Some constructive criticism

Hello, Telu!

Thank you very much for your comment.

Keep in mind that I originally come from traditional background: I am PHD in music education, piano, music theory and music history: I graduated state music school, music college and university of arts - pass 17 years of strict music training and graduated with honor.

I also was teaching Suzuki method and deeply investigated it for my teaching and researching goals.

As you may imagine I know very well the methods that you mention in your post and consider them outdated and low effective.

In contrary, most of professionals have no idea what Soft Mozart is all about. In fact, SM is not just software, but new school that requires their attention to the data that it collected in 15 years, training, reading and practice. We have 100% results and our graduates are winners of piano competitions and students of the most prestigious schools. All for very valid reason.

Here is the answers to your questions:

1. Fingering. Suzuki as well as all the other approaches (except my method) teaching people to play piano and read music mostly upon their aural perception - I call it the blind mode.

What is blind mode? In blind mode beginners are unable to see and anticipate exact keys and notes in their bold connection. They also unable to anticipate and where they are going to move in 2-3 seconds. On the top of that they can't see and anticipate for how long they should press the key according to the duration of notes they play.

How blind people move around? They rely mostly on their muscle memory. This is exactly why all methods start with fastening finger numbers to the piano keys. This make people learning music mechanically. Some gifted people manage to move from this stage up, some stuck forever. Imagine if we would teach toddlers to move their legs with their eyes covered - so, they won't make a wrong step.

Such approach is killing everything in people: freedom of muscles, motivation, desire to be puppets in piano teacher's hands.

We raised generation of young people that managed their fingers OK with no push. If beginner doesn't use correct fingers with my Method it means only one thing: he/she doesn't have any room in his/her head to perform this task yet. Should we insist? No. To insist on that is like to open flower's petals prematuraly.

Now let's move on to your second question about cheap keyboards.

To play touch sensitive and not touch sensitive instrument phisically different tasks. Every Soft Mozart teacher knows that there will be difference in concrete data. After learning to play with easy touch beginners easily add to the skills ability to press keys with different weight. It doesn't affect their development at all.

As for their music ear: when they are way too busy building essential skills to find a note, a key, to press the key and to manage fingers, they have no room for registring the pitch. For example, when hildren build skills to read words and syllables, they don't pay attention to the content of reasding.

We built gradual steps of developing and mastering all skills from scratch. No school has this knowledge and considered to be scientific method.

Let me know, if my explenatopn helped you. I will be happy to provide you with more information about the topic.

telu wrote: Elena,

I'm not questioning your background. As a matter of fact, I probably know better than most Westerners that university education in "my second home country" (Ukraine) has a high standard. This is especially true for the mathematical sciences, but also for music. To be honest, I even have a PhD from a NIS/CIS country myself. People often ask me how I could be such a jackass (or even kamikaze pilot...) to enter aspirantura there when I already had my Master's degree with good grades from a good Western university. The main reason I did it was because I considered the benefits stemming from the quality of education (especially in mat. modelirovanie) to be higher than the costs of corruption and red tape.

[Here, it should be said that I certainly do not recommend any sane person from a rich Western country to study in Ukraine without having consular or political contacts beforehand, as I did. He or she will most likely be seen as a wandering wallet: extorted, blackmailed for bribes and "eaten alive" by faculties, departments and authorities.]

Well, people can be extorted, blackmailed for bribes and 'eaten alive' in any field. The strongest will survive regardless.

...which brings us to the point: Everything in this world - be it higher education in Ukraine or the Soft Mozart package - carry costs and benefits; advantages and disadvantages. Soft Mozart is a great system. Its biggests strength are the visuals, no doubt. The fact that it starts which solfeggio is also great. In many countries musical education doesn't start with solfeggio, which I think is bad.

But what I'm trying to say is the following: Gentle Piano would be the perfect system, even the ultimate one, if you could just add the finger notation feature in the software. If you did, the system would have everything.

You remind me a story about first cars. People opened the trunk checking for hidden horses. Yes, initially I was also under the impression that it is very needed feature. I was wrong. Fingering can be different for people of different age. The worst thing about it also is that it is 'Pandora box' for abuse. Teachers/parents have little to know understanding how skills are getting build and how attention span is being delivered, but they start pushing a beginner, especially child to use 'right fingers' to add more stress to his/her muscle system. After that people have phantom pains for life time (and I am not talking about scars on their self-esteem). Enough nonsense already! Beginners develop fingers management. It is natural process. The fingers management develops organically. Give me the numbers that your child gets after playing a song and I will tell you, is your child ready for this step.

Therefore, for your own sake, I think this would be a very competitive and welcome improvement for many people. Without it, on the other hand, I personally would probably not be willing to extend my subscription for another three years when this one runs out.

The fact that I take payments for my method is not making me a sale person that want to win 'customers' by fulfilling their wishes or orders. Soft Mozart is scientific project and we do everything above and beyond to keep it this way. There are many 'methods' that will be happy to please you. Check them on YouTube and see how far they can go in teaching music and piano.

The logic is as follows: In the