of general music education gradually showed me its real face, which is
seriously threatening the development of all musical art.
How Music Education Brought Itself to a Dead End
The key power of any activity is motivation, the need for the activity. The need is
formed by society. That which is wanted and cared about is developed by new
dimensions. Unpopular knowledge disappears. In an illiterate society, the necessity of
books disappears. In a society in which only the few can read sheet music, music
literature is kept in reserves – rare, specialized music stores.
Was it ever otherwise? I won’t embellish the situation: the majority of society has
always been musically illiterate. But earlier, more people persistently aimed for a music
education; at the time, it was in demand. In order to fill one’s life with music, a person
had to be able to play, and to listen to music as it was performed live. Any person that
was able to play a music instrument, and freely play from notes, was treated with
respect and held in high regard. Because of this, people of all social classes tried to
learn music grammar.
However, only affluent people could afford access to a proper music education. The
ability to understand and perform serious music was considered to be one of the
highest honors. People bowed before a “talented musician.” High society spent its
spare time in opera theatres and philharmonic orchestras. The “average people” were
drawn to these spectacles, so that at least in the gallery, while standing, they’d get an
opportunity to hear good music. The elite often opened musical salons and invited
concert virtuosos to them. Without proper music lessons, the education of the
aristocracy wasn’t considered to be ‘proper,’ and because of this the middle class
treated music with immense respect.
These were the past couple of centuries, the “Golden Age” of musical progress. It
was stylish to listen to and understand different genres of music. Society wasn’t lacking
listeners and admirers; there were more than enough! Society needed talented, bright
performers, whose masterful playing could stun the listener, cheer him, and touch him.
“The Golden Age” formed the elite system of music education. Music pedagogy rarely
trifled with the “average joes.”
The music institutions of Europe passionately busied themselves with the art of
professional performance. The upbringing of new virtuosos – that is what brought the
educators pleasure! The need of people with ordinary musical gifts didn’t interest them
at all. Why waste time on “the ungifted masses” when you could take a talented
student and make a name for yourself through him? This was the motto of most music
educators of the time. As a whole, it is still the same motto today.
As a rule, music talents reveal themselves from early childhood. They are
exceptionally convenient for the educator: there’s no reason to hurt one’s head trying
to think up special methods in order to develop the music ear or memory. The
assignment is simplified: using the ready-made abilities of the student, one only needs
to develop the technique of his playing and help him to reach the professional level.
Imagine a gardener that can’t grow flowers from seeds. He buys grown bushes, aids
their growth a little further, and prides himself on the splendid plants. And so convinced
is he of his method that he proclaims that all seeds are incorrigible and a useless
invention!
Just like him, music educators have declared that untalented students are hopeless.
They don’t want to sow the seeds, to create and develop the music ear, music
memory, intonation of voice, and sense of rhythm. The criterion for admission into
music schools has become the population’s musical abilities. For the duration of the
past century, graduates had to undergo special tests in which they were required to
sing a melody while hammering out a different rhythm, and to separate movements
from the intervals by ear.
But the greatest filter for the children who weren’t “gifted enough” was the very
process of education itself. It was consciously oriented towards those that didn’t need
to develop their music ears. It is a fact that since then, music education hasn’t changed
much! It is still oriented towards gifted people, and doesn’t leave any chances for the
rest, even if they really want to learn.
Music education doesn’t want to become that which it must be: an enlightening
activity. It has irresponsibly isolated the selected few from the rest, and for the most
part, has ceased to be pedagogy. It is exactly from this that so many absurdities,
mistakes, and obnoxious habits stem into our music schools! The language of music’s
scorn for most people. The inability to develop hearing and voice in ordinary people.
The demand that each beginner must be made into a concert master. The persistent
need to ‘get with the program’, or better, to get ahead of it. Lack of tolerance for
mistakes in the performance of beginners. Disdainful regard for “amateurs,” yet an
infinite inability to understand that music is a necessity to every person for his
personal spiritual and creative growth.
Unlike the rest of our economy, our music education system doesn’t have a “middle
class”; there are only the narrow group of elites and the completely illiterate majority.
Nobody wants to understand that this situation is on the path to the degradation and
fall of music as an art form.
What Sort of Epiphany Could Save Music?

Of course, among the musicians of the past, there were some advocates for music
enlightenment. In 1862, a Free Music School (FMS) was opened in St. Petersburgh. It
was founded by two prominent composers named Gavril Lomakin and Miliy Balakirev.
The FMS existed for a good, long time. It granted a preliminary music education to all
that wanted it and held a wide range of concert activities. For several years, it was
headed by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and under his guidance the school became the
center of the performance of new Russian music.
Russian advocacy for reform went even further. In 1906, under the initiative of the
composer Taneev and other figures of Russian culture, The People’s Conservatory
was organized in Moscow. It was intended to spread music education among the
population, to teach the art of choral singing and to bring out talented people so that
they could learn to play music instruments privately.
From then on, choir singing has been considered the single best way to spread
music literacy. It’s not hard to understand why; study in a choir has long been the only
affordable and accessible form of music activity for the masses. Yet, as has been
explained, choir singing greatly restricts the music skills, and thus cannot provide a
proper music education.
At the beginning of the 20th century, three composer-professionals developed the
ideas of public music education. They worked out their own original systems in public
schools. Zoltan Kodai (1882-1967), a famous Hungarian composer and pedagogue,
suggested a method that developed the music ear and voice. Karl Orf (1895-1982), a
prominent German figure, introduced people to music through their sense of rhythm.
Soviet composer Dimitri Kabalevski (1904-1983) made the understanding of musical
genres and styles more accessible. The achievement of these prominent advocates is
unquestionable, and their contributions in introducing people to music are huge.
Unfortunately, not one of these new systems has solved the main problem of music
education: the problem of universal music literacy.
Alas, neither singing in a choir to Kodai’s hand symbols, nor participation in Orf’s
sound orchestras, nor the ability to differentiate a waltz from a march under
Kabalevski’s system can improve a child’s ability to read, write, and think in the
music language.
The teaching methods of the past conformed to what was possible at the time. Until
the very end of the 20th century, there couldn’t be a single thought that it was possible
to teach an entire class to play the piano at once, or that reading notes could be taught
with a simple computer program. Nowadays, these old views have no use, and only
bring harm. It is time for us to examine our habits: the world has long since changed,
and we have a store of new possibilities in our hands!
Let’s acknowledge some obvious facts once and for all. Music education has
already become unfashionable. Public choirs, bands and orchestras aren’t changing
this situation. Without educated listeners, the art of music is continuing to decline.
An education in music shouldn’t be just a use of inborn music talents, but a
conscious creation of them from nothing. At the age of 4-5, any child is capable of
grasping the music language and playing on the piano without difficulties. All that is
needed is a corresponding method of education. Such a method already exists, and I
am offering it to all that want it.
The Age of Technological Music?

Sound recording has produced a revolution in the musical lives of people; in order to
hear music whenever you want, it is no longer necessary to be able to play. An entire
army of singers, orchestras, and performers can now fit into the pocket, and one can
listen to any of them at the press of a button. The ability to play instruments, and
especially knowledge of notes, are now nothing to the public at large. Performers are
coming to the stadiums not knowing a single thing about music grammar – and take
pride in this!
A new standard has been established in society, once voiced in a song by Chuck
Barry: “Roll Over, Beethoven!” People don’t need to ask musicians for music any
longer; they can simply pick out what they want at the store, or online. “You didn’t want
to teach us, and now we can get along without you!” is the essence of the current state
of affairs between the population and music professionals. Music education turned
away from society, and now society faces it with the utmost disdain and apathy.
In musicology, new trends have appeared: they say the ability to write music
notation is an unnecessary attribute of the art of music, and many contemporary
genres (jazz, rock, folk) simply don’t need it. They even say that the knowledge of
music grammar is BAD for the development of rock and pop musicians! Furthermore,
they say that by not knowing how to read notes, they’re protecting their own originality.
And in reality, the authors of contemporary pop music really do get along just fine
without any serious musical knowledge. It is totally enough for musicians to get by with
their music ear alone. Electronic devices grant the ability to unlimitedly manipulate
sounds, computers allow for the arrangement of entire orchestras, and software can
translate sounds into music notation without the participation of a person. All that the
musician needs to do is to think up a melody, play it out, and organize an arrangement
over it. Then, the program can translate it all into sheet music, or more often, simply
record, and make a soundtrack.
Really, these new possibilities in technology are amazing. But machines can’t
create7. The quality of the music is a product of the highest human intellect. And, as it
was before, and is now, the best, most interesting music compositions are created by
those with a higher music education. This is because the mastery of the music
language can only be realized through music literacy.
Witnessing the experiences of my fellow Ukrainian compatriots in Houston, Tx, the
fate of a verbal language under the conditions of immigration was shown to me. The
children of many of the immigrants could only speak in the language of their parents,
but couldn’t read or write in it. These kids quickly lost Ukrainian and preferred to think
and speak in English. Their vocabulary quickly shrank and dried out, like the ass’s skin
in Balzac’s famous novel. This is normal – in order to develop, a language must be
nurtured by various sources: books, articles, news, and personal compositions and
letters. Only reading and writing can develop one’s vocabulary, and this means
creative thought in the language is also required.
The ability to write down music isn’t simply a pragmatic skill. This is the main
condition for the development of musical thought and intellect. One can translate
sounds into music notation with the help of a machine, but he will never be able to
widen his own intellect using this method. In fact, while musicians stay illiterate, their
musical thought skids in place. And while it’s stuck in one place, the thought is
inevitably reduced to the level of rhythmic cacophonies or primitive, annoying
repetitions. It is this very level that has long been demonstrated by club DJs, and the
majority of rap and techno groups.
Listeners fed on this type of ‘music’ are unlikely to ever choose something more
advanced. A minimum of music and a maximum of rhythm are information not for the
brain, but for the reflexes. Just like tribal ritual dances, contemporary ‘dance’ is aimed
7
In 2001, Chun-Chi J. Chen and Risto Miikkulainen of The Dept. of Computer Sciences at the University of Texas
at Austin released their findings after attempting to use evolving recurrent neural networks to artificially compose
melodies. The findings state that “While the results were promising, they often lacked flexibility in generating
variations in the melody, and they drew little support from music theory.”
at primitive instinct and has a rather hypnotic influence. 120 beats per minute and a
pounding rhythm crawl into the subconscious at an exclusively physiological level.
Music is a part of the personal world of the listener. Tell me what type of music you
enjoy, and I will be able to tell who you are. When true musical thought is missing, and
the composition obnoxiously and monotonously spins in circles, the listener feels
desperation and falls into depression. It is as if this music is justifying his discord with
the world. It isn’t a coincidence that this type of music is a symbol of intimidation and
protest. It can call forth a rising tide of energy and a storm of aggression, outrage, and
a temptation towards destruction and self-destruction.
Primitive forms of music absolutely can’t develop one’s hearing, memory, and
perception, and not to mention taste. The abyss between the masses of admirers and
serious music genres is extending. Serious music is becoming isolated and more and
more elite, while the language of music is going the way of Latin, which is only used by
advanced medics and biologists.
Of course, one can argue about the evolution of music. It is possible that the alloy of
technology and music intellect will cause some sort of breakthrough, and nothing
otherwise. But I am talking about what we have come to now. And now, professional
music is like a many-branched tree with rotting roots. Even the relatively simple,
melodic classical music of “The Silver Age” has less and less admirers. New works, it
seems, are doomed to complete isolation and lack of understanding by the masses.
TRADITION V.S. PROGRESS
Music is a language, and learning music is similar to learning a different language.

Learning is based on common laws of perception, memory, and the development of
skills. If a gradual pace, elements of fun and a rational evaluation of the results are
maintained, the person will become familiar with music easily, and relaxedly. In
contrast, if one can’t keep our developed ‘habits,’ the laws of perception and
development, in mind, then little will be achieved in study.
Cramming: When One Has Nothing Else to Depend On

A person has many channels of perception – a huge stream of information!
Fundamentally, it comes from the outside through the sensory organs. We try to sound
out all that we fixate on – we give each occurrence a name and collect definitions.
Memorizing and sounding out these words, it is as if we make these occurrences a part
of ourselves, a part of our consciousness. All that is named and sounded out is saved
in our memory in the form of familiar images. Specifically with the help of these images
we are able to think. We can think out and speculate using our imagination. And then
appears a wish to influence the order of events – an urge to create.
The learning of something new involves a gradual increase in knowledge and
experience. Everyone knows this, but only the rare pedagogue really understands this!
The main word here is “gradual.” The principle of gradualness is at the foundation of
any education. It literally means that each step or skill must we acquired completely,
worked out to the condition of free application. And if this hasn’t happened yet, to move
on, to demand something new, is unnatural and unacceptable. Gradualness means
that each student, alone, according to his own peculiarities, defines the speed at which
he will learn something new. The problems in education arise only when the teacher
starts to demand that which is impossible, undeveloped, and incomplete.
New information is accepted only when we are ready for it. A new understanding
must be a logical development of knowledge that has already been acquired. A new
exercise is a straight consequence of skills that have already been worked out. That
which has already been adapted is the single support for something new. Anything that
isn’t adapted is rejected by our perception; for us, the unfamiliar is simply dead weight.
When you assimilate something new, you add another step to a staircase that
you’re building yourself, rising one step higher. Before strengthening the new step, you
can’t put any weight on it. Of course, it is possible to force a person stand on this step
– but he will simply slip through and fall.
Our usual music lessons are full of breaks and falls! Holding hands a certain way,
sitting up straight, looking at the sheet music, playing without mistakes and even
dynamically, the teacher asks the student to do all of this without giving him the chance
to develop at least one of these skills! If he manages to familiarize at least something
once in a while, his sigh of relief isn’t noticed – the program doesn’t wait!
A good example of gradual learning is the use of alphabet cubes when teaching the
letters. Here is a cube with a picture of an apple. The symbol next to the apple is some
sort of letter. The child already knows what an apple looks like, and knows how to say
the word “apple.” He also knows that the letter “A” exists in the alphabet. This has long
ago been voiced and understood, and is his support, his “step” on the staircase. All
that’s left to do is to take the next “step,” find out what the name on the block is. The
picture of the apple is a hint. The name of the letter is the answer to the question that
the child can ask of himself. This is why the answer is perceived and becomes a part
of his experience.
However, the time for cubes quickly runs out! When he comes to school, the student
quickly falls into the world of “educational programs.” What gradualness there is here!
After primary school, a waterfall of information rains down on him. There isn’t time to
master all of his skills, but nobody demands this from him. All that is needed for good
grades is to repeat what’s been read. As for music school, all that is needed is to play it
out. This is when a habit of cramming appears.
If a focal point for new information isn’t ready, a conscious memorization of it isn’t
possible. Then, the memory starts to work mechanically, using the path of the repeated
completion of the unknown at the level of muscle memory. There isn’t anything to lean
on: the supportive steps of experience have run out! This unknown information simply
hangs in the air. There is only one escape: complete memorization without any sort of
understanding. This is cramming, enforced by aggressive and involuntary
memorization of new information.
During piano lessons, cramming is a common resort. In order to free oneself of the
torment of reading notes from the paper, students memorize songs by ear, and with
their fingers, using muscle memory. I have read many times that highly respectable
educators recommend that students learn new music not by reading it, but by
cramming measure after measure into memory! Where do these methods come from?
Only from our inability to teach children to fluently read notes. What do they give to the
students? A cartoonish suspension in the air. Still raw, pieces that are performed are
wiped from the memory without the possibility of return. Having played out a piece at
an academic concert, and even receiving high marks, a person forgets it and isn’t in
the condition to recollect it. Without a visual focal point and inner hearing of the music
notation, the performed piece is disposed. Hearing and muscle memory aren’t capable
of drawing out all of the musical information, and it is quickly lost.
Perception is free by nature. It doesn’t like to be forced, tied down with that which is
incomprehensible, and without fail will fight against it. Crammed information, not finding
application, is pushed out of the memory. Because of this, the effectiveness of
cramming is inversely proportional to its labor intensity.
The Ignored Stages of Learning
A STORY ABOUT
MY VERY FIRST POOP
Music is a language created for the transmission of musical thoughts. To use it,
theory won’t help; here one needs control over many skills. The abilities to hear, read,
and understand, and to have creative thought are all separate groups of skills.
Music literacy isn’t a code of laws, but a practical, everyday ability to freely translate
sounds into music notation, and vice versa. In this regard, there isn’t a big difference
between music and speech; whether we translate words into letters or sounds into
notes, the process remains the same. In both cases, the human voice serves as the
main intermediary, the focal point. Both verbal speech and music “speech” are
familiarized, before anything else, through the voice.
There are four stages of learning:

1. The sounding-out stage: We sound out what we read with our
voices, letter by letter, and then by syllables. We already know and understand the
words that are read out loud, and the voice can articulate them – this is our “focal
point.” Our assignment is to connect the letter (symbol) with its perception in the throat,
and on an auditory level. This embeds the letters into our consciousness. The result is
the ability to vocalize what you are reading.
2. The silent utterance stage: We switch from reading through the
external perception to reading in our minds. We can already remember how words
sound when read out loud; this is our “focal point.” The voice has completed its role
and has passed the baton to the consciousness. Our new assignment is to work out
our own mental dictionary of sounds and letters. The result is the ability to read out
words and sentences within one’s mind. At the same time, we work on the skill of
writing, and learn to write down what we’ve heard or read.
3. The grammar stage: We begin to receive a much larger volume of
information, and we need clarification. Words and sentences are written following strict
and definite rules. The time has come to learn the rules. The “focal point” for this is a
ready mental dictionary. The assignment is to perfect the writing of the words and
phrases in this dictionary. To do this, one doesn’t only need to learn the rules, but also
must write down accounts and dictations by ear.
4. The creative stage: The achieved literacy becomes a stable base for
developed thinking and self-expression in the mastered language. Now, we can
seriously study different literary styles, improvise, and compose. Having mastered the
language, we can have our own influence on it and can communicate in it with other
readers.
These stages are natural for the perception, and all students learn language in
this way. Yet, with music, for some reason, everything is quite opposite. The
psychological disposition of the students filling music classrooms is by no means
extraterrestrial, yet the system of music education is built upside down! Here, they start
with the creative stage, with an emphasis on the laws and rules. Then they shift to
mental reading from sheet music, not involving the voice at all. Finally, only after this
do they come to the sounding-out stage, if they resort to it at all. Not tying sounds to
the voice and hearing, not having given a mental ‘dictionary’ of sounds and notes,
teachers demand that the child play on an instrument, and even more, watch his
application, dynamics, rhythm, and placement of the hands! This backwards teaching
beats out all footholds from beneath the student. He hangs in the air, and stops seeing
what he’s doing and where he’s going. All he is concerned with is how best not to
upset the teacher. There is only one escape: mindless memorization.
There is another absurdity in our system of education: the artificial preparation of
skills. When we learn to read words, we rely on hearing, reading aloud, vision, and
coordination all at once. And of course, a person can’t read words aloud if he’s never
seen them or heard them, and has never used his vocal chords. Yet in music classes,
this is disregarded. One day the children are taught to memorize the notes and the
keys, and the next, they are taught to play without ever singing, the next, to sing
without accompaniment, and after that, to play exercises without singing nor reading
the notes. Instead of jointly helping the child, these skills conflict and battle for the
position of priority. Artificially separating these skills, we later attempt, painstakingly, to
unite them back into “one happy family,” more often than not in vain.
I constantly see people whose hand technique isn’t well connected to their
hearing, or whose voices aren’t capable of singing out what their eyes see. This chaos
is the result of the methodical laceration of the united perception of music. The nature
of the language of music demands a perfect harmony between the sensory and motor
organs. Each fraction of a second in reading music notes is an entire block of
perceptions and reactions. The vision, symbols, inner sound, the throat, the voice,
hearing, the quality of the sound – in any language, all of these things work at the
same time. If they have been sufficiently worked on, we can easily make music. But if
this hasn’t happened, we struggle from note to note at the speed of a tortoise.
Stopping at every note in order to find its key, tearing through the music text as if
it were an overgrown jungle of Columbia, we aren’t in the position to listen, nor
understand and analyze what we are playing. These activities give almost nothing to
the musical development. The most common product of the music schools is the sigh
of relief after the final recital, when the instrument is locked away, concluding the long
punishment that has been endured with much suffering.
Where Do “The Musically Handicapped” Come From?

The current system of music education, accepted by most teachers in many parts
of the world, cripples one population of students after the other and causes incurable
harm to the music of the world. While this continues to happen, not a word can be
uttered about the salvation of music! Each educator that begins to teach with the
ALPHABETICAL REPRESENTATION8 of notes should know that he is threatening the
student’s music perception with execution, and gives the student a handicap. Why?
Because the alphabetical system excludes the voice from the essential process
of musical development.
8
C, D, E, F, G, A, B
A letter is an abstract graphic symbol of the secondary signal system9, and sound
is a phonetic occurrence of the first signal system. The pitch of a sound and a graphic
symbol have no physical relation to each other. But they can be tied together, if the
symbol is pronounced or sung out loud. The voice of a person is the tie between
sounds and abstract symbols. It is specifically because of this that every letter and
sound has an articulated name. This creates a relationship between sounds and
symbols; only the voice can pass on a name to letters or notes. Both speech and
music were born in the human throat. Only the voice of a person can sing out and
name a note at the same time! Moreover, only the voice can connect the perception of
a symbol and its sound into a single whole.
The Alphabetical System was created for the simplification of separate, specific
musical activities. As I will explain in the next section, it is very uncomfortable to sing
notes with this system and therefore it excludes the voice from the process of note
familiarization. Thus, it relies on an already established music-analytical thought
process and a developed memory. Its application in music education isn’t anything but
the most unnatural attempt to connect sounds and symbols without the participation of
the voice. The selection of the “note symbols” here is incidental – it is simply the
mechanical order of the letters in the alphabet. In this case, the most important quality
of musical speech suffers – its articulatory nature: unlike the Solfeggio syllables10, the
voicing of letters is unnatural and uncomfortable for singing with the voice.
Without reading the notes on the Grand Staff aloud, students simply can’t tie their
sounds to their visual representations. Yet the teachers are convinced of this strange
practice’s sanctity. They authoritatively declare that it is simply “part of the hardship
and suffering, without which music progress isn’t possible!” On the other hand, toddlers
that are taught to sing along in Solfeggio while they learn to play songs quickly
progress to a multitude of complex pieces, and without any of those “inescapable”
sufferings. This was revealed to be quite easy – it was enough to find the natural paths
of the perception and development of speech.
The Alphabet System demands a confident knowledge of letters, which makes
teaching music to preschoolers very difficult. We’re losing a very important
developmental period! At 3-4 years old, a person can already sing, play and read
notes, and not only develop those very musical abilities, but also can develop his mind
for the successful study of other academic subjects.
The Alphabet System isn’t the only thing that is confusing and burdening to
students in traditional piano lessons. Music education squeezes out those that need it
9
Raymond Corsini’s “Dictionary of Psychology” defines the second signal system as “human language and
symbolic knowledge based, according to Ivan Pavlov, on the first signaling system (first order classical conditioning
to external stimuli). Derives from individual experience within a culture and depends on language, abstraction,
generalization, analysis, and synthesis.”
10
Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti
most: people with an undeveloped music ear. Here, just as in the jungles, only the
fittest survive: those that have received the gift of talent from nature. Quickly passing
through the first stages of development, these lucky savants practically develop on
their own. However, people with such talents are very few.
The rest of us graduate from music school without ever mastering all of the skills
necessary to build a strong base; we become musically handicapped. There are two
different types of handicapped: The Readers and The Hearers.
The Readers are those that crammed and memorized their way to a perfect,
mechanical reading of music text. They are the musicians that can fluently read from
sheet music, but can’t play by ear, compose, or improvise. They experience a constant
dependence on sheet music. This is natural – in the process of mechanical reading,
neither hearing nor musical thinking are developed.
The Hearers are those that have a well-developed music ear and music
memory. They memorize music faster than they can read it by notes. Musicians that
can easily improvise and can play by ear, yet can’t freely read sheet music, come from
this group.
Both one group and the other are cut off from half of their potential musical
abilities. Imagine a city where half of the residents cannot use their legs, and the other
half have sworn never to use their arms. Our musicians are just like this. The Readers
limit themselves exclusively to music that has already been written, and never apply
themselves to musical creativity. Often they cannot play a piece all the way through
after forgetting a chord or several notes. A person stutters in the same way if he has
crammed a text in a foreign language. The Hearers, in contrast, cannot read what has
already been written, sharply narrowing their musical horizons to personal auditory
experience. They often compose that which has already been written. And even having
composed something very interesting, they are limited to the simple genres: without
writing, the composition of complex music isn’t possible.
The Linguistics of Music

Thus, at the foundation of a person’s musical development is the singing of
music out loud with the voice. Everyone understands this, even devotees of the
Alphabet System. Often, when using the Alphabet System, the teacher attempts to
sing the melody by letters with the student.
However, the names of the letters are far from being as comfortable for singing
as Solfeggio. Both English pronunciations [see, dee, ee, ef, jee, ey, bee] and Latin
transcription [tse, deh, eh, ef, jeh, ash, ah, beh] aren’t suitable for the development of
the throat. Let’s analyze this in detail.
Linguists consider the vowels “A,” “O,” “E,” and “I” as fundamental, focal for the
speech apparatus in all languages11. The vocal sound “Eh” has been classified as
secondary. The singing of the sound “Eh” requires a tension on the vocal chords and a
half-opened jaw. That aside, the sounds of “Ey” and “Ef” are locked by consonance
and aren’t open enough to be connected to other vowels.
The remaining sounds of the Alphabet System depend on the vowel “I” [ee].
Even though it is classified as a fundamental tone of speech, is still tenses the throat,
11
Wikipedia’s entry on “Tenseness” offers some additional information as well as a bibliography of related works
on phonetics.
requires the jaw to be open just 15%, and causes five of the seven notes to be voiced
in a rather sharp timbre.
The syllables of the Solfeggio System are incomparably more comfortable for the
apparatus of the voice. They are composed of a variety of the fundamental tones: “Oh”
(50% opening of the jaw), “Eh” (50%), “Ah” (100%) and “Ee.” The more varied the
vowel sounds, the more varied the movements of the facial and jaw muscles. Sounds
are perceived on a diversified muscle level, and this helps to better memorize the
music text. The alteration of vowels gives the vocal chords a stable phonetic
foundation and trains the separate muscles of the throat. This provides each note with
a physiological uniqueness that helps to more precisely memorize the pitch of the
sound.
Is Every Good Boy really Fine…?

“What are the notes for the bass clef? I know treble is "Every Good Boy
Does Fine", and FACE. What about Bass?
I want to learn the piano, but I only know the treble clef, which means I can
only play the right hand. Which, of course, poses a problem. I'll take any
other advice you may want to give. Thank you.”
Question from answers.yahoo.com
Music and piano teachers like to use the mnemonic statement “Every Good Boy
Does Fine,” or other words that start with the same letters to help beginners memorize
the layout of the music staff. To this day, it is treated as an illustrious discovery in
music education. In reality, this hint causes more harm than good.
Music and speech have a different logic behind the use of symbols. While words
and phrases are strictly tied to their meanings and grammatical rules of sentence
construction, musical sounds aren’t limited to any specific sequence. The tying of the
letters of music notes to a sequence of words prohibits the freedom of the sounds.
By tying the notes to the first letters of words, we give the student a false support.
He is, after all, not prepared to read out the sequences of “Fine Does Boy Good
Every,” or “Every Does Boy Fine Good,” as that would be nonsense! Having learned
the mnemonic hint, the student finds himself on a very short leash, skidding in place
while attempting to read sheet music. And a slow reading of the text hinders the
development of all other skills.
Each Simplification Has Its Place

A moveable “Do” is just as nonsensical in the science of music as a moveable
“A” is in the alphabet, when each letter that we start from could be “A.”
Once, the Hungarian composer Zoltan Kodali (1882-1967) invented a system of

relativity for choir education. The system allowed illiterate people to learn to sing in
choirs without having to waste time on learning all of the notes and their tonalities.
Kodali applied the very beginning of learning, the sounding-out stage, but limited it to
the very minimum in order to simplify things. Instead of notes, he implemented seven
hand signals for the conductor’s use. It was as if he reduced music to the simple
relationship between the seven steps of harmony. This system, as there wasn’t any
better, was embossed into good practice specifically for people who didn’t have access
to musical literacy.
Unfortunately, Kodali’s invention, originally created for a strictly utilitarian
purpose, was carried over into music classes in countries that use the Alphabet
System, thus worsening music education. Singing in Solfeggio has been assigned to
only one scale – that of “Do!” No matter what tonality music actually sounds in, the
Tonic is called “Do.” It has become impossible to sing Solfeggio in any other tonalities.
Solfeggio’s connection to Kodali’s system hasn’t improved it, but has reduced it to the
singing of seven notes. Ever since, all other tonalities have been studied without
practical application, exclusively with the help of the Alphabet System and without
vocal sounding.
There is a simple solution to this problem: take away the moveable “Do,” but
keep the most important element of Kodali’s system – familiarization of tune with the
assistance of hand signals. Of course, starting music education with the one simplest
tonality, Do Major, should be allowed. The use of Do Major to teach the relationship of
the different steps to each other is entirely justified. But the singing of real music
comprises of all of the notes in Solfeggio in all 24 tonalities, and should be a crucial
stipulation of any music education.
What Can the Music Alphabet Do?

Having graduated school, college, and music university, and having taught music
for more than 30 years, I have never met a colleague that seriously taught children the
Music Alphabet. This is unbelievable!
We teach children the alphabet of our language long before they ever go to
school. In the U.S., for example, every toddler knows the “Alphabet Song.” Having
learned the names of the letters, children easily add their visual representations to
memory. On this foundation, the phonetic sound they make when read is also added.
With this preparation, it isn’t difficult to form syllables and words from the letters. And
only when the child is familiar with all of this comes the time to work on grammar and
rules. Through this method, the alphabet ties the sound of letters with their written
representation. It obviously serves the fundamental familiarization of any language. Yet
with music, everything is topsy-turvy! We start with grammar, teach the notes one at a
time, and for some reason, we don’t teach the alphabet at all.
What is the music alphabet? In form, it is a sequence of notes of the musical
system that can be spoken aloud. But in essence, the music alphabet is the
fundamental base of music reading, crucial to the comprehension of the
interrelatedness of music sounds, and the tie between speech and music logic. This
alphabet is not simply speech, but not quite music. It doesn’t require singing by pitch
yet, but already calls for music logic in sounding out and articulation. It is the natural
bridge from speech to music.
Resources for the development of hearing and voice are embedded into the
Music Alphabet. This is the key to reading melodies, intervals, and chords. It is at the
foundation of procurement of sound from an instrument, because in any instrument,
the sound apparatus is organized in a set pattern.
At the moment, educators try to tie the memorization of notes to the lines of the
music staff, ignoring the notes’ context in a united space, such as the Grand Staff. This
is unreasonable because:
1. Each note is a part of a united whole. It doesn’t exist all on its own, but
is connected to all of the other notes in a music context. One must
know not only one note’s location on the music staff, but must be
familiar with all of the space that surrounds it. Ideally, one should be
able to internally hear the note’s harmonious constructions, possible
melodic paths and possibilities. Playing each note, a musician should
be able to name it, sing it out loud or in his head, and trace it forward
by several bars. This is what constitutes firm music logic, and
knowledge of the Music Alphabet helps to understand the logic of the
language of music.
2. Notes of the alphabet follow a specific order. An alphabet is an orderly
and symmetric system. It helps one to understand the visual logic of
the language of music: music notation.
3. The use of the Music Alphabet prepares the student for the spatial
regularity of music. Knowledge of the order of the notes transfers to
the keys, where he will understand that “Do” is three keys away from
“Sol,” etc. Later this helps to quickly play the jumps in melody, double
and triple notes, and chords. Work with the music alphabet prepares
the hands of a person for music reading.
4. The auditory memorization of speech is one of the most stable and
innate skills. With the help of the articulative memory, a child learns to
speak. To leave out this prized skill is simply stupid. In my classes,
there are children with very poor music hearing. At first, they
effectively memorize music pieces depending on articulation (the
naming of the notes). Articulation becomes music, and the music tugs
out the development of hearing and memory. The music alphabet
helps to develop music memory through articulation.
What Is The Music Alphabet?
The music alphabet expresses the logic behind the language of music.
Many think that this means that the 7 notes should only be expressed in their
ascending order: Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, and Ti. This is not so. First of all, in
music there isn’t only one direction of movement. This means that the true music
alphabet should be: Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do, Do Ti La Sol Fa Mi Re Do.
Secondly, each note in the music alphabet can appear first. Because of this, we
must know seven sequences of notes. The music alphabet includes all of these
sequences combined:
Cycle 1:
Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do – Do Ti La Sol Fa Mi Re Do
Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do Re – Re Do Ti La Sol Fa Mi Re
Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do Re Mi – Mi Re Do Ti La Sol Fa Mi
Fa Sol La Ti Do Re Mi Fa – Fa Mi Re Do Ti La Sol Fa
Sol La Ti Do Re Mi Fa Sol – Sol Fa Mi Re Do Ti La Sol
La Ti Do Re Mi Fa Sol La – La Sol Fa Mi Re Do Ti La
Ti Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti – Ti La Sol Fa Mi Re Do Ti
My students are encouraged to recite this entire cycle, forwards and
backwards from each note in 14 seconds, and they enjoy competing to see who
can recite it most quickly. When reading, a speedy reaction is essential.
Therefore, the ability to quickly recite the alphabet is at the foundation of fluent
sight-reading.
Throughout the innumerable amount of note combinations and intonations,

their relationship with each other always follows a concrete order. The Music
Alphabet expresses the fundamental relationship between notes, accepted in all
western music notation.
1. Notes can be positioned skipping a step. This sequence of thirds orients
the second cycle. This helps to see and read a music staff where notes
are positioned either on lines, or in the spaces between them. Here, the
structure includes triads and sevenths, making reading much more
simple.
Cycle 2:
Do Mi Sol Ti Re Fa La Do – Do La Fa Re Ti Sol Mi Do
Mi Sol Ti Re Fa La Do Mi – Mi Do La Fa Re Ti Sol Mi
Sol Ti Re Fa La DO Mi Sol – Sol Mi Do La Fa Re Ti Sol
Ti Re Fa La Do Mi Sol Ti – Ti Sol Mi Do La Fa Re Mi
Re Fa La Do Mi Sol Ti Re – Re Ti Sol Mi Do La Fa Re
Fa La Do Mi Sol Ti Re Fa – Fa Re Ti Sol Mi Do La Fa
La Do Mi Sol Ti Re Fa La – La Fa Re Ti Sol Mi Do La
2. Notes can be arranged by skipping two steps. These sequences of

fourths comprise the third cycle. Knowledge of these sequences helps to
read melodies that “skip” along the Grand Staff and aids with chord
inversion. It is much easier to memorize the fourths-fifths cycle of
tonality and the positioning of flats and sharps.
Do Fa Ti Mi La Re Sol Do – Do Sol Re La Mi Ti Fa Do
Fa Ti Mi La Re Sol Do Fa – Fa Do Sol Re La Mi Ti Fa
Ti Mi La Re Sol Do Fa Ti – Ti Fa Do Sol Re La Mi Ti
Mi La Re Sol Do Fa Ti Mi – Mi Ti Fa Do Sol Re La Mi
La Re Sol Do Fa Ti Mi La – La Mi Ti Fa Do Sol Re La
Re Sol Do Fa Ti Mi La Re – Re La Mi Ti Fa Do Sol Re
Sol Do Fa Ti Mi La Re Sol – Sol Re La Mi Ti Fa Do Sol
3. All other combinations of notes are derived from these three sequences,
known as musical inversions.
As you can see, learning the Music Alphabet, even without singing it, is a
very important aid to music development. The alphabet is a matrix for the voice
and hearing, a foundation for quick reading from sheet music, and the framework
for understanding music theory. This is the concentrate of the entire system of
music. Learning the language of music without it is impossible.
One can learn the alphabet in different ways: it can be laid out in the form
of flashcards, or recited in a rap with some neutral musical accompaniment. I
have developed a computer game named Note Alphabet that trains the student
to fit the notes into the proper sequences through a Tetris-style interface. All
three cycles should be taught until they can be recited automatically. The student
should be able to recite it starting from any point, and in a very quick tempo. The
result is an ability to quickly name a note that is next to a step, over a step, or two
above/below.
With the aid of the alphabet, music sounds can be perceived on a stable
level similar to that of human speech. The person gets used to not only hearing
sounds, but also to guessing their names. The sounds that we hear are gradually
decoded into their names and symbols (notes), which we can sing, play, and
write down on paper.
A Coach, a Map, and a Compass
The reading of a music text is based on the knowledge of the organization

of sounds in a system. Knowledge of this system is just as important in music as
knowing the multiplication table is in mathematics.
Speech is the most natural focal point for the understanding of the system
of music sounds. Giving each sound a name, we rely on speech and articulation
to familiarize ourselves with the relationships between pitches. Simply speaking,
at first we should memorize the names of the sounds. Playing them and singing
them aloud, we adhere their names to their absolute pitch.
After learning the sequences of notes one way and the other, one step at a
time, skipping steps, and skipping two steps, we look upon the Grand Staff with
different eyes. It is no longer splattered with various notes on lines and on
spaces. We see it as the framework of the entire system, where each note can
easily be found so long as you know the rules. Seeing a note, we find its tonal
equivalent in a fraction of a second, regardless of whether the melody is moving
up or down, whether it is smooth or jumpy.
In such a music staff, it is just as comfortable to find things as it is at home,
where everything is familiar even in the shadows. A systematic perception of
notes is the single path to competent sight-reading. Seeing how it all is built, a
person can easily understand the world of music. The music language becomes
a part of one’s daily creative thoughts.
The music alphabet is especially important for playing the piano. The keys
follow the very same system of music. Outside of the system, they seem to be
“unknown space,” where it is dangerous to be because of its unpredictability. I
still remember that tension and inner fear – what if I press the wrong key? This
didn’t just interfere with practice; it made it impossible to think about music at all.
Don’t assume that this is an exaggeration. We know that the fear of making a
wrong step hinders the movement of a person. Playing on the piano involves the
coordination of our 10 fingers in a vast auditory space, separated into thin,
multiple pieces. The fear of falling into the wrong place is the main cause of the
clenching up of hands. The space will only become yours when you know
precisely where you are and what is around you.
Constantly practicing a bunch of works, etudes and exercises, and
especially scales, learning harmony and Solfeggio, professional musicians
usually work out the Music Alphabet on their own. Yet I am sure that one’s music
education should start precisely from the alphabet. Only then will all students
understand how the system of music is built, and will easily learn the language of
music.
THE VOICE IS THE CRADLE OF THE LANGUAGE OF MUSIC

“The human throat perceives sounds in just the same way that human
hearing does.”
-D.E. Ogorodnov
In The Beginning, There Was The Word…
Thought started from a word. Speech is the most important apparatus to

human thought. We learn to think when we are given the names of objects and
events. An object doesn’t exist in our conscious world until we have a name for it.
While learning to talk, we constantly speak out loud in order to hear our voice
and evaluate how precisely it imitates the words of adults. Gradually, we learn to
carry on an internal dialogue, which trains us to formulate our thoughts. And only
then do we begin to start to think on an abstract level.
The human throat is one of the most important systems of organs to our
perception. “What is your name?” We ask a stranger, and repeat his name out
loud in order to memorize it. In order to be understood and remembered,
everything must have its own name, and we must repeat it out loud.
First speech was developed in the throat, and then it spontaneously drew
out the language of music. Before anything else, people learned to form words
from vowels and consonants. Consonants became the bearers of meaning, while
vowels carried the word’s emotional, tonal decoration. Arabic, one of the most
ancient languages of the world has just this structure. In Arabic, words are written
with consonants only, with vowels added in the form of supplementary marks.
This principle still affects all languages, and this can be easily proved. Write
out any sentence without including vowels:
_t _sn’t th_t d_ff_c_lt t_ r__d _nd nd _rst_nd w_rds w_th_ _t v_ _ ls.
Yet, without the consonants, it is much harder to get the message:

I_ i__’_ __a_ _i_ _i _ u __ _o _ea_ a__ u___e___a__ _o____ _i__ou_
_ow__.
As you can see, the idea of the consonants is quite clear, but it is
absolutely impossible to guess at it with only the vowels! Vowels are the voice’s
very own notes. In speech, they are used for tying consonants together, for
voicing words, and most importantly, they express the intonation, melody, and
emotion of speech. In conversational speech, we use a limited diapason – this
keeps the throat from getting tired. In most Western languages, giving certain
words a certain pitch isn’t necessary – consonants carry the code of the thought,
and thus adequately distinguish most words from one another.
But the vowels can be sung out. Singing them out, one can communicate
with oneself, with nature, and express oneself among fellow beings. At some
point, humans started adding a new quality to vowels – a definite pitch and
length. That is when music appeared.
Why did people need to sing? There exists a number of theories, and most
of them are pragmatic12. Some think that singing was used as a roll-call between
hunters when chasing the mammoths. Others think that singing was a way to
keep from getting lost while looking for roots and berries. Another group is sure
that people sang to express their condition. I think that people sang so that they
wouldn’t feel quite so alone and weak, facing the world around them. Only the
sound of a set pitch, a musical sound, can connect everyone’s voices and songs
in unison. This gives a strong feeling of communion and confluence with others.
As a part of something more significant, a person feels stronger.
Where Do Tone-Deaf People Come From?
12
For more information, read “The Origins of Music” by Nils L. Wallin, Björn Merker, Steven Brown
Professor A.N. Leontyev, a well-known psychologist, spent many years
researching the specifics of the perception of speech and music sounds. One of
his discoveries draws some light on the problem of “lack of musical talent,” the
inability to separate sounds by their pitch. As it turns out, we perceive speech
through its vowel ornamentation. Our perception attributes the pitch of sounds to
vowels. When one sings out the vowel “U” [“oo”] and “I” [“ee”], “U” sounds lower
than “I.” The first thing that a child learns to do is to speak. This means that the
first to develop is our “ear for speech.” Whether it also becomes musical all
depends on our surroundings.
It is possible that a lack of hearing isn’t an attribute that’s present at birth,
but rather acquired. I first developed this idea when I read Masaru Ibuka’s book
“After Three Years, it’s Already Too Late.” He insists that bad hearing is not
embedded genetically, but is passed on from parents to children. “The child,
raised by the mother that doesn’t have music hearing, also grows up without the
hearing,” writes the founder of Sony. “Let’s assume that the mother doesn’t have
hearing, and that every day, the child listens to her lullabies, sung in distorted
melodies. He remembers this melody as an example, and will also sing it
incorrectly. And when the mother hears this, she will say that her child also
doesn’t have music hearing, and that hearing is, after all, a gift of God. If Mozart
and Beethoven were also raised by such mothers, then they’d be guaranteed to
have bad hearing.”
Ibuka’s take seems rather categorical to me. I know many people that were
gifted with hearing from early childhood and didn’t see that it was worsened by
“nonmusical” surroundings. But hearing can be developed even among the most
tone-deaf, and this is a fact. All it takes is to create conditions under which the
perception of music can be improved. Not to mention that hearing and the voice
can develop with the help of very simple exercises. It brings about the notion that
the person is simply restoring an ability given to him by nature. While it isn’t in
demand, it remains dormant. All it takes is to invoke it, and it easily wakes up!
While I was a student I knew of famous music and choir teachers that could
turn tone-deaf students into vocalists. One of these “magicians” was Muscovite
choirmaster Dmitri Ogorodnov.
Once, he carried out an interesting experiment in Moscow’s Boarding
School No.42. Eye witness S. Kozirev writes in his article about the event: “Not
too long ago his students were as tone-deaf as they get, awfully out of tune, and
didn’t even think about [the possibility of]singing in a choir on stage. Ogorodnov
was actually quite happy with this circumstance; for the ‘purity of the experiment’
it wasn’t bad at all. This would make the result more pronounced. Now, there is a
choir in the boarding school!”
It is significant that in working with students, Ogorodnov depended, above
all else, on work with vowels. Kozirev writes: “These transformations are
amazing, but [Ogorodnov’s] methods are even more surprising. To teach the
vocal chords to work correctly, the kids first sing the sound ‘Oo,’ conducted by an
extraordinary scheme drawn on paper. This isn’t study, but rather a game with
sounds. He calls these intricate monograms with flowers ‘algorithms of the
arrangement of the voice.’ The program of lessons is built on two or three notes
familiar to the kids, on which speech is built upon. In them, like in a seed, are
embedded all of the possibilities of the voice!
“The methodology of this work is a separate, very wide subject. But it is a
fact that after these activities the voice suddenly develops and sets, and music
hearing develops in the most hopeless students. Here are the instructions for this
algorithm: “The voice isn’t simply sound, but an expression of the soul. It should
be expressed freely, not compulsively… Don’t ‘study’ the song, but sound it out.”
He had students that weren’t even allowed into music school. Now, many of them
study in a music conservatory, and in arts colleges.”
Why Chinese and Vietnamese Children Learn Music So Easily

“At the neurological level, there is strong evidence that the brain structures
underlying the processing of lexical tone overlap with those underlying the
processing of phonemes in speech.”13
Ogorodnov’s theory states that the throat perceives sounds just as hearing
does. The voice doesn’t only reproduce sound, but it also perceives it. This is
supported by the experiences of Russian psychologists working under the
leadership of A.N. Leontyev. They have revealed that listening to music incites
bioelectric activity in the throat, even if the vocal chords aren’t working at the
time.14
Most of the world’s languages are “timbre-articulate;” they are based on the
recognition of vowels and consonants, and not on the distinction of the voice’s
pitch. However, there are also several tonal languages, predominant in East
Asia. For example, most Chinese dialects, and Vietnamese, among many others
use words that take on different meanings depending on the tone in which they’re
spoken. A 2004 study released by the University of California15 explains how this
works:
“Lexical tones are defined both by their pitch heights (“registers”) and also
by their pitch contours. In Mandarin, for example, the word “ma” means
“mother” when spoken in the first tone, “hemp” in the second tone, “horse”
in the third tone, and a reproach in the fourth tone.1 So when a speaker of
Mandarin hears “ma” in the first tone, and attributes to it the meaning
“mother,” he or she is associating a particular pitch (or combination of
pitches) with a verbal label.”
As you can see, the use of pitch is established as a part of speech in tonal
languages.
Perfect pitch is an extremely rare phenomenon in our culture, and has an
estimated prevalence of less than 1 in 10,000 of the general [timbre-articulate]
population16. A possible cause of the rarity of absolute pitch in timbre-articulate
populations is that they tend to perceive music just as they do their speech; they
have a much harder time distinguishing sounds by pitch. They can’t intonate and
hum with the voice or repeat melodies as easily as they can repeat phrases. In
the meantime, the population of tonal language-speaking countries is
distinguished by its precise hearing – after all, recognition of pitch is necessary
13
2004, “Absolute Pitch, Speech, and Tone Language: Some Experiments and a Proposed Framework”; Deutsch,
Henthorn, and Dolson
14
(Leontyev, Lectures of General Psychology Moscow, 2000. Lecture 25. Hearing of pitch http://psicom.ru/lekcii-po-
obshey-psi090.html )
15
2004, Deutsch, Henthorn, and Dolson
16
2004, Deutsch, Henthorn, and Dolson
for them to understand words! And the advantage recognition of pitch gives a
music student is exhibited again and again in my classes. Out of all of the
children that I teach, Vietnamese and Chinese students are the most successful
at music at an early age. Their parents preserve the tonal language, pass it on to
them, and their hearing is trained to distinguish the pitch of different sounds from
birth.
A.N. Leontyev promoted such a hypothesis: the development of speech-

related hearing surpasses the development of musical hearing. The melody in a
song is identified indirectly through speech. Having learned the words, a person
can even sing along to a song, though no one demands a pristine performance.
This way, speech-related hearing compensates for the shortcomings of music
hearing and therefore is established as primary in hearing perception.
Leontyev conducted a curious experiment: he gathered the most
tone-deaf people and quickly developed their sense of exact pitches. In order to
do this, he used a simple vocal exercise; the subject was asked to match a pre-
recorded note with his voice. “The results were amazing, and for me,
unexpected. We worked with each test subject 3 times a week, and this involved
probably half an hour of non-stop work. And imagine, after an extremely short
amount of time, 10-15 days, we achieved a swift increase in sense [of pitch].”
An “increase in sense of pitch” is a development of musical hearing.
Therefore, the voice isn’t only an organ for the perception of musical sounds, but
also the most important instrument for the development of hearing! Developing
our voices with the help of an instrument, we can infinitely perfect our recognition
of sounds to a perfect pitch, and their tonal interrelatedness with each other.
Knowledge of the music alphabet and the different alphabet cycles as well as
singing by notes in Solfeggio are the best means of developing one’s music ear.
But can’t we also sing songs with their lyrics? Of course, and sometimes
it’s even necessary! But not while we are trying to learn music. Singing the lyrics
of songs doesn’t develop one’s musical literacy. It doesn’t fasten the names of
the notes to their sounds, and doesn’t connect the sounds to their visual
representations. Only singing in Solfeggio fulfils all of these assignments, and
without it music education is ineffective, that it barely makes any sense at all.
MUSIC VISION
Do We Need “Etudes” for Our Eyes?

It is believed that in order for a person to sit and play from sheet music, all
he needs is an elementary knowledge of theory and an understanding of the
notes’ positions on the music staff, as well as a relatively developed coordination.
However, judging from the current success rates in traditional music lessons, it is
obvious that this isn’t nearly adequate.
Naturally, the most important part of the work done in music reading is
performed by the vision. Yet because of some sort of misunderstanding,
traditional lessons rarely use visual exercises that develop the perception of
sheet music! As a result of this, the ability to “catch” the entire page in one
glance, momentarily separate the important from the supplementary, and to read
it on the fly is considered to be an art on the verge of the impossible. Only the
most talented musicians are believed to have the skills necessary to obtain this
“holy grail” of musicianship.
In reality, the “secrets” of lightning-quick sight-reading aren’t at all difficult to
pass on to children at the earliest age. In fact, there is only one thing preventing
the achievement of this: stubborn educational habits and prejudices. All that the
educator needs to do is to look at the music staff with the eyes of a person that’s
never seen it before. I’ve been lucky enough to manage this. Let’s admit it – our
“familiar and logical” notes are completely nonsensical, and even hostile to the
beginner! When I first set eyes on a new page of sheet music, I saw a minefield
where any false step would set off a disaster.
Later, when I completed my education, I tried to find ways to adapt the
Grand Staff to make it more comprehensible to a beginner. I had to think up
some proper exercises that would develop visual skills, and eventually created
flashcards, computer games, and posters capable of such a task. With their help,
the eyes of my students were trained to separate the different elements of music
notation.
Here are the main obstacles, or potentially undeveloped skills, that hinder
the fluent reading of notes.
1. An inability to distinguish notes that are one step apart from notes that
skip several steps. The student can’t quickly tell a note that is on a line
from a note that is between lines.
2. An inability to quickly determine which line or space is which. I myself
often confused the 2nd and 3rd lines and spaces with the 3rd and 4th as a
child. This was a consequence of the fact that there are over 7 lines and
spaces to keep up with on the Treble Clef alone, and the visual
perception gets lost in its “visual jungle.”
3. Confusion between the “left-right” movement on the piano (the keys)
and the “up-down” movement of the notes (the Grand Staff). When the
melody goes “up” in pitch, one needs to move to the right on the keys,
and when it goes “down,” he needs to go to the left. While the
coordination of right-up and left-down hasn’t been properly formed,
competent reading of sheet music is almost impossible. The child exerts
a large amount of concentration just to “rotate” the notes.
4. An inability to read both the treble and bass clefs at the same time. If
this skill hasn’t been formed, expecting to play with both hands would be
the same as trying to eat from an empty plate.
5. A lack of coordination between the hands while reading the two clefs
simultaneously. If the hands haven’t properly been “worked out,” they
just get in the way of reading! Now the plate is full, but there aren’t any
utensils to use.
6. An undeveloped “music eye” that can accurately estimate the distances
between notes (and their according keys). In other words, the inability to
count and play the jumps in melodies and complex chords.
In order to help my little students work out these difficulties, I used

supplementary graphics, and most importantly, a colorful and simplified
transformation of the grand staff. At first, I used flashcards and written
exercises, and later, computer games. Finally, with the help of interactive
(reactive, answering) animation, we were able to develop the vision of our
students quickly and without difficulty.
The program was published, and again I ran into the confusion of my
colleagues. My visual “aids” were called “another charlatanic, gimmicky
attempt to color the notes and keys.” I understand. Colors and graphics are
often used as aids in music lessons, but none of them have achieved much
success or popularity. Simply coloring the keys and notes, isn’t enough; it’s
just a visual effect. One needs to understand the mechanism of the visual
perception and use graphics as a guide, not as a “fifth wheel.”
Which Types of Pictures Teach Music, and Which Types Do Not
“Would you tell me, please, which way ought I go from here?” asked
Alice,
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the
Cat.
- Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland
Kids love bright colors and engaging pictures, so many educators try
to use them to make learning more interesting and exciting. This is a
completely understandable and justified trend.
However, the topic of this book is about teaching the language of
music. In this regard, it is important to understand the goals of the use of
music graphics. They can be decorative, and they can be educational.
Decorative graphics use colors and shapes to make musical information
more interesting and conspicuous to the student. Educational graphics, on
the other hand, are logical guides that help the student in his understanding
of music grammar and expression.
Fairy-tale characters, drawings of music, and spontaneously colored
keys meant to “cheer the eyes” are all attempts to call forth interest and
take up time during a music lesson. However, if a student is submerged in
the world of sounds without hands-on experience of music-making, no
graphic, no matter how inventive, will maintain his live interest in the
language of music. No “happy pictures” will pike a person’s interest in the
same way that a pair of simple, yet familiar skills in playing an instrument
will. This means singing by notes, and reading and playing sheet music.
The entire family on my father’s side was fluent in Finnish, and I often
listened to them converse with each other without any idea of what they
were saying. As a child I was often lectured about the beauty of Finland,
and showed a ton of photos and films from the country. But Finnish didn’t
ever become more comprehensible nor accessible to me. Nobody taught
me to speak it! With Russian, Ukrainian, and English, it’s a completely
different story. I can freely communicate in these languages, and thus can
truly comprehend their uniqueness and beauty.
Let’s return to helpful graphics, and examine their application in
computer games. There are a lot of computer programs out there that
teach the student about music. They conceal the same old ineffective,
traditional methods in colorful graphics and animation, without any real
change in essence. Furthermore, they ignore the vocal nature of hearing
development. One can write about the exciting adventures of the different
notes, and even think up witty names for the heroes of the story, but this is
all a wasted effort. A miracle won’t happen; pictures won’t help the music
perception without the help of the voice.
The right way to do it is to have the student sound out of the names
of notes with the help of a drawing. A picture with a proper representation
of note’s phonetic name can be used as a valuable guide in music reading.
For example, a picture of a door can be used for “Do,” a rain cloud for “Re,”
and so on. In this case, the pictures act as mediators between the note and
the voice, and in turn between the voice and the instrument. Many teachers
use this method with great success. Place a picture on the music staff and
its corresponding keys, and the sound of the key will help the voice to find
the note, and its picture will tie the voice, symbol on the staff and tone all
together. This graphic method combines the hearing, muscles, vision, and
abstract representations all into one system. This way, the graphic
becomes a helping guide in the development of a musical mind. This is an
example of an actively educative approach that helps to teach music
regardless of the presence of musical aptitude.
What Should Be Coded by Color?
If we use colors or images, they should act as guides that can direct
the viewer’s attention while viewing normal music notation. The graphics of
the music staff and its auxiliary form should add to each another, not battle
for primacy. A colleague in Ukraine helped me to understand this best.
Once she proudly announced that she’d been teaching children with
a “colorful perception of music.” Her students write down music dictations
with colored pencils. Each of the seven notes is assigned a separate color,
and it must be marked down with the right pencil. During the dictation, the
kids not only have to understand which note is being played, but also
remember which color it has been assigned.
My god! When I tried to imagine what was happening in the students’
minds during such “innovative” dictations, it made my head spin. Color and
sound aren’t at all related in our perception because color is
perceived through vision, and sound through hearing. I’ve read many
scientific articles about the subconscious perception of sound in relation to
a color spectrum, but nowhere has it been written that separate colors can
logically be fastened to certain notes. These ties simply don’t exist. Of
course, we know of several composers that were born with a “music-
chromatic perception,” such as Skryabin and Rimsky-Korsakov. But their
color associations mostly didn’t coincide.
Hearing and the voice are responsible for the separation of sounds by
pitch. Audio-chromatic associations are different for every person. They
can even change depending on one’s mood! Because of this, color can’t be
used as a focal point in the understanding of sound at all. Trying to rely on
such a foundation will bring the perception to a dead end. No matter how
hard the perception tries, it can’t tie one to the other.
Still, one often comes across attempts to coordinate each step of the
music scale with its color, and to tie it to the keys and the music staff. But
this barely helps the effectiveness of a lesson. First of all, under the laws of
perception, a person can handle no more than 2-3 different colors (objects)
at the same time. Memorization of seven different colors connected to their
notes, in essence, is an entirely new and abstract language. Instead of
aiding the student, this becomes a heavy and unnecessary burden for his
memory. Secondly, as has already been explained, sound and color aren’t
at all associated in a person’s perception. It’s like trying to teach Finnish by
translating into Turkish.
“War and Peace” on the Grand Staff

One day in Ukraine, a teacher came to visit our preschool and spent
a long time telling our oldest group of children about the highly respected
Russian writer Lev Tolstoy17. After the lesson, one of the teachers thought
to ask the children what they remembered from the lecture. The children all
eagerly expressed all sorts of things about a “fat lion,” and even a “tiger
that’s fat!” The traditional grand staff is understood in much the same way
by a beginner as “War and Peace” is understood by a first grader. Because
of this, under no circumstances should colors and shapes be abolished
completely from lessons.
17
The Russian name “Lev” can be translated into “lion,” and “Tolstiy” into “fat.”
The grand staff and its notes are absolutely unfamiliar to the
beginner’s visual perception, but he’s familiarized the colors and certain
images long ago. What do pictures have in common with music grammar?
They have a shared language – the language of graphics. A colorful picture
can be the guide especially to the visual perception of sheet music.
The main difficulty in reading music is that it involves a brand new
approach in reading graphic information. It is hard for the teacher to see the
problem; he doesn’t understand what the student’s vision is trying to
depend on. The beginner, before anything else, looks for an analogy to
something with which he’s already familiar, such as reading from a normal
book. More often than not, beginners look at sheet music and see it as a
“book for notes,” and try to read the notes while following the same graphic
rules… and fall right into the trap!
The letters of the alphabet are all graphically different, and can
be memorized separately by comparing each in turn. Notes are
identical circles, are graphically very similar to each other, and are
most easily memorized in a system.
Just as with letters, the beginner searches for distinguishing
characteristics in the notes. And the first thing that jumps at his eyes is their
various “ornamentation:” white, empty (whole and half-notes), and black
(eighths, fourths, sixteenths). Then, in a glance, he sets aside another
“important” difference: some notes have “tails,” and others don’t. The
perception deduces that these little circles are distinguished by tails and
colors, and that one must focus on this! Immediately, a filter falls over what
is perceived: colors and “tails,” when in actuality these are just symbols of
rhythm. Oftentimes, children play two separate keys on the piano when
they see two notes of the same pitch but with different lengths
(“ornamentation”).
The graphical representation of the most important quality of notes,
their pitch, is barely noticed. Notes on lines and between them are almost
indistinguishable. After all, the little line through the middle is barely
noticeable. Even a grown person has trouble noticing this difference
sometimes; what does that say about a child?
The graphics for rhythm in music notation appear more boldly,
and are remembered more easily than the graphics for the pitches of
notes. Thus, the person misses the most important thing: the pitch of the
sounds. This is why the ability to distinguish notes by their pitch must be
mastered before rhythm exercises in lessons. This is, after all, what the
natural development of coordination needs.
While learning to play an instrument or sing, a person goes through
four consecutive stages of development:
1. Coordination: the student learns the notes and the proper
sequences of the music text. The goal is to play without any
mistakes. Like any perception of space, we should first
understand what directions the notes can move, and what
types of paths they can follow.
2. Rhythmic Organization: the student begins working on the
rhythm of the music text. Ideally, he learns to play the song
without any stumbles and unnecessary pauses. This means
that the child has become familiar with the musical space and
has attained a sense of “balance,” and can start to work on
his movement within it. This involves changing different
speeds spontaneously, much to the chagrin of adults.
3. Metric Organization: the student works on the tempo, the
pulse of music, trying to play without any stops. Now, his
movement in musical space is more conscious and
organized, and the speed of his steps is deliberately
calculated.
4. Performance: The student works on the dynamics and
nuances of the work of music. Having mastered the basic
skills of movement in the space, the child is ready for
creativity. He can learn gymnastics, dance, judo, etc with
pleasure.
I’d like to focus you attention on the fact that these stages form a
pyramid of skills. The higher skills are built on top of the lower ones. Of
course, with time, the skills start to grow together, developing at the same
time. Nevertheless, one needs to keep in mind that while the preceding
stage hasn’t been properly worked out, the demanding of work from the
next stage is a sharp break from the rules of gradualness. While the
student can’t read the notes by pitch, he can’t play the entire note
sequence. And while he can’t play the note sequence, he doesn’t have the
proper coordination. Asking him to play rhythmically and dynamically at this
stage would drag him into a state of confusion. Doing so will negate all of
your efforts to familiarize a person with an instrument.
Now, let us return to our graphic analysis of sheet music. Rhythmic
graphics scream and wave at the beginner with their contrasting colors and
flags. The graphics that indicate pitch are barely noticeable, and are
perceived much like lines in a book, organized in fives. Because of this,
most students never learn to properly read notes. The graphic position of
the notes is bowled over by the graphics of rhythm, and pitch reading is
never worked on properly, since the teacher rarely notices this.
Something must be done so that the pitch of notes can become more
conspicuous and practically throw itself at the eyes. Colors can be used for
just such a task. The closely positioned little circles can acquire some
contrast with the help of a color code.
The principal question is: how many colors are needed to distinguish
notes by their height? It is important to understand what the color needs to
warn the person about. I’ve seen many different attempts at color-coding
notes, all trying to demonstrate the difference between the notes by their
height. As I have explained, this only trips up the person’s perception. Color
should never be used to “explain” sound. The ‘bicycle’ has already been
invented, and it is the grand staff. The assignment of colors, then, should
make the representation of the music staff more understandable, not the
other way around. Thus, we first need to work on the development of the
eye’s focus with the help of only two colors.
Visually speaking, all notes are separated by one simple feature: they
are either on the lines of the staves, or between them. The ability to quickly
differentiate notes by this feature must be developed at once! Musicians
that are capable of reading sheet music on the fly first take note of this very
quality. For example, seeing five notes between the lines in succession, no
one even thinks of naming all of them – rather, the hand automatically skips
one key between each note it plays. When one note is on a line and the
other is on a space, the fingers automatically skip an even number of keys.
If the notes are homogenous, the fingers skip an odd number. The
representation of intervals and chords is “embedded” in the fingers, along
with the ability to distinguish notes on lines from notes on spaces. It is
confounding that no one bothers to train this crucial skill in beginners!
The reading of sheet music shouldn’t involve a “deciphering” of text,

but rather a subconscious ingestion of the entire textual representation,
done at a glance. This is because while literature is read one line at a time,
the musical text is constructed of multiple lines. This type of “vision” should
be trained from the very beginning of the student’s education. “Textual
vision” is the main component of reading. In traditional lessons, this skill
forms spontaneously, if it forms at all.
More often than not, a student’s work on a new musical piece is a
rather sad affair. The student assiduously ‘sits’ on each chord; he
painstakingly deciphers each note, and then seeks out its corresponding
key on the instrument. This kills the very essence of music reading. Just
like normal books, the songs in sheet music must be read at a decent
tempo, or else you can’t understand what you’re reading about!
The problem of music reading can be easily solved, and it still
surprises me that no one else has thought up a solution. All you need is
two colors, and the eyes receive a wonderful support. The perception of
colors is a soundly mastered skill (with the rare exception of the colorblind),
and contrasting colors direct the attention specifically to the graphic
difference between notes.
Imagining that the lines of the staff are solid, and the intervals
between them are ‘air,’ I colored the notes on the lines red, and called them
“girls” because of their “skirts.” The notes between the lines were colored
blue, and named “boys.” Even two-year-olds understand that there are two
genders; to them, the separation of the notes into boys and girls and seems
natural. This association quickly catches on, and children immediately
respond to it. From the very first steps, the beginner receives an important
directive: an aim to distinguish notes by their position on the grand staff.
Later, this skill will help them to learn the intervals and chords.
In order to develop the eye’s focus on music notation, special
flashcards can be used that train a quick count of skipped steps between
separate notes. This type of training is fundamental to quick reading. But in
order to fully understand this, the teacher should recognize how an
unprepared student’s eye perceives the lines of the staves.
The Gibberish of Notes

As I have explained, the lines of the staves are like a spy’s secret
code to beginners. If one tries to read them like the lines of a book,
another trap lies in waiting. In a book, the stuff between the lines is
separate, empty space. In sheet music, the spaces between lines are
just as important. While reading books, we only have to focus on one line
at a time; with music, we’ve got to focus on eleven at minimum! Five lines
and six spaces, plus supplemental lines (and spaces) for high and low
notes must all be fixated upon simultaneously!
Lines and spaces in sheet music are equally important, just like the
squares on a chessboard. But they are represented in completely unequal
ways: the black space is made of thin lines, and the white comprises the
large space between them. This confuses our perception. The lines are
perceived to be something important, like the lines in a book. The notes on
the lines appear to be more prominent, and to a beginner, this means that
they are more important. The notes on the spaces, in turn, aren’t as
prominent, and are therefore believed to be less important. This tendency
isn’t at all what we’d like to enforce in our students, is it? For example, this
is why beginners that are shown notes on the first and second line, Mi and
Sol, play two keys that are next to each other, like Mi and Fa. The interval
between the lines (the note Fa) is assumed to be empty space.
To keep this from happening, music notation should have a different
appearance when shown to beginners. We should widen the black lines, so
their width matches that of the white. This makes the significance of both
‘paths’ for notes visually equal, and the beginner isn’t distracted by the
‘prominence’ of certain notes. The most important quality becomes their
position on the staff, which is as it should be, practically speaking.
A child’s thought process is based on concrete evidence. In order to
first understand that 1+1=2, the kid must pick up a stick in each of his
hands, then see them together. In order to understand that the thin lines
and the spaces between them are equal lines of text, he must be able to
see this with his own eyes, and feel it with his hands. Where can one touch
and hear the music staff? On the keys, of course! The keys of the piano are
a natural extension of the lines and spaces in sheet music.
Simply by widening the lines on the music staff, we help the child to
solve several problems at once:
1. Understanding the logic of the positioning of the notes, and
developing the perception of lines and spaces and their equal
significance
2. Perceiving the visual representations of intervals
3. Seeing the music alphabet on the music staff
4. Concretizing music theory and tying it to hands on the keys
5. Developing the eye’s accuracy in music reading in order to fluently
sight read.
The Music Staff Helps to Understand the Music Staff!

The staff – that’s what really matters, right?
From early childhood, I learned to count with the help of my fingers

and toes. Starting with the little finger of my right hand, I got used to
counting from 1-20, and this became a skill. Without this method, I would
have had to rely on outside sources. Of course this could have been
possible, but without a reliable guide, I wouldn’t have been able to check
my estimates, and would never have gained confidence in counting.
It wasn’t at once that I understood that the piano’s keys are a visual
extension of the grand staff. No one ever taught me this. The world of the
keys was hardly connected to the world of sheet music in my
consciousness. But one happy day, this view turned sideways. I wanted to
look over some piece, and accidentally set the sheet music on its side, with
the clef symbols on top. I looked, and suddenly saw the music staff as it
really is – “standing on its tail.” This revelation struck me like a lightning
bolt! On the paper before me, I saw the keys of the piano!
Later, I found out that this idea is far from new. Before I came along,
some teachers tried to place their staves vertically for their beginners. This
way, the keys become an extension of the lines, and the vision acts as a
support for the coordination of the fingers. Furthermore, both the notes and
the fingers move in the same direction (left and right), the coordination
becomes more clear, and the student no longer has to strain to flip the staff
in his head.
Before I developed the computer program “Soft Mozart,” I printed the
sheet music for my students on widened, vertical lines. Once, at one of my
student’s birthday parties, a guest got into the room where the piano was
kept. One of my vertical printouts was left there from a previous lesson. It
was the “French Song,” meant to be played with both hands. The girl sat
behind the instrument and dutifully started to pick out the piece. Delighted,
she spent about an hour on this, and learned to play the song by memory.
Later, she played it for everyone, and with disbelief admitted that she had
never played the piano before – it was her first experience.
The Magic Number Seven
How many identical lines can you memorize?

The ten thin lines of the grand staff are barely distinguishable to the
unprepared eye. It is well known that a person can follow no more than
seven homogenous objects with his gaze. And seven, only if he’s really
pushing it! But the spaces between the lines are also ‘lines’ in music
notation. A child is expected to keep up with not ten, but as a minimum,
twenty-two objects! He has to navigate an entire jungle of lines and
spaces… and hardly has any reference points.
To keep my beginners from getting lost in this maze, I have
numbered each line in the treble and bass clefs with the digits 1, 2, 3, 4,
and 5. The supplementary line for the middle Do got the number 0.
Contrary to the traditional practice, the lines of the bass clef are numbered
from top to bottom; this makes more sense.
The music staff represents a thermometer, with the 0 in the middle.
The music system is quite symmetrical, like a mirror, or a numerical scale.
The second Do and the Do of the minor octave are located between lines 3
and 4. I tinted these spaces a light bluish-gray color, making both of these
Dos additional places of reference.
Thus, the grand staff has been visually separated into four sections.
In each of them, there are only 5-6 lines and spaces; it is much easier to
keep up with them now. With this image, the territory of the grand staff is
simplified for familiarization! The intimidating ‘scary’ 10 lines and 12 spaces
quickly become ordinary space.
Only after all 22 note lines are familiarized can work begin on the
supplementary lines. Until the skill of reading the ordinary lines is worked
out, how can the student possibly read the additional ones?
The Music Alphabet on The Grand Staff
The next step to fluent reading is to place the note alphabet on the
staves. And then, on the keys. I added a simple picture to each note that
phonetically calls forth its name: Do: Door; Re: Rain cloud; Mi: Mirror; Fa:
Farm; Sol: Salt Shaker; La: Ladder; Ti: Teacup. Then, the music staff
became a true map, arranged between the notes and the keys.
The pictures evoke an already familiarized skill of perception, and the

music notation becomes a logical extension of this skill. The music
alphabet, in turn, becomes a support for the understanding of the
coordination of the system of notes’ location.
Having ‘survived’ this transformation, the grand staff is easily
understandable to any beginner. From an abstract system, it has been
transformed into a clear and logical ABC “book” that is completely suitable
for the very first reading, playing, and singing of a song.
After all, people are not born musicians. The ability to allocate notes
on the grand staff requires extensive training. To test this out, I made a big
poster with thick black lines and asked my students to place red and blue
‘note’ circles on it in order. The preschoolers didn’t immediately learn to
alternate the red and blue circles on their corresponding lines and spaces!
More often than not, they skipped the spaces completely, placing the
alternating circles only on the lines. And only after regular training did they
learn to read both the lines and the spaces without skipping a single one.
Older kids mastered this exercise a little more quickly, but the majority of
them didn’t understand the logic behind the lines and spaces at once. It
took a little time.
Later, we developed a special computer game named “Fruit Lines,”
which develops the student’s orientation of the lines and spaces with the
help of graphics and interactivity.
Only a note's certain position among the lines makes it a note!

Because of this, the ability to quickly orient oneself among the lines of the
staves is one of the most important visual skills. Without it, a quick
understanding of the music text is absolutely unthinkable.
Hay or Straw?
Trust me: when first sitting in front of an instrument, a person has way too
many hands! The grand staff is like two books that you are expected to read at
once. It has two staves: the treble clef, and bass clef. Their symbols are placed
at the left, and they aren’t that similar. Obviously, a beginner isn’t a pro. Think of
the first time you sat behind the wheel in a car. There were two pedals and three
mirrors, and you were told to keep an eye on everything at once! Was this easy?
While looking at the music text, a beginner can’t always differentiate between the
treble and bass clefs. And if he is a child, then a confusion between right and left
is also added into the equation. Not every child knows his left hand from his right
yet!
Adults forget the problems of childhood quickly. For us, it is a ready,
subconscious reaction to use our left and right hands. But even all adults can’t do
this! It’s common knowledge that when illiterate peasants first started serving in
the royal army in Russia, they couldn’t tell their right side from their left. How
could they walk in formation? Getting fed up during training, the officers thought
up a clever trick: they tied a piece of hay to the soldier’s right leg, and a piece of
straw to his left. Then the command was sounded: “Hay! Straw! Hay! Straw!”
My first piano teacher also thought up a way to help me sort out my hands.
He asked me “What hand do you write with?” This helped…about halfway.
Raising my pencil in my right hand, I answered with confidence: “Left!” Why?
Because the words “right” and “left” are abstract to a child. In order to understand
them, the child needs a contrasting guide. Muscle memory (which hand I write
with) is a good hint… Until the hands find themselves on the keys of a piano. I
write, of course, with my right hand; but I play with both!
Again, color can be used to help tell the difference. If the treble and bass
staves are colored in contrasting hues, the perception can use them as a
support. The treble system can easily be distinguished from the bass system,
and the role of each hand is strengthened as a result.
The Tree of the Music System

The selection of colors when it comes to education is just as important as
those of the interior of your home. No – it's even more important!
If color doesn't act as a support for the perception, then is becomes an
obstacle. Either it helps, or it gets in the way. This means that the selection of
guiding colors should be based on something specific. For example, what is the
best way to highlight the contrast between lines and spaces? Guido Aretinski first
used the fingers of his hands as a ''Grand Staff'.'' This is where the idea for
current music notation came from. Subconsciously, we perceive the lines as solid
'flesh' and the space in between them as 'air.' The choice of colors should
preserve these associations rather than conflicting with them. As I have already
explained, it is natural to make the notes on the lines red, and the notes between
them blue. These two colors aren't just contrasting on the color spectrum. They
answer well to associations, subconsciously hold up the origin of their ideas, and,
just as importantly, don't tire the eyes.
Later, picking out the colors for the treble and bass clefs, I had to figure out
something else. The tones of music gradually get higher. Here, a sharp color
contrast might confuse the viewer and convey false associations. I needed the
type of example from one's experience where the different colors were a
continuation of a whole. The ideal image is that of a tree. The trunk and the earth
are brown, and the crown is green.
An analogy of a tree is a great color guide for the music staff. A tree calls
forth both the unity of the music system as a whole, and the essence of the
positioning of sounds in registers. The 'roots' belong to the bass register, and
gradually grow into the crown – the high register. The sounds of the lower
register are written on supplementary lines – these are the 'roots' of the tree. The
middle register is 'solid,' deep, and rich in the presence of overtones. This is the
'trunk'. Gradually, the middle register becomes more and more 'airy,' in the
'branches and leaves.' At last it grows into the highest register, lower only than
the 'birds,' the additional lines at the top.
COORDINATION, AND NO SLIGHTS OF HANDS

How Do Hands Get “Cramped Up?”
Cramped hands are a tragedy of music lessons. More than anything else,
they cause the most worry. Teachers in traditional schools run into this “problem”
at once, and struggle with their students’ hands from the very first lesson, and for
the rest of their lives. How many students have come to learn music, and have
left with beautifully rounded palms and straight fingers, but not the least desire to
play? I don’t know of a single profession dealing with the work of the hands and
fingers that is as obsessed with their “being too tense.”
Have you ever heard of a one-year-old, just having learned to stand up,
being trained to do the ballet step so that he “doesn’t develop the wrong walk?”
How about a baby, picking up a spoon for the first time, getting etiquette lessons
while his caregiver anxiously wonders why he hasn’t learned to use a knife?
Sometimes, it seems to me that piano teachers are pioneers from a different
planet. Evidently, the children born there pop out of the womb with ‘rounded’
hands and an ability to play music from the books, with dynamics of course. As
for “cramped hands,” well, they are a rare birth defect, and the mission of a real
teacher is to save the child and fix his hands as soon as possible.
Before even learning which key is which, the student is already asked to
place his hands properly on the keys. The teacher insists that he curve his palms
and spends a good amount of time explaining exactly how this can be done.
Imagine that you’ve come to your first driving class. Of course, you want to sit
behind the wheel and drive, but unfortunately, your instructor is a man of duty.
The hands are what’s most important to him. He tells you that when placed on
the wheel, your hands must look relaxed and free. You must turn it with light,
delicate fingers, or else you’ll never be able to drive correctly! You might not be in
the condition to start and stop smoothly, to monitor your speed or turn, but this
barely worries the instructor; he’s constantly chastising you for your “ugly hands!”
And anyway, all of his struggles are in vain. I don’t know about you, but when I
first got hold of the wheel I latched on and held onto it for my life! Only much
later, after gaining experience, did I learn to drive the car relaxedly.
The Joke of Holding Your Fingers ‘Delicately’
Let us recall the stages of familiarization. A teacher has just shown you
how to properly place your fingers on the keys. If you were able to mimic this
pose accurately, you’ve passed the sounding-out stage with the help of your
muscles.
When you’ve memorized how to set down your hands and can envision the
position in your mind, you’ve mastered the silent utterance stage mentally.
When you’ve learned to place your hands on the table or any surface
without the help of your teacher, you’ve mastered the Grammar Stage.
If you can apply this skill to playing on the piano, your hands have reached
the Stage of Creativity.
The joke is that none of this will actually help you to play the piano. Frozen
in a beautiful pose, a “correctly-placed” hand doesn’t have the slightest
relationship to the technique of the fingers and their work on the keys! Before a
person has mastered the mechanics of playing an instrument, the elegant
process of the placement of well-rounded fingers is an empty waste of time and
effort. A “beautiful hand,” regardless of the movement it involves, can’t be a
support when playing piano. This is because the freedom of the muscles isn’t
a skill, but a consequence of physical development.
“New Shoes” and Weighted Keys
There is a popular exercise that teaches the student to play a random key
on the piano repeatedly with one finger. In other words, the person learns to feel
the weight of the keys and can press them in different ways, extracting different
types of sounds. One can spend several months pushing down a child’s hand
onto the keys and lifting it back up. But it won’t bring him a step closer to an
actual sense of the weight!
Think of all the times you’ve tried on shoes in front of the mirror at the
store. Did any of this help you to wear them in? Nope! Only wearing them around
for a few weeks will rid you of the last callus, and you will no longer feel them on
your feet and move about freely. Isn’t it time to end this preening in front of a
mirror and actually walk somewhere?
Only playing scales and other exercises will give the student a sense of the
keys beneath his fingers.
The First Steps of the Piano “Walk”
Playing involves the work of all of your fingers in a set sequence. The
perception and consciousness should have full control over all that is needed for
the muscles to play. To accomplish this, the muscles must be exercised.
Provided that the exercise is simple and easily memorized, and that work on it
doesn’t distract from the main goals, it is the most effective way to teach the
hands and fingers to work.
The key phrase for a starting pianist is “walking along the keys.” Putting our
fingers on the keys for the first time, we become year-old toddlers again, taking
our first steps. The difference is, this time, we’ve got a minimum of five legs
instead of two!
There is only one way to learn to walk, and that is – to walk! In this regard,
exercises and songs are like prescribed strolls. An active exploration of the
keyboard achieves a score of useful goals.
1. They develop coordination between the fingers and keys.
2. They train the perception to fixate on this coordination and the keys at
the same time.
3. They allow the vision to become more familiar with the space of the
keyboard. After several trips forward and back, it no longer seems as
scary and mysterious.
4. They help to slowly memorize how the black keys are grouped in twos
and threes, and how the white keys are organized in octaves and in
order.
5. They help to apply the music alphabet to the keys.
The effectiveness of exercises doubles if stickers are used (it’s like

applying a road map with the names of the keys), and if each pressed key
is also voiced out in Solfeggio.
Many argue that exercises are too tedious and mechanical. Again,
this is the view of more mature musicians. But at the very beginning, it’s the
other way around. The task of the exercise, its predictability and
repeatability, is a great starting point for the new skill of “walking.”
Plain, repetitious movement can quickly be memorized, and the
attention is free to focus on the coordination of the fingers and hands.
Rather than worrying about figuring out where to go and how to find out the
direction, the student can move on autopilot and focus on the fingers and
the sounds they make, slowly developing a feeling of balance.
Every Toddler Can Play Hannon!

A toddler can learn to play the piano just as easily and relaxedly as
he can ride on a tricycle. And what’s more, he should!
To teach my preschoolers to walk with their fingers along the keys, I
picked out several of the simplest exercises. We need to cover the entire
keyboard gradually and with every finger (Do Major in perpetual movement), with
a little help with a stretching exercise (Hannon 1), and with the help of alteration
between black and white keys (Chromatic Scale) and three keys simultaneously
(Triads).
I taught children of various ages to play these exercises. The
quickness with which they grasped these movements surprised me, and
gradually the age group of the students I taught lowered… to two years old! It
turns out that at the age of two, most kids can master the coordination of their
fingers and are absolutely able to “walk along the keys” with both hands.
My selection of the aforementioned exercises isn’t coincidental. At
first I only worked with the scales that were very easy to imitate and memorize,
but gave a maximum freedom of coordination. Then, I checked how the children
took to them and how effectively they developed their coordination. It turns out
that I wasn’t mistaken. These exercises, described in more detail later, really do
help kids to get familiar with the keyboard’s space, and my students ‘run along
these paths’ several times a day with delight.
Once, a mother of one of my three-year-old students told me a story
about her toddler. Having learned these exercises, he was so amused by them
that at the moment that he noticed a set of keys, he’d move towards them as if
drawn by a magnetic force. More than anything, he enjoyed ‘wandering’ along
them with his little fingers. One day, finding at a music store, he moved towards
the biggest grand piano in the building with purpose. He immediately started to
play the chromatic scale, shifting along the seat after his hands. Onlookers fell
into an indescribable rapture, but he continued to play attentively, not paying the
slightest attention to the adults. He was happy: he was doing it!
The ability to do something with one’s own hands is the greatest
pleasure for little kids. They’ve got the most powerful internal stimulus to learn:
the delight of achievement. Playing exercises is exactly what they like best.
Here is a short write-up of the exercises that work as a support in
developing technical coordination in my classes.
Stretches, or Hannon 1
I start with ‘stretches,’ the first Hannon exercise. This is like the ‘ignition
key’ for the car, namely the hand. Hannon helps to cover the space of the entire
keyboard, using all of the fingers in turn. It gives the perception an important
lesson: the ocean of keys isn’t so wide, and it is easy to swim in it. It shows how
to move around in the space in circular movements, and how stretching the
fingers helps to skip across a key in order to continue moving.
Beginners first play Hannon with stiff fingers, which is natural. The main
assignment of this exercise is to ‘awaken’ the mechanics of the hand and to force
every finger to work independently. It implements a simple guidance in its
activities: “stretch, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.” Later, when the fingers
have been properly worked out, kids easily place their hands down with rounded
palms and play with the tips of their fingers.
The Chromatic Scale, or “White Cat, Black Cat, and Mouse”
This exercise helps to organize the fingers into the right curve; it uses only
the strongest fingers, the first and third, and this frees the other fingers from too
much stress. This scale is extraordinarily useful for the familiarization of the white
and black keys, necessary for the proper placement of the thumbs. Playing the
chromatic scale with both hands is very helpful in the development of
coordination and concentration; in the intervals between the black keys, each
hand plays a different sequence.
Triads, or “The Three Sisters and Three Brothers”
Triads teach the coordination of three fingers of the hand at the same time.
At first this is very hard, and kids confuse the first, third, and fifth fingers with the
second and fourth. By separating the fingers into ‘girls’ and ‘boys’ along the code
of the keys, I was able to bring my kids’ attention to the difference between these
two groups of fingers. At first, when the exercise is played by one hand at a time,
the children watch to make sure that the ‘unwanted guests (2 and 4)’ don’t show
up while playing with the group of 1, 3 and 5. In order to master the coordination
of these fingers, they play the triads many times.
Later, when they can achieve this without difficulty, we play the triads in all
of the octaves at a quickened tempo. This helps kids to comprehend the octaves
at a tactical level. Later, the exercise can be played with both hands, and
develops the coordination between them.
Do Major Through Continuous Movement
This exercise is perfectly symmetrical. It teaches to place the first finger

(thumb) after the middle and fourth fingers for a continuous playing of scales.
The scale is played through continuous movement, one hand at a time, from the
Do of the first octave to the very end of the keyboard.
First, we learn the magical formula: 123-1234-123-1234-123 etc.
When each hand can do this, we place both of thumbs onto the Do of the
first octave and play the scale to the very end. This exercise powerfully affects a
‘weak’ sense of the keys, and the technique necessary to move in opposite
directions. It helps to understand the organization of the white keys and their
sounds when played in order.
The Entire Journey Starts With The First Step!
Can a beginner really be allowed to play exercises with stiff, spread-out

fingers out of tempo? Of course! More than that, this is exactly how he should
play. After all, he simply can’t do it any other way!
Once, a music professor visited my studio. Seeing a recording of my three-
year-old student playing Hannon, he was very unimpressed. “The boy is playing
with improper hand placement!”
“But he’s only three years old!” I countered. “His coordination is only
starting to develop!”
“He should play with rounded hands, or not at all!” he cut in.
Then, I showed him a video of some of my older students. “And how is the
hand placement of these students?” I asked him.
“See. There you go! That is how it needs to be done. I’ve said it before and
I’ll say it again: you shouldn’t start that early!” He didn’t know that these kids,
playing with free and rounded hands, jarred professors in just the same way a
few years ago, groping along the keys with ‘improper’ fingers.
Why should we talk to the beginners about rounded hands? Their
adventures along the keys aren’t much different from their first steps, made with
small, bent legs to meet their mothers. Of course his fingers stick out in random
directions, and in order to press the key with his pinky finger, he’s got to move his
entire hand. The sense of the keys will come to him only when he develops his
coordination. When properly worked out, the hand will easily assume a natural,
rounded position. And there isn’t any kind of tension! When you know where
you’re going, then the going gets easy!
The problem of ‘improper hand placement’ simply doesn’t exist. We thought
it up ourselves. Comparing which students’ hands are the best, we are only
satiating our own self-love. But the problem of cramped hands is absolutely real
– though the kids don’t have anything to do with it. We’re the ones that cramp
them, or rather cripple them, trying to force proper hand placement on them
before we’ve taught them anything at all.
The most important support for coordination of the technique of playing is
familiarization of the entire space of the piano. It isn’t learning the weight of his
hand, but exercising over all of the keys that helps the beginner to gain
confidence in his hands. Think for yourselves: where do you feel most confident,
in a place where you know every corner, or in a place where nothing is familiar?
After learning to “freely run along the keys,” a child will want to do
something new. Then comes the time to learn some other ‘tricks.’ The student
will look upon them with happiness and delight. Now, he’ll be able to:
-learn to play rhythmically with the help of a metronome
-learn to play more loudly and more quietly, with the flow (legato) and in
jumps (staccato)
-learn to play on the piano without stickers.
And as for stickers .. As has been explained, their role to the visual
perception of a child is simply priceless. Visual information on the keys is the
most important support for the development of the technique of coordination.
How To Win Over The Trust of The Perception

DADDY IS THINKING ABOUT WHERE TO GO NOW!
If you don’t want to bump into something, don’t walk around in the dark.
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. The kids are spared
from many hours of impractical mental work, and the attention has been focused
onto coordination and the reading of notes.
When I did this, I received many letters with questions from my colleagues:
won’t this damage the student’s ability to think independently? And I’ve always
wanted to ask: tell me, what does the student come to you for? To learn to play,
or to learn to think?
When you have to drive to a different city and don’t know the way, you take
a map with you, or print out directions. And you will continue to check them until
you learn the route. Imagine that you’ve gone to the store to buy a map, but the
clerk won’t sell it to you! “Don’t take the map, you won’t ever learn to think
independently and solve your problems that way! You’ll never be able to develop
a biological compass!” How would you respond to that?
The natural desire of a person is to get to the end of the journey rather than
get stuck somewhere in the middle. Why is it that in music education, we’re
supposed to sit in one place and think long and hard instead of freely exploring
the keys and gaining pleasure from it?
Many educators are convinced that when he gets a hint, a person will
spend the rest of his life relying on it. They don’t understand how a person’s
perception works when he is learning. It has two habits. First, new information is
only taken in when it is needed. In order to understand anything, a person must
be able to have an applicable use for the new information. Second, having
understood something, the perception widens at once. It doesn’t stay in one
place! Receiving a hint and feeling secure, the perception starts to take in
everything around it, traveling farther and farther from its safe spot.
Think of your first day at a new job. Did you go home with a crystal-clear
memory of the room you were in, the color of the walls, and the names of all of
your co-workers? More likely, all of this information was assembled after you
became more comfortable in your environment, and gained the confidence that
you were doing your new work properly.
Within each of us lives an explorer! But what is most important for any
explorer is his ‘home,’ a place that he can always return to so that he doesn’t get
lost. And the wider our world becomes, the wider the safe zone is. This way, after
starting in a ‘cottage’ of a few counting fingers, we move into the ‘house’ of the
table of multiplication, and later we can even build ourselves a ‘palace’ of
integrals.
I often witness these ‘house warming parties.’ Coming in for a weekly
lesson, a toddler proudly announces, “I don’t play with stickers anymore!” And
just try to force him to do it! To him, that is a personal insult. Learning and
mastering a certain level, the perception gets bored and starts to push it away,
like an older child does a lullaby that he’s outgrown. In my studio, there is always
an instrument without stickers, but with a small guide behind the keys that
displays that same ‘map.’ After a little while, kids that sit down at the piano
ceremoniously take it off. At that point, it even distracts them!
I am convinced that the use of guiding stickers isn’t simply humane to our
students. It is also an act of respect of their inexperience. Giving a beginner
guides and warning him of his hardships, we display a huge amount of loyalty to
his perception. We shouldn’t punish the child for the fact that he is a child. We
shouldn’t torture him like cruel jailers, giving him a problem and watching how
he’ll save himself from it. We should give him a helping hand, like friends: lean on
me, while you need to. I trust you, and you’ll definitely get better. And the
perception, feeling our help, starts to work with us. With every new achievement,
the individual develops self-respect and trust in his own strength.
Here is what happens with the perception during a “jailer’s” lesson…
Much Ado About Nothing: The Search for The Do of The First Octave
What does the keyboard of the piano look like? A vast collection of
absolutely identical keys. And at least the black keys, luckily, are a little
asymmetrical. The pair of black keys in the center of the keyboard are suitable
for one’s orientation. To the left of them is the Do of the first octave. “Here, right
in the middle,” the teacher tells the student with an enigmatic voice. “Just to the
left of these two black keys is the note Do!”
Let me assure you that even the most inventive Disney film about where
Do ‘lives’ won’t give a beginner the ability to find it right away on the keys. The
white plane, separated into tens of straight identical slices, is the same thing as
an untouched snowy field in which one must find a white mouse. To adults, it is a
simple matter of ‘twos’ and ‘threes’, but for a child, it’s completely different! He
still doesn’t have the necessary skills. First, he needs to pass the stage of
sounding out: “One two, one two three.” Then, he must figure out the difference
between the numbers, and learn to catch it with his eyes on the fly. And only
then, gradually, will he develop the ability to mentally count and figure out the
difference in keys at once.
It takes a few weeks of practice for my young students to easily understand
how the keys are grouped in twos and threes. I cut out figures of dinosaurs and
horses out of paper. I showed my students that the dinosaurs belong on the three
key groups, and horses on the two key groups. The kids, in turn, would place the
figures on tops of the right key groups, but without them, they struggled to
answer at once where the two- and three-key groups were.
This means that here too, most teachers ignore the gradualness of the
perception. They assume that the student can already count quickly in his mind,
and that the keyboard is already a familiar and studied space to him. But a child
isn’t an adult! To wait for a beginner to take the entire keyboard in with an eagle
eye, quickly group all of the black and white keys and separate the octaves is,
simply speaking, naïve. If a child is concentrating on the black keys, then he can’t
easily keep up with the white ones. And if he’s focusing on the white keys, he just
isn’t in the condition to distinguish between the black keys, two here, and three
there. Think of all of the mirrors in a car. A beginner is in just the same confusion
when he sits in front of an ocean of keys. But this isn’t all!
See, Do is located to the left of the two black notes that are located in the
middle. As I have already explained, “to the left” isn’t much of a hint for a
beginner. This word doesn’t say much to a kid if he hasn’t memorized it tactically
yet. “In the middle” is also a mystery to him. And thus begins the second act of
the drama of “The Search for Do.” It goes something like this:
1. Wandering aimlessly one way or the other along the keys, the eyes try
to separate two keys out of a mass of black and white. At last, they stop
at a pair of them. They sort of seem to be in the middle, right? The
student hesitates, trying to figure out exactly how close they are to the
middle… by comparing the keys to where he is sitting on the bench.
2. Now, a test in mathematics. Two or three, that’s the question. It seems
that it’s two. Hooray! We’ve found the place that’s been prescribed.
3. And which is “left?” Hmm… It seems that “right” is the side I write with,
so “left” is the opposite! That way!
4. Look at the keys: which is closer to the hand that I don’t write with? That
one is “left.”
5. From that key, I need to shift over to the white one, again to the left.
Here it is. Hooray! I found it! Now what?
And now, all that’s left to do is to seek out the remaining notes just like this,
one at a time. This is how things go when you don’t know the music alphabet!
Hooray?
These are the questions and confusions that innocently fly by when a
student that is learning about the note Do. Seems quite a way off from playing
fluently with both hands, no?
THE VOICE, VISION, AND COORDINATION:

WAR OR PEACE?
Piano Rodeo
Traditional piano lessons remind me of the rodeo: the teacher battles with
the attention span of the child. The victor is the one that hurts himself the least
and stays on the saddle the longest. It’s like all of the methodology of the
beginning period of education is set against the perception of the child, and was
created with a goal to lower his self-respect and confidence.
Playing the piano requires that:
1. You can control all ten fingers of both hands,
2. You are familiar with the entire space of the keys,
3. You can read notes from sheet music,
4. And all of this is to be done AT THE SAME TIME.
But the teacher won’t let the student learn so quickly. First, he will spend a
long period of time teaching the keys, notes, music theory, and hand preparation.
And all of this is done separately!
We already know how the perception of a young beginner takes to
unwanted material. Coming to class, the child is usually full of hopes and
aspirations. He is ready to pass through all of the hardships necessary so that he
can realize his dream: to sit and play his music with his own hands. It is exactly
because of this that students are willing to do everything that the teacher asks,
and even enthusiastically start cramming, entering a steadfast battle with their
own perception, which fights against this type of education every step of the way.
To this day, teachers still think that it is enough to separately work on the
hands so that they can sense the weight of the keys, separately study music
grammar and separately play exercises, and the student will start to play.
“Preparing you” in this way, they are convinced that all you’ll need to do is open a
book of music, and all of the skills will work as one happy family.
Alas, this never happens. A skill that is learned separately will remain a
separate skill! And separate skills aren’t in much of a hurry to unite for the
common good. Here, a common neuro-biological law is at work: to master a new
type of complex activity, one needs to work on the entire activity as a whole.
Skills should be worked on gradually, but simultaneously!
Should We Read Books Behind the Wheel?

If you can read, and you can ride a bicycle, it doesn’t necessarily mean that
you can do both at the same time.
One can give a student a mass of exercises all at once. He will get familiar
with the keys, will learn to ‘walk’ along them, will develop his coordination and
confidence in his movements, and will learn the ‘map’ of the keys and their
octaves. The more confident the coordination of the hands becomes, the more
developed the apparatus is, and the more freedom the muscles will have. This
means that the keys will become a part of the student’s consciousness. But this
absolutely does not mean that the student will be able to open a book of sheet
music and play a piece from it freely. It isn’t enough to have good coordination to
fluently sight read!
While playing simple exercises, the perception quickly grasps the note
sequence and works on autopilot, freeing the student’s attention for coordination.
But if the path is sharply complicated, and if it also needs to be deciphered, the
limited paths of the exercises won’t help. After learning to drive our car in our
neighborhoods, we always reduce our speed when traveling somewhere
unfamiliar. And the more difficult the route is, the slower our going becomes –
until we reach a complete stop.
Why do traditional teachers love to repeat the mantra, “practice, practice,
practice?” Because after the selection of a new piece, the student progresses at
an extremely awkward and slow pace. Sometimes, in order to play it from the
beginning to end, an entire lesson is needed! The teacher can’t even allow
himself to im that the student, as he should, could simply open the music book
and play a piece from it at once, with minor difficulties. Another popular saying
comes from this: “work bar-by-bar on a selection of songs.” This means that the
student sits down, and slowly, note by note, ‘picks out’ the music.
Imagine how this baffling process plays out between the student’s different
skills:
A Few Minutes from the Days of Their Lives

(A one-scene drama)
Perception: Agh, I’m sick of this cramming of rules! How about playing a little
something?
Coordination: What, you haven’t had enough of Hannon yet?
Perception: A total bore! That’s what your Hannon is! I’m sick of it! I want music!
Vision: And have you thought about me? I’ll have to read in that case! I think I
need glasses! Besides, nobody’s taught me..
Perception: Hooray! They gave me a song to learn! Of course it isn’t Moonlight
Sonata, but it’ll do. Something about a star. Nice and simple!
Coordination: Simple!? What are you, joking? I’ve got to play with both hands in
this one!
Perception: So what? You played with both of them for Hannon, didn’t you?
Coordination: Like there’s a comparison! With that one, it’s just the same thing
over and over in a circle; anyone can figure it out. But here we’ve got a
schmorgesborg of some sort! I never agreed to this!
Perception: And what’s the vision for? It needs to help out!
Coordination: Go ahead, keep waiting! Look, there it is – it’s still latched onto
the first note and is pondering about how to find the other two.
Hearing: Hey, intelligentsia, will you be a while? Are we burying someone or
what? I’m about to fall asleep! How long are you going to chew over one? Have
pity!
Coordination: Don’t yell at us, you philistine! You’re over there twiddling your
thumbs, but I’ve got a devil’s pick here of keys. I’m picking at straws here! The
hands are blundering around in fear, look for yourself – agh, they’ve gotten
somewhere else again! Listen, Vision, you could at least help a little!
Vision: But if I tear myself away from this note now, I won’t be able to find it
again! Give me some sort of hint or I’ll-
Hearing: A-Ai! What the heck are you guys doing there? What a sour note! That
hurts!
Coordination: Pardon moi, there’s only one of me, and there are lots of keys!
What’s done is done.
Vision: Well, now, it’s happened! Where am I? Help, help! Someone! Anyone!
Coordination: I can’t help you with anything. I’m barely moving on my own
here…
Hearing: Well, that’s it! Enough! Figure it out on your own! Who am I, Sherlock
Holmes? Solving the mystery of the three false notes at the tempo of a dying
turtle!?
Perception: Folks, what’s the problem here? Where are the proper fingers? Why
aren’t you following the rhythm? Did you fall asleep or what? The teacher’s just
said in plain English to play in tempo and expressively!
Coordination, Vision, and Hearing: That’s it! Do it all yourself! And express it
all on your own!
Perception: Mutiny on board, eh? And what about me? What am I supposed to
do? And what will become of me if I can’t figure out this little song after a month?
Vision, Hearing, and Coordination: You’re untalented, that’s what you are! And
so are we! This business is dead, folks. Burn it down! We need to get out of here.
Not everyone can be Mozart, afterall!
Curtain.
There’s a pretty picture! The only salvation in this state of affairs is to drag
it out. In order for the work to somehow seem more like music, the student needs
hours, from day to day, to patiently pull it all apart and then put it back together,
like the pieces of a picture puzzle. Not to mention that the tactical memory takes
the entire unbearable burden onto itself. The hearing and logic also do all they
can to spare the perception from the tedious work. The final sum is still an
inability to read notes. The song is memorized, and becomes another impressive,
complicated, though useless skill. Memorize a concrete, one-time-use collection
of sounds that will quickly be forgotten - is there much use in that?
This type of education can only be tolerated as a necessary harm. It leaves
so many tiresome memories that the joy at the result fades into nothing. You
won’t have much luck in getting the majority of “musically educated” people to
figure out new material. More often, they don’t approach an instrument for years!
And if they do approach it, all that is in their repertoire is a few crammed pieces
that are hard to remember, and nearly impossible to play from sheet music.
Because they never learned to read from sheet music.
The Orphan Does Not Rejoice After a Heavy Breakfast

Sight reading is the Cinderella of our education system.
Traditional music education is an over inflated attempt to force the
perception to work in a situation of natural disaster. Not one of the elements of
this work has any guide to its unison with the others, and gathered together, they
become a new challenge with many unknowns.
1. Sight reading doesn’t depend on the normal and natural voicing stage:
singing the abstract note symbols’ names out loud. The beginner is
expected to jump all the way over to the Stage of Rules. Only extremely
gifted people can do this.
2. In countries that use the Alphabetic System, the multi-directionality of
notes could easily be taught if the music alphabet were used in lessons.
Instead, the beginners are offered a few short phrases that support the
notes’ movement in only one direction – Every Good Boy Does Fine!
3. In traditional lessons, the grand staff is deprived of any graphic guides to
help decipher it for reading. Understanding depends on the use of
elementary cramming.
4. The organization of the keys produces several problems at once, and
the lessons don’t provide any guides to their solutions.
5. The only guide to memorization of the white keys is a precise
understanding of the black. But this hasn’t been formed yet!
6. Note sequences don’t depend on the music alphabet and different
cycles of it. The perception is left to mechanically memorize the seven
notes and their octaves in order to understand the keys. If the Alphabet
System is used, then the guide here is knowledge of the English
alphabet. This makes it much harder to read notes in the opposite order.
7. The study of the piano keys is separated from the graphics of the grand
staff, as if these systems aren’t connected at all. As a result, learning the
keys doesn’t help to read the notes, and memorization of the notes
doesn’t help to learn the keys.
8. Exercises for the development of coordination barely help to read music
notation. They are based on simple sequences and don’t require an
ability to read music.
Because of these methodological blunders, reading notes is simply

impossible for most beginners. Until literacy becomes universally accessible and
spreads through a wide network of education, it is left out of the way like
Cinderella, waiting for its magic hour away from its evil stepmother.
Vision, Voice, Hearing, and Coordination: What’s More Important?

Without including music reading in the very first lessons, it isn’t possible to
teach music; there simply isn’t any other way.
My beginners start to play with both hands and sight read during the very
first lesson. And during this lesson, they have no idea what the difference
between the treble and bass clefs are, they’re not asked to distinguish the two
and three black keys, nor find the middle Do. They don’t know the notes on the
staves, have no idea what time, measure, and length are, and what types of
pauses there are. All that they learn is the first cycle of the music alphabet: Do
Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do Ti La Sol Fa Mi Re Do. Anything else is simply
unnecessary to them!
Loading all sorts of information onto their students, educators forget the
main quality of their own childhood: we learn when we do it ourselves.
To walk, to talk, to hold a spoon, to tie our shoes, to count and to ride a
bike – we learned to do all of this through the process of action! No one forced us
behind a desk and told us that they’d tell us what laces are and how to tie them.
No one told us about the build of a shoe and its resistance to stress, and no one
showed us diagrams of knots. And notice, our abilities haven’t suffered at all as a
result. Moreover, it was because of this that we learned to do those things in the
first place!
But it’s one thing to tie your laces. It’s a completely different thing to read
notes with the help of the piano and your voice. Here, all sensory organs are
working together simultaneously. But does this mean that we should measure
them and develop them all simultaneously? Of course not!
It is extremely important to understand once and for all that in this tying in,
the most important evidence appears, often seen in everyday life.
If a child can’t stand on his own feet and can’t crawl, what’s the sense of
telling him where he needs to go, with which step, and at what speed? The most
important ability in education is coordination. I’ve seen blind musicians. History
even knows deaf composers. I often have to see people play without ever
learning their notes. But there isn’t a single professional pianist out there that
can’t control the coordination of his hands and fingers.
While learning notes, it is most logical to depend on one’s coordination.
The music text should be made to be easily legible. The vision should be a guide
to the muscles, and not a personal burden that only adds difficulties.
The most important result and goal of piano lessons should be speedy
reading. The understanding, conscious and whole, of the entire piece depends
on it. Seeing the entire composition helps the perception to seize the sense of
the words and sentences.
The rate at which we read determines exactly what we are reading. If it is
by syllables, we can only take on a kids’ book in which the pictures are larger
than the words. And if we can read quickly, then we can take on big, serious
novels. The rate of reading is directly tied to the level on which we think. It
shouldn’t lag behind the rate at which we understand things. In this regard, the
reading of music isn’t at all different from the reading of books. The only
difference is that while reading a music text at a decent speed, the beginner also
develops his hearing and voice.
A method in which all senses work together, but the attention is directed
towards the coordination of the fingers and hands is the most effective. While a
child hasn’t worked out his coordination adequately, all of his attention will be lost
on the fingers and keys, and an expectation of normal sight reading would simply
be nonsensical. Luckily, kids quickly develop coordinational skills, and once their
movement is right, more attention can be devoted to the music text.
A Little Revolution Now and Then is a Healthy Thing
Little kids love music very much and always gravitate towards it. They want
to play on music instruments and aren’t afraid of doing this. And now, we have a
wonderful opportunity to teach them! Nowadays, this can be done at home, and
at the daycare; and as for school, please, for goodness’ sake! Music literacy can
and must become accessible to all people, and especially children. For too long
now, our public schools have been occupied with our kids’ animal needs, such as
paid meals and physical exercise. But they also need guidance in creating, and
understanding that their spiritual needs are just as important. This is what
separates us from the animals, after all! Reading and writing in music notation
can become just as ordinary as the reading of books, magazines, and
newspapers. Music making can be a popular creative activity. Most people can
compose and perform. And this language of socializing can unite humanity more
soundly.
All that is needed for this to happen is a little revolution. It should happen in
the consciousness of adults. It is us, the piano teachers that are standing
between children and music.
Our tedious habits and ambitions for “the last drop of blood” are fighting for
their comfort and continuity! And it is up to us to examine our methods. Every
teacher should decide what it is he working for: the real abilities of children, or his
reputation as an infallible, “gifted” being.
Seeing the vertical and color-coded grand staff, at times, my colleagues go
into a fury. To them, this temporary method is a terrible sin, at the core a
murderer of all of their assumptions about what a “proper” educational process
should be. I simply ask them (and yourself, if you have the time) to conduct a
small experiment with their own perception, so that they can understand
someone else’s.
Grab a sheet of paper and pen. Take a small sentence (such as the one
below) and write it out in ‘Japanese style’ (from top to bottom, right to left). Keep
track of the time it takes to complete this task. Then, rewrite it in the usual style
(left to right) and compare the times it took.
Writing in the opposite direction that you’re used to reading is extremely

hard; it requires a huge amount of extra concentration.
How much more time did it take for you to write in the ‘Japanese style?’ Of
course, no one’s ever taught us to do this before, but maybe if we practiced a
bit… Yet no one’s taught the beginner to read sheet music before, either!
Yet, is it worth practicing? That’s the question. It’s possible to learn to walk
on one’s hands, but what’s the use in that? But to get back on one’s legs and
walk properly, that’s really useful. Reading the notes while moving in a parallel
direction along the keys, the beginner quickly develops his coordination and
technique, and as a result develops his hearing and voice.
Adapted especially for beginners, a simplified and vertical representation of
the music staff develops reading at the level of a foreign language. The speed of
reading that is achieved from the very first steps allows the hearing to perceive
the musical sense of the entire piece. The voice, familiar with the music alphabet,
is supported by the sounds of the piano and confidently sounds out the material
that’s read. All channels of the student’s perception unite into one collective and
work together to read the text.
It’s clear that when these skills grow strong, the music text can assume its
usual horizontal representation. The student’s attention, already free from vigilant
watch over his coordination, hearing and voice, easily figures it out, and without
obstacle occupies itself with the music notation.
When I first started using the vertical music staff, anxious parents often
asked if their kids could just learn with the “normal” sheet music. I asked them
why it mattered how the notes were standing at first. If only the child could read
them! But kids flawlessly follow the stages of development. “Getting” the principle
of the music text, they themselves turn the notes back to “normal,” and after
doing this, don’t lose a minute in their reading speed! Receiving a guide and
mastering the process, even a little child will keep striving forward rather than
loitering in one spot.
The Magic Proportion: One to Three

I cannot stress my words enough when speaking about the gradualness
that is necessary to go from simple to complex. Many years ago, while still
studying in the conservatory, I stumbled upon an interesting hypothesis in
observation of the proportion of the mind’s acceptance of new material. I can’t
remember the name of the author but his words have been engraved into my
memory: for one part of new material, there should be a minimum of three parts
of what’s already been learned. In other words, there can’t be more than 25%
of new information.
When working with my students, I’ve always tried to keep to this formula,
and it’s never let me down. I tried to organize all that is new and unfamiliar so
that the base of knowledge was always about three times more.
Often, I’ve asked myself this question: why must there be exactly one
fourth of new stuff, and not a third or half? Here is what I’ve decided. At which
moment does a person start to understand a new language without a dictionary?
When he learns a minimum of three-fourths of the words. Here is a good
example.
Let’s take the sentence “Mike is going to ______.” Where is Mike going? To
guess without an identifying word is impossible. The known information
comprises two-thirds, and the unknown, one-third. But if we read “Mike is going
to ______ to learn,” then it isn’t at all hard to guess that he is going to school, an
institute, or some type of lesson. There are three-fourths of known information,
and only one-fourth of the unknown.
This exact formula is used on alphabet blocks, too. The child is familiar with
the image of the Apple, the word “Apple,” and the symbol of a letter. All that is
unknown is one-fourth, the name of the letter. It is easily guessed with the help of
the givens, which he already understands.
New information is easily perceived when it has a minimum of three
sources of support. It is possible that this is one of the main laws of human
perception. At the foundation of any reasonable education is a progression from
simple to complex. But how complex can the new information be in relation to the
simple? How steep can the ascent be in order for the person to develop without
any overloading and trauma? My experience says that the “incline” should be
limited to one-fourth of unfamiliar information.
Once, I discovered several of my company’s competitors on the internet.
They’ve also created a computer game that teaches the student to play the
piano. The authors did think of flipping the music staff, but tried to tie it to the
keys with graphics: they colored the notes and keys with the same hue. All that
the beginner had to do was match the keys to the notes of that color. As I
explained earlier, this dependence on color isn’t the best guide for the student’s
perception, but worse, the process breaks off entirely as the student progresses.
“They learn intuitively to hit the right note at the right time. Gradually, as their skill
level advances, so does the game. Before you know it, it isn't just a video
game anymore; it's reading music.”18 As for how exactly one can cross from
the blind copying of different colors to really reading the music text, the creator
doesn’t have the slightest idea.
Unfortunately, the majority of methodological programs that have decent
ideas for beginners stop short of developing their skills gradually, from simple to
complex. Teachers only vaguely imagine what gradualness is, and how to build a
staircase that the student won’t stumble down, scrambling along the missing
steps without a handrail to hold on to.
Visual “Steps” of the Grand Staff
What I’ve worked out for the grand staff is a unique example of gradual
development in education.
The very first introduction to a vertical staff doesn’t leave the beginner with
any questions. On the page of sheet music or on the computer screen, he sees
exactly what is on the piano keys in front of him: those same exact five green and
five brown lines, and the same notes with pictures of contrasting colors. All that’s
left for him to do is to check the keys, and copy what he sees.
This is the First, Elementary Presentation of the Grand Staff:
Of course, it incites the majority of our reprimands – allegations of

charlatanic activities being the slightest of them. The main argument of the
accusations against us has been that we teach the beginner to “mindlessly follow
the pictures.” In the opinion of my colleagues, the student will get comfortable
with a certain skill, and will stick with it without any desire to challenge himself
18
http://www.computertimes.com/feb06edchoicePianoWizardPremier.htm. Editor bolded text for emphasis.
further. If this was the only representation that was used, their accusations would
have been fair. But after this one, five more steps remain! The grand staff is
transformed into its normal form, absolutely abstract, over time. But the first
introduction should show the child in a straight-forward way how the notes and
keys work together. You see, at first, the main challenge of learning piano should
be solved – that of a quick development of coordination.
Each person that has studied music knows how unbelievably hard it is at
first to “tear the eyes away” from the sheet music to the keys. One can even fall
into the extreme: throw the notes out and focus exclusively on coordination,
playing by ear. But then, we don’t develop the main skill of a musician:
“multiplicative vision.” When you were learning to drive, no one took down any of
the mirrors! Because of this, the single best solution is to lighten the burden
involved in reading the text as much as possible. This is exactly what the first
presentation of the grand staff does. In essence, it is a limited simplification for
reading. Not leaving any unknowns, it allows the beginner to focus on the hands,
fingers and keys.
Naturally, at the rate of the development of the skills of play, the notation
becomes more complex. But without fail, it does this under the 1:3 rule of a
gradual increase.
Accordingly, in the Second Presentation of the music staff, we took away
the pictures with the names of the notes.
Now, the beginner must rely exclusively on color and his knowledge of the
music alphabet. This presentation fixes the student’s attention on the lines and
spaces between them; now, this is the only reference point for the reading of the
notes. The marks with the symbols of the notes comprise just about a fourth of
the information presented. The other supporting elements – the colored
difference between the Treble and Bass Clefs and notes on the lines and spaces,
and the synchronized movement of the keys with the notes – remain unchanged.
In the Third Presentation, we’ve shifted the music staff back to a
horizontal form.
Now, the beginner must make a certain exertion: he must mentally rotate
the image 90 degrees. But the image is already familiar and doing this isn’t too
hard. The symbols have been added again to the notes; otherwise, the jump
would have been too steep. To have to seek out the necessary notes and add
the new rotation would be twice the load for the student’s concentration! This is
why the symbols with the portrayals of the note names are returned to their
former place – so that they can become a visual support for the rotation of the
music staff.
The symbols are again taken away in the Fourth Presentation.
Only the formerly familiar reference points are left: colors and widened
lines. This is already almost the regular music staff. All that remains is the color:
the differences between the Treble and Bass Clefs, and notes on the lines and
between them.
The Fifth and Sixth Presentations are already black and white. Their only
difference is the complexity of information. Thus, in the Fifth Presentation, the
notes are enlarged, and the rhythmic indicators are gently “unloaded.”
The final point of the “ascent” is a representation in the traditional form.

When the student can easily sight read from the Sixth Presentation, he will have
no trouble with “non-computerized” books of sheet music.
Progressing from one presentation to the next, the beginner perfects his
coordinational skills without any breaks or falls. And his coordination helps to
continuously better his understanding and reading of the text. A simultaneous
strengthening of the students’ skills is a good indicator of the effectiveness
of the educational process. Developing coordination, hearing, the voice, and
reading altogether quickly helps the student achieve a high level of proficiency.
Judging this type of education by its results, we can consider it to be the
most humane and productive out of all of the existing programs in practice. The
most important quality of this process is its gradualness and friendliness to the
perception. A definite balance between the development of the vision and tactical
coordination is very important. All of this is helped along by the continuous
stimulation of the voice, hearing, and music memory.
The described methods can be applied everywhere. Our gradual formula
doesn’t incite any hardships, nor conflicts. Reading notes becomes a fascinating
activity for toddlers that are barely three years old. Our world doesn’t have any
shortage of affordable keyed instruments, and I don’t see any problem in every
person, regardless of his starting abilities, learning to sing accurately and sight
read notes.
The only barrier to universal music literacy is the conservatism and
personal ambitions of educators. It is too hard for them to part with their
principles, even if these principles lead to suffering and poor results.
Short Sums, or An Outline of Other Skills
The language of music is the most universal of all earthly forms of

communication, and a quick development of musical skills grants a slew of useful
secondary effects. These include a good spatial thinking, an understanding of the
logic of language, increased concentration, systematic perception of what is
given, musical philosophy and coordination, and most importantly, the skill of an
effective development of other skills. Undergoing such a preparation, a
person will easily master all other sciences – the natural as easily as humanities.
There is a vast collection of material out there that examines the effect of music
on development in detail. Gordon Shaw’s “Keeping Mozart in Mind” is a great
starting point for those that want to learn more about this.
In the meantime, I continue to see how quickly toddlers that have learned
music grammar learn to read and write. I am convinced that it’s worthwhile to
start one’s music education long before learning to read and write.
Our instrument of choice is an electronic piano connected to a computer
through MIDI, which enables interaction between the two. Sight reading, when
played and voiced in Solfeggio, is developed simultaneously. The support for this
is an elementary representation of the music staff and corresponding stickers on
the keys. At the same time, each of these skills can be worked on separately,
which will speed up familiarization with music notation.
Music reading should develop in all possible directions, both in “height” and
“depth.” Here are some of the best supports for this:
1. For fluent reading: the most basic music material on a traditional,
black and white music staff. Simple is best, as the coordination
shouldn’t be overtaxed.
2. For development of coordination: “practice” material on a simplified
music staff with colors and shapes.
3. For perfection of the technique of playing: special exercises for the
visual, tactical, and auditory perceptions. They should be carried
out parallel to all other work.
No person is obligated to be born with musical gifts in order to make music.

While teaching, we should depend on the basic abilities of any person: his ability
to hear different sounds, distinguish different colors, and move his fingers. This is
absolutely enough. The abilities of a person aren’t gifts – they can easily be
developed. A true gift is the success of a method of education, not the
talent of a “genius.” And, of course, the most important element in such a
method is natural gradualness.
A person between the ages of 2-5 to 80 has come to learn from zero.
Which skills of his can we rely on to start a gradual progression to fluent sight
reading with both hands? Distinctly speaking plain words and syllables.
Distinguishing one picture from another. Distinguishing colors: red and blue,
green and brown. Pressing down a key with one finger. That’s all! A two-year-old
child has full control of these skills. More than that, even in the cradle, he was
already capable of hearing and remembering all types of different music.
Speech memory can act as a support for familiarization of the music
alphabet, the keys, and notes. Differentiation of pictures and colors ties the
screen to the keys. And the ability to press a note clamps together seeing,
checking, pressing, and naming the note, all into one. This is sight reading.
Deriving the concrete sounds, emphasized by their visual and figurative
references, the child can easily grasp the language of music – he makes it
himself. The pictures gradually change into note symbols, his coordination
develops, and auditory experience is developed. A person becomes an educated
musician just as naturally as a seed grows into a flower, without coercion or
difficulty.
THE COMPUTER QUESTION: TO TEACH OR NOT TO TEACH?
Is Martyrdom Necessary in Music Lessons?
Most people, students and teachers alike, are convinced that an education
in music requires patience, stress, and suffering. I’ve audaciously taken it upon
myself to declare that this isn’t true. It’s time to part with the theory of “hard
work.” It doesn’t reflect much aside from our inability to teach effectively. It is as if
we’d like to pass on the hardships we had with music onto our students.
I also studied music through the traditional method. When I flipped the
music staff over, placing the clefs in the air, I learned to see the notes in a
completely new light! But the enthusiasm and success of my students became
the true indication of the efficacy of my method. I simply can’t imagine a different
path. Now and then, some of the more conservative parents request that I teach
their children in the old way. But even they give up on this venture when they
realize how much this slows their child’s progress. This is the same as switching
from a powerful, fast computer to an old machine that crashes and lags from any
new information.
For too long now, music educators have been swimming against the flow –
they have battled with the natural development of the perception, with the laws of
the establishment of skills, and the gradual cycles of learning. Instead of trying to
improve its effectiveness, traditional pedagogy has thought up a justifying
philosophy for itself: learning music requires certain abilities that not everyone
has, and mastering music involves hardship and suffering. Convinced of its own
innocence, pedagogy must convert everyone else to its belief. “Patience and
hardship” have been elevated into an ideal, and the “believing” educators are
blind to the fact that they are teaching with the worst of all methods.
The truth is that every child can read notes and play with both hands as
easily as he can ride a bike. Having demonstrated this through action, I received
angry letters and rejection from my colleagues. I can recall an irate letter from a
professional pianist and educator. He labeled the application of supports in
education as “confusing to the students” and “gimmicky methods.” He crowned
his bitter tirade with a typical position, a device of the traditional school: “Your
program seems simple, but in reality, this is an illusion. In your chase after the
dollar you’re forgetting that not everyone can learn to play the piano, but only
those that are ready to work extraordinarily hard!” It seems that in his fervor to
defend the traditional methods, he didn’t realize that he himself had admitted its
greatest weakness: its inability to teach everyone. He didn’t want to accept the
very possibility of a simple solution, even though he saw its results with his own
eyes!
Unfortunately, to most teachers, the idea of public music education is
nothing more than a “chase after dollars.” They don’t allow the thought in that
every person can play music on principle. They are convinced that only certain
children have the necessary talent to pass through all circles of hell in order to
grasp the language of music. Where does this confidence come from? Their own
experience. Their known ambitions and habits outweighing sensibility and
reason, they are only able to teach the most gifted. This signifies that whatever
results are achieved aren’t because of their system of teaching, but rather, in
spite of it. But this can only be recognized by those that have been able to find
better methods.
Our progress has a certain unfortunate effect: Every authority thinks it his
personal duty to oppose anyone that has been able to find his own path. We
earnestly try to remain “the most correct” …forever! It would seem that new
discoveries and achievements would cheer accepted pedagogues and
colleagues. But they see outside success as a personal slight.
A new, more productive method always inadvertently disproves tradition.
But if this didn’t happen, we’d still be calling priests and exorcists every time
someone at home became ill!
My colleagues have classified my work as a debunking of their labor and
beliefs. I can understand this, but sincerely wish that the main focus of their
ambitions became their result.
In the hierarchy of “devotees to music,” the ‘norm’ becomes more important
than the success of the black sheep. Sometimes it seems to me that the point of
the pedagogy isn’t at all the joy of our students’ progress, but their bowing down
before us as gods. Many educators are willing to overlook the fact that there are
no results in their efforts, so long as they don’t have to reexamine their methods.
They are ready to demand any amount of effort and time from their students,
compel them to cram without stop, but are sanctimoniously convinced: to
sacrifice oneself to “high art” is the price the student has to pay. And this would
have been acceptable if “high art” were the true mastering of music, rather than
the comforting of those that don’t care to learn anything themselves.
The Rise and Fall of Computer Education

Play on instruments is mostly taught through hourly private lessons, and
doesn’t come cheap. This has continued for so many generations that it is
regarded as the classic norm. Nearly every person that can play music is an
individual product of hourly lessons. Imagine if other basic subjects were taught
this way: math, physics, biology, language. How many educated specialists
would our society have produced?
Computers gave a renewed nudge towards the solution to this problem.
Many musicians and programmers dove in at once to create software for music
education, connecting the computer and instrument into one system. Everyone
awaited a miracle from the Technological Revolution. It was expected that
computerization would conquer the problem of common music illiteracy in the
coming years.
In the states, electronic music studios opened one after the other. Lessons
there were markedly less expensive thanks to mass production. And,
understandably, the musicians’ relationship to them wasn’t simple. Music
teachers split into two parties. The “Conservatives” categorically rejected the
computer’s ability to teach “beautiful art” and thought the attempts at teaching
with a “soulless machine” to be barbaric. The “Computerists” were convinced that
only a computer could really teach music, connected into the process with
interactivity and graphics.
However, the huge enthusiasm of the Computerists has been warped by
years of disillusionment. Most of the companies that made programs for learning
the music language were ruined. The demand for their production simply didn’t
overcome their expenses. Those expecting progress were left in confusion. The
Conservatives celebrated victory.
Meanwhile, the failure of the computer programs of that time can be
explained quite simply: they didn’t change the approach to the perception at all.
The same old ineffective system of music education remained at their core. The
elements of play, colored graphics and interactivity only sweetened the bitter pill
of the usual method. They couldn’t teach people to master the language of
music. You can change anything you’d like in an old car: the body, steering
wheel and tires, you can even install an A.C. and a TV screen. But until the
broken engine is replaced, the car will remain a piece of junk that nobody needs.
The “motor” of any method is its effectiveness with students. If the alphabet
system for note names doesn’t help the development of hearing and voice, no
amount of graphics will change this attribute. And if theory is separated from
action, the perception isn’t interested, and no interactivity will make it more
wanted, nor memorable.
The computerization of ineffective methods only worsens them. For years,
traditional pedagogy held on to human interaction, picking out exclusively the
most talented and working with them. Not contributing anything new, the
computer took away even that, making education soulless and mechanical.
Where “Nasty” Teachers Come From

In order to learn a new language, one must use it often. But even this isn’t
enough. A teacher should be nearby to point out and fix mistakes and give
correct guides for memorization. This teacher is the natural carrier of
“interactivity.” It’s great if he is kind and patient. But such teachers, unfortunately,
are few and far between. For his mistakes and slips, the student gets more than
enough punishment!
Learning to play musical instruments has always been particularly
dramatic. History has preserved terrifying tales of how young Beethoven was
thrashed by his father, and how little Paganini was beaten and locked in the
cellar. It would appear that there was something malicious flowing in the veins of
these music educators. Not too long ago, an elegant, though very unhealthy
switch was an ever-present attribute of piano lessons; it was reserved for beating
the hands in the event of a mistake. The impression sets in that only hot-
tempered people enter the profession of teaching, impatient with others’
mistakes. Actually, the cause of this aggression is quite different. It’s not the
people, it’s the methods!
Traditional methods of education are especially, no – extremely cruel to
above all, teachers. Using the traditional approaches with beginners, the teacher,
himself unsuspecting of it, conscientiously works through the entire lesson… as a
punching bag. So long as the beginner’s focus isn’t in the condition to follow
more than 20 note “paths,” most teachers spend the first years working as a “live
supplement to the decree”; they mechanically and vacantly help the student to
shift his eyes from one note to the other. For a large portion of the lesson, this
teacher is useful for only one thing – to point out the mistakes of the student,
and, at times, the same mistakes, over and over! This kind of “professional work”
leads him to howling or chastisement, and at other times his hands itch to move
this “stupid talentless hack” with something heavy!!!
Until the invention of the computer program Soft Way to Mozart (Soft
Mozart), I felt like my career was in a constant state of crisis. It turned out that I
simply wasn’t in the condition to continue lessons for hours each day. They wore
me out to the point of frailty. From day to day, I had to sit for hours with a pointer
next to a book and wave at every note so that my beginners could manage with
their hands. The words “play with both hands together” evoked a headache; the
simplest skill – to hold a chord with the left hand while playing the melody with
the right – took several months to master!
Fatigue accumulated from constant disappointment. As much as I could, I
incited the most benevolent manner within myself, but I continued to experience
something close to physical pain at every false note. When a kid starts working
on a new piece and you know every corner of it, it takes the patience of a saint to
listen while he “passes by” the right notes over and over again! But the most
distressing of all was the way that “home practice” went. Sending the student
home, I knew deep inside with morbid confidence that there, he wouldn’t learn
anything at all. His parents were just as helpless, there wasn’t anyone to check
his work and tell him if he was playing correctly, and how it’s all supposed to
sound.
The vertical presentation of the music staff helped the younger children to
quickly understand the principle of music notation and greatly lightened my work
with beginners. But the ability to play with both hands from the very start only
progressed at the rate of my exertions; at home, the students were completely
helpless. Only once a week when they met with me could they check how they
“actually needed to play it.” Because of their inability to work independently they
didn’t only keep from moving forward, but at times even forgot what they learned
– each time we had to start from the beginning.
Occasionally, those that were more diligent soundly memorized the song..
incorrectly! Then, it had to be relearned over the next few lessons. Inside of this
nightmare, I saw myself as a living Sisyphus – some angry gods had also cursed
me, and day to day I had to heave a giant rock to the summit of a mountain, from
which it would invariably roll back down.
No matter how bad it is for the “stuck” student, this methodological
“productivity” doesn’t leave any chances for the teacher to remain a kind and
patient person! But I got lucky. It seems that my despair was so great that I was
forced to discern a solution.
Mario 64: The Game that Taught Me the Value of Patience
At the time that my tormented thoughts about the skills of my students were
reaching the point of a mania, my daughter got a new toy for Christmas: the
videogame Mario 64. A bomb went off in my consciousness! I couldn’t believe my
eyes: a child that couldn’t sit in one place long enough to learn the simplest song
spent hours in front of a screen and delightedly worked out the precise
coordination of her own fingers!
The essence of the game is simple: a little person named Mario has to
travel through a chain of different worlds, and has all sorts of adventures. With
the help of the buttons on the controller, he clambers, swims, jumps and even
flies. And if the gamer can’t control his fingers with enough precision, then Mario
“dies,” and the level must be started all over again. To make it to the end means
victory! My daughter patiently started the levels over and over again, and with
surprising agility perfected the coordination of both thumbs of her hands.
All of this effort, simply to polish a useless ability to the point of brilliance!
But if only… If only one could transform the controller from a useless piece of
plastic with a couple of buttons into an instrument with keys… This is how the
idea arose to make the computer into a helper for beginners in piano playing. It
turned out that computer graphics can unite all that is necessary to read music
into one: coordination, hearing, vision, and voice. No one had achieved this yet,
but so what, everything must be done for the first time.
Johann Sebastian Bach once said that playing the organ involved the
simplest activity – all one needs to do is press the necessary keys at the right
time. He expressed the essence of play. The ability to press and release the right
keys at the right time is at the foundation of sight reading. You can sit next to a
student and mumble “play it together, don’t lift your hand,” until you feel sick. Or,
you can shift the “working out of the strokes” onto the computer monitor, and
allow the student to understand how his coordination works for himself .
This is how the idea for Soft Mozart arose. It needed to develop the hands,
vision, and hearing. It needed to substitute for the teacher, so that the student
could productively learn to read, play, and memorize music at home. It needed to
form the fundamental skills of playing the instrument and singing. And above all it
couldn’t require any prior knowledge or talent from anyone. Music hearing,
understanding of theory, the ability to play notes, mastering the keys – all of this
needn’t be implied, but formed. Here, the computer wasn’t going to be an
electronic version of a manual for self-education, filled with an abundance of text
and questions. It needed to boldly teach the student to play concrete works, to
read and memorize them.
What Makes an “Ugly Duckling” Different from a “Black Sheep?”

Over the recent years, certain traditions have been established in the
organization of computer programs. They should definitely have windows and a
menu, which can be traversed with a cursor. Our program has nothing of the sort.
It doesn’t resemble any familiar methods of music education at all , nor traditional
computer products. Because of this, I often receive negative feedback about its
appearance. But what’s most important is that it works!
We didn’t want to overload the screen with windows and other common
attributes of an interface. All of that is unnecessary. We swore off the use of a
mouse; a toddler has a hard time getting the mouse to go where it needs to. It is
much more comfortable to select commands through the computer keyboard.
The program has connected all of my methods together, enriching them with
animation and computer graphics. It effectively teaches adults and three-year-old
toddlers.
Now, my students come to my lessons with a full arsenal! They learn much
more material than before without any impediment. The program doesn’t only
teach them to play songs and read notes, but also communicates their level of
progress in numbers. Music lessons have been transformed from a punishment
into a celebration, playtime, and the parents sighed with relief. Not only that, but
now they can see the results with their own eyes; they can even learn
themselves, alongside their kids.
Some time ago, the grandma of one of my students complained to me that
her husband gets so absorbed in learning a new song that he won’t allow his
granddaughter to approach the instrument! In Europe, there is a good, old
saying: “In order to really become educated, one must have minimum of three
diplomas – one for your grandparents, one for your parents, and one for yourself.
Many generations of people have missed the opportunity to receive a music
education. Now, with the help of our invention, they can make up for lost time,
and this is wonderful news!
If I were to write about all of my hardships and challenges, to complain
about human stubbornness and inability to accept new things, this would be a
thick and sad book. I have had my fill from the chalice of the innovators, and can
certainly say that it’s a bitter drink. But each time I see how effectively it works
and what kind of results it’s capable of, I understand that we are on the right
track. We really have done a good deed for music education.
Much that is in our software is unprecedented. It is best to get a copy of it
for yourself, and see it at work. I want you to understand – the future of music
education depends on productive training of playing skills, and this can only be
achieved with a computer.
The Computer Keyboard can be a Predecessor of the Piano
The computer keyboard and the keys of the piano are very similar. Both
must be used by different fingers, pressed by the fingertips and coordinated into
the work of both hands. Understanding this, we decided to involve computer keys
in the development of the student’s coordination.
For example, in the game Note Duration, kids play out the songs with only
one key: the space bar. Here they learn to play different rhythms, count out loud
and differentiate between notes by their lengths. Think of how hard it is to teach a
child to play from sheet music while counting rhythm at the same time. Thanks to
the computer, the coordination of the hands has been simplified to one key, and
the focus is completely directed at the music notation and reading rhythm. The
guides of this exercise are coordination and the computer screen, assigning the
differences in note length with the help of colors and sounds.
In the same way, the computer keyboard helped to create exercises that
allow the beginner to connect the movement of the notes of the music staff with
the keys on the piano. With this goal, we don’t use the Up and Down arrows in
our games – after all, there are only two directions one can go on the piano: left
and right. We tried not to miss a single detail that could help a beginner in his
movement of music reading from simple to complex.
To Complicate is Easy, to Simplify is Hard
Once, a woman from New York called me. Her daughter takes piano
lessons. Her technique isn’t bad, and she easily memorizes music, but almost
can’t read from sheet music at all; a typical example of a “musical handicap”
when the alphabetical system is used in piano lessons. After purchasing our
program, the mother and daughter started to make up for what they missed: they
read and played through collections of songs, one after another, in Gentle Piano.
Shortly after, the mother called me to express her gratitude and admiration
for the program. I asked her if they worked with any of the other games besides
Gentle Piano. “But what for?” she asked. Years of hourly lessons taught her that
theory and practice are two different things that have very little to do with each
other. “Why should we learn theory?” she pointedly asked. “My daughter already
knows the rules!”
“They aren’t just theory! They are exercises that develop recognition of
note sequences and visual perception of notes and chords, which are tied to
music notation and hearing. These skills add up and develop fluent sight reading
of sheet music!”
“But what will knowledge of note sequences help?” she asked perplexedly.
“They help in reading notes in any direction and from any place on the
grand staff. This way, the keys can easily be identified.”
“Hmm.. no one’s told us about that before! Here’s another question: What’s
that one game for, the one with the lines like a tree?”
“It’s for learning to immediately recognize any line from the grand staff.
When reading notes, you daughter should mull this over continuously!”
“Oh, it’s all so logical! You’ve simply broken musicology into tiny, easily
understandable pieces!”
“Thanks, but that’s how it’s supposed to be! You don’t eat the week’s meals
all on Sunday.. .that would make you sick! Sight reading is a serious and
complicated skill, and its elements should also be “eaten in meals.”
Music performance is a single alloy that is formed by all of its necessary

skills. The notes are perceived by the muscles of the hands, the vision, the voice,
and the hearing all at once. The throat and the fingers embed an inner hearing
into the student. The sound calls forth a quick impulse of the muscles needed
and an image of the music symbol. The sighted note signifies both its sound and
the reaction of the muscles. In music reading, everything is connected, and the
skills can only be developed simultaneously, simplifying one thing in order to
familiarize the other. Today, this is only possible with the help of a computer and
our program.
The Most Ancient and Natural Way of Teaching… On a Computer!
“I saw your program on Channel 2 in Houston and was simply staggered by

how well a toddler can play! But I think that you must be too dependent on this
new system. I think this because I also played on piano. I studied for around 7
years, and was even the star of my teacher’s class. I suppose that if this child
were asked to play the piano without the program, she wouldn’t be able to
because she depends on the computer. Has this ever happened, or am I just an
idiot?”
Sincerely, Ben (12 years old)
For young Ben, “star” of his class, it is hard to imagine that it is possible to
learn music many times more quickly. He can hardly realize that he learned
monstrously slowly and with difficulty, and that the results he achieved had
nothing to do with his education. Shot for the news program, my three year old
student Gracie easily played Bach’s Minuet, which, after two years of lessons,
not every person could do. With the help of the program, she reached the same
results that many students in ordinary lessons achieve after five to six years.
There isn’t any secret involved. Starting from the very first lesson, Gracie
actively and frequently READ and PLAYED this minuet. Just like other
languages, Gracie simply “talks” constantly in this one. She learns music just as
every child learns the language of his parents – through constant practice. And
practice is the most ancient and productive way to learn, teaching each of us!
While other children study rules and “sort out” music, crawling from note to note,
Gracie simply sees and plays it. And she enjoys this a lot.
The computer is capable of doing something that a teacher isn’t: it
tirelessly, immediately, and precisely reacts to the activities of the student. In this
regard, the computer is the ideal means of education. A good program deeply
“digs” into the process of training, because it is capable of immediately scoring
actions and giving valuable feedback, and can do this better than the best
instructor.
Meeting with the student once or twice a week, a traditional instructor
shouldn’t have to occupy himself with repetition. At the same time, the student’s
inability to read music brings lessons to a dead stop. But he has to practice
somehow, and soon teachers give up and act as “drill instructors.”
What is the Teacher For?

Often, people object to the computer in this way: “Nothing can replace live
interaction with a teacher!” Well, there’s nothing to argue with here… I am in
complete agreement with this! From that very stipulation, “live interaction” is far
from all that a student needs.
Let’s examine where live interaction is really necessary, and where it
becomes an empty waste of effort, time, and money.
What is needed in order to:
• help to coordinate both hands while playing
• teach to read music notation
• play along with the right hand while the student plays the left, and
vice versa
• point out where the mistake is and what must be done to fix it so that
the phrase sounds right
• break the piece into small parts so that the student can work out
“local” challenges
• help to learn the piece by memory, analyze the text by ear and alert
the student of mistakes
Is the inimitable talent of the teacher really necessary here? By no means!

A good computer program can easily take care of all of this. And it’ll do it much
better than a teacher can!
Transforming the development of elementary skills into “live interaction,”
the teacher trades valuable practice time in for lectures, and sharply limits the
progress of the student. Only a teacher is capable of thinking that his smart
speeches and notations are more useful for study than concrete playing, reading,
and singing! A computer could never be guilty of such naïveté.
With a computer, my students play a piece a minimum of 15-20 times in
one lesson. Moreover, they quickly perfect the technique of each hand and
coordination of them both, work out and put the finishing touches on a tough
passage until full acquisition, develop their hearing and train all forms of memory.
Meanwhile, in the “traditional” class, almost all of this time is spent on “live
interaction”; the teacher diligently explains “how this needs to be played,” and
seriously believes that with this advice, the student will be able to play as he’s
been told.
It’s a completely different deal when the student can read on his own. Here,
live interaction can be written without any quotation marks! The teacher outlines
the strategy for the student’s development, helps to pick out an adequate
repertoire, to grasp the traits and nuances of the pieces, realize the subtleties of
interpretation and to express the character of the music. No computer could
possibly replace the teacher here – and no one has tried to suggest otherwise.
I don’t know how feasible it would be to make a similar program that could
teach foreign languages. It would have to control the student’s voice, his
intonation and articulation, and react to mistakes on time, in pronunciation as well
as grammar. But for the music language, this type of control can be fully realized
because the focus here is coordinated work with the keys of the instrument.
Meanwhile, the voice and hearing develop in parallel as a result of practical
music application.
It is important to listen. To what?
Psychologists say that the visual memory “catches” things more quickly,
but the auditory memory holds on to them longer.
What happens if a student makes mistakes during a traditional lesson? The
teacher constantly stops him, points out his mistakes and shows him how to fix
them. This is fine if the mistakes aren’t ones of coordination. But if the muscles
don’t cooperate, demands and appeals won’t help. In fact, this makes things
worse – it wastes more time.
A computer doesn’t explain – it makes the student work. Computer
graphics distinctly point out all mistakes. Seeing the same mistake over and over
on the monitor, the beginner quickly understands what it is that isn’t right. Right
there, he tries to play the right way and repeats his attempts until the skill is
enforced. Until this is done, the computer won’t let him “pass.”
During this time, the ears frequently listen to the right way to play,
memorize it, and become a support for the performer. And the vision flawlessly
ties the sounds to the music text at the same time.
The notes first appear as flower buds, which open up in accordance to their
duration. If the key is released early, the blooming of the flower stops. A “dwarf”
appears in its place and disappointedly waves his arms. He helps to indicate the
mistake for a fraction of a second. These methods don’t only teach the student
to play the right lengths. The program controls the correctness of the hands and
fingers in the same way.
And even the most correct memorization of songs. Ordinary memorization

of music is at times agonizing: it is very hard to check yourself, and the teacher
can rarely help. In Soft Mozart, with the help of graphics, the student can learn a
piece with ideal precision. For example, if the text is played correctly, it is
counted in points, and if not, a bright hint appears and the points aren’t counted.
Moreover, the text of one or both hands can be hidden from view, and appears
only in the occasion of a mistake.
If before the music memory was expected to develop spontaneously, then
with the aid of the computer, the student sees exactly how well he memorized the
piece and how to make the performance ideal.
Now let’s return to the educator that tries with his last strength to express to
the student where he went wrong. Does any development of skills ever occur
here? Fundamentally, only one: the student learns to get these mistakes past the
ears without detection. Graphic interaction beats “live interaction” by a mile!
The objective computer has a mightier arsenal of facilities. In its single-
mindedness, it creates precise communications through the student’s sight,
hearing, muscles, and voice – separately and together. A teacher simply isn’t in
the physical condition to use all of these faculties simultaneously.
But most importantly, the final result of any approach is a developed ability
to sight read. If a person can competently read from the sheet music, all
possibilities in music are open to him, and no one cares whether he achieved this
with the help of “a live, soulful piano teacher” or a “soulless machine.” This in
mind, the battle for “traditional methods” doesn’t have any reasonable basis
supporting it.
Music Literacy For All

Imagine what a normal music development could be for a person. It starts
from early childhood and becomes a full-fledged part of life. An EK or a digital
piano is a common fixture in each home and classroom, and places where
people spend their leisure time. The keys have a “decoder,” a layout or stickers.
Pressing a key even by accident, a person immediately knows what it’s called,
and ties its name to its sound and position on the grand staff.
Music grammar for toddlers is represented by an interactive grand staff,
which gives all of the information about the music system with colors and shapes.
With the aid of the program, kids easily play various simple melodies from sheet
music.
Music exercises that teach to “walk along the keys” are just as important in
daily development as morning stretches, bathing, learning letters, and table
manners. Playing every day, kids learn to control each little finger of both hands.
Since we already teach kids to draw with pencils and paint with a brush, it is also
our duty to teach them to interact with the keys.
The fundamentals of music literacy – the ability to “walk along the keys,”
knowledge of the music alphabet, and primary skills of sight reading from a
simplified music staff – are a crucial part of the education of young parents and
all specialists that have a relationship with children. Each teacher that works with
preschoolers can sing from notes and play simple songs from a children’s
repertoire.
All preschoolers know the music alphabet as well as they know the
Alphabet Song. They can recite it forwards and backwards from any note, across
one note, and two. With the help of flashcards and drawings, studying the notes
with building blocks, they assemble alphabetical sequences in class and quickly
learn to do this on their own.
At schools and kindergartens, songs are sung by notes. Participation in
sound orchestras, elements of dance, history, and theory of music are used to
supplement the foundation – the ability to sight read music and write it down from
memory.
Parents sing lullabies to their children, easily playing accompaniment on
the piano. The text of a new and interesting piece is like a gift of a new toy: it isn’t
hard to play, and can be arranged and performed for friends.
The education of all instrumentalists depends on a grasp of the piano and
sight reading. Every trumpeter and violinist can accompany a colleague on the
piano. Having developed this base, people learn to play other instruments
without difficulty. Often, neighbors and friends get together to play in ensembles
or small orchestras. Once in a while, town and neighborhood festivals are held in
tribute to certain composers or certain musical epochs.
Dream About a Musical Planet
Our program was created in the USA, but the method was built upon the
experience of the entire world. I sought out progressive methods everywhere –
both in music education and general pedagogy. I gathered information about the
psychology of music perception and the nature of musical abilities, about the
mechanisms of the development of new skills as well as causes of the inability to
learn – everything that was related to the initial period of education. A huge role
was played by knowledge attained during my years of study at the Kosenko
Music College in Jitomir (UA) and the Karpenko-Kariy University of Arts in
Kharkov (UA). My work in classes with Solfeggio, music theory, and piano has
become priceless – in Ukraine as well as the US.
The sum total of all of this research is my method, which has surpassed all
of my expectations. The embodiment of the new methodology turns over all
assumptions about the nature of a person’s musical abilities. Now, we know the
truth. A five-year-old child can learn to play a simple piece with both hands not
after two months, but in fifteen minutes after first opening the notes. Three-year-
old children can freely read notes, sing Solfeggio and play Bach’s minuets from
memory. Children can learn music long before learning to read and write. All one
needs to do is install Soft Mozart, and an entire class in a public school can
manage to learn a few songs – a secondary student at a traditional music school
will spend several months on them! And all of this isn’t dependent on an innate
music hearing. Music doesn’t require the ear – it develops it. It all just depends
on the method.
This is the truth about music. The dream of universal music literacy can
soon be realized. The interactivity of the computer, its impartiality and unlimited
audio-graphic possibilities have finally overcome the main problem in education,
considered inescapable – the separation of hearing, voice, coordination and note
reading into separate, unrelated entities. The problem with the development of
“musical talent” in beginners no longer exists. Pedagogues can leave repetition
alone and occupy themselves with their true work.
Trust me, I know how hard it is to realize. The conservative predisposition
of teachers from the “old school” will continue to battle for “proper lessons with
the teacher” for a long time. If someone’s going to resist new methodology, it will
definitely be them.
It could be that my colleagues are afraid of losing work or the trust of their
students. I sincerely hope that they’ll understand that our method doesn’t
abolish the teacher – it simply makes the teacher a full-fledged tutor of his
student. The only difference is that instead of one student, they’ll be able to
teach many, and several times faster than before. The program doesn’t replace
the teacher. Instead, it is to be used as a training instrument of true power. Now
we can work with both toddlers and adults that may have been “burned” by music
schools, and we can guarantee success. And for success, people are always
ready to pay more.
Nowadays, I don’t earn my money for time spent, but for the concrete
achievements of my students. They have increased, and so has happiness and
trust in my lessons. Earning more than before, I know for sure that I have fairly
earned every cent.
In the program Soft Mozart, early education isn’t separated into

performance, Solfeggio, music theory, rhythm, and music literature. All of these
components are interrelated and form a united, universal system –what music
actually is, after all.
Having transformed “sciences” into real practice, we have relieved another
enormous problem in education – the unbearable burden of incomprehensible
words. Think of the “fat tiger!” Incomprehensible words are the result of a break
from gradualness. A person can only name that which he can feel and
understand. Remember, first passes the sounding-out stage (feeling, seeing,
familiarization) and only after that, the stage of rules (naming, calling,
understanding). In unpleasant circumstances, words remain unnecessary and
abstract, and each time call forth confusion and rejection, a feeling of nonsense
and at times, even a headache! “Theorization” of skills, in essence, causes the
pedagogy to crush the psyche. Relieving this frightening burden, we continue to
be surprised at how quickly and happily our beginners learn music.
The more sensory organs participate in learning a new skill, the more
neurons are grouped together that are responsible for it. In contrast to “single
channels,” these universal “matrixes of behavior” are solid and active. Our
program adds all that is necessary in making music with the muscles and
sensory organs to work – except the legs. Pedals should only be included in the
lesson when reading no longer occupies all of the student’s attention. The
program takes this gradualness into account. While developing skills, we try to
attach them in a thought-out and adequately balanced proportion.
I am convinced that this type of work is essential to all music education. I
hope that my discoveries will change our future for the better. They will certainly
help new generations of educators. Of course, the current version of the
methodology is only the beginning. The program and the method will continue to
be perfected, will become even more effective, and will adapt to the particularities
of different countries. And music will become what it needs to be – the simple
and universal language of our planet.
Music Is the Key to the Development of All Mankind
Without an understanding of music, each of our lives is twice as poor as it

should be. All we need to do is roll up our sleeves and put music education back
on its feet.
Each time that I speak about literacy, I must clarify that I’m talking about
music literacy. For some reason, the word “literacy” doesn’t apply to music, and
is used exclusively for language grammar. For the past few centuries, people
have been focusing exclusively on literary literacy, and have dismissed music
literacy as unnecessary. In reality, this is the highest injustice to the music
language, and leaves a huge hole in our culture. Backfiring, musical illiteracy
“beheads” the universal education of mankind.
Plato didn’t accidentally name music as the most important subject, which
should be studied earlier than all of the rest. At the core, music is universal. It is
the most effective means of strengthening the balance between abstract (notes)
and concrete (perception), between logic (grammar) and feeling (intonation),
between time (pulse and rhythm) and space (pitch). Learning music, a child
receives a store of the highest knowledge and abilities, key to the development of
all learned fields. Musically literate children can master all other school subjects
without issue. If we give the music language to the children, we will undoubtedly
solve a mass of other problems! All that’s left for us to do is to wish for this to
happen.
Conclusion
Each time that I see a toddler reaching for an instrument with outstretched
hands, I’m overwhelmed with anxiety. What will happen to him later? Will he
learn to make music, or will he continue to beat the keys with his fists?
Children don’t want to perform and understand music any less than they
want to talk. Not allowing them to master this skill, we parents close them off
from an entire world! And only when they see musicians perform do they feel like
something’s missing, that they’ve been robbed.
When I discovered that music pedagogy could easily be improved, I first
and foremost turned to the educators. But they didn’t want to listen to me. Most
of them still slam their doors in my face. And still, this calls forth pain and
indignation. Each teacher is like his own universe. He’s a propagandist for his
own method, a PR agent between his work and the public at large. Of course,
everyone puts all of their effort into their work. But it’s not the effort that matters –
it’s the result. And if the music language is obviously losing its position of priority,
then the teachers are working for nothing. This means diligence won’t help
anything! There is only one option: to reexamine the method.
But far from everyone can think rationally about this. Many times, I have
tried to reach those that are in key posts in music education, and have bumped
into a complete unwillingness to make anything better! Why is it that the
organizations that so loudly declare the importance of saving music are so
unwilling to focus on what’s important: the methodological problems of
education? It was hard for me to understand this. It turns out that we are talking
about different types of music.
Once I met with the president of a highly respected music organization and
tried to open his eyes to the real situation. He waved his hand at me and said,
“Drop it, I beg you! You can’t keep spreading this nonsense around! They’re
already cutting the budget more and more! If you continue to shout about our
shortcomings, they’ll be sure to axe us completely!” Then I understood that he
was talking about a different type of music altogether.
But you can’t buy time. Receiving money for work that doesn’t bear fruit, we
should expect to eventually be laid off and fired. In order to remain needed, we’ll
eventually have to think of our effectiveness, anyway. We will only gain an
adequate place in society when we can raise a new generation of musically
literate politicians, executives, and presidents, who not only won’t cut the budget,
but will assist in music’s development.
Meanwhile, educators are continuing to create a global crisis in the art of
music. From year to year, century to century, under our guidance, musical
geniuses have been choked off. Brilliant performers, composers, and listeners
are becoming clerks, workers, and maintenance technicians. The “tree” of music
education is almost fully deprived of roots, and has become a puny growth that
will soon dry out.
I really want to prevent this from happening. I want the Moonlight Sonata,
now lying through space, to remain alive, rather than protected as an ‘artifact’ of
a time long past. I want new composers to step up and write new masterpieces,
and to create new genres. I want popular music to become just as rich and
interesting as Classical Music from the Silver Age, and for people in different
countries to find timelessness just by sitting before an instrument.
The planet will be improved. You’ll see!

You CAN Be A Musician - Defence of Music

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You CAN Be A Musician - Defence of Music

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Hellene Hiner, Nikolai Kurdyumov

Translation and editing by Valery Pinchuk

You Can be a Musician: A Defense of

“Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth”

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Between The Devil and the Deep Sea

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Is it really impossible to teach music to every person?

The Hardworking Janitor

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Is Additional Funding Really Necessary?

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Music Lessons and Lessons About Music

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How We Aren’t Teaching the Language of Music

Composition and Improvisation

“GRADES K-2 OVERVIEW: Over the three lessons, the Concept

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The Texas Education Code outlines the creative requirements of a beginner’s

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The Theory of Music

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The Pros and Cons of Group Playing

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Piano is the Foundation for Music Education

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If only Mozart could have seen an electronic keyboard…

Many classically trained pianists have a scornful view towards electronic

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Piano Lessons in Public Schools? Of course!

THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS OF MUSIC PEDAGOGY

MUSICAL EDUCATION AND “THE TONE-DEAF”

Either Ideally, or Not at All!

How Music Education Brought Itself to a Dead End

What Sort of Epiphany Could Save Music?

The Age of Technological Music?

TRADITION V.S. PROGRESS

Music is a language, and learning music is similar to learning a different language.

Cramming: When One Has Nothing Else to Depend On

The Ignored Stages of Learning

There are four stages of learning:

Where Do “The Musically Handicapped” Come From?

The Linguistics of Music

Is Every Good Boy really Fine…?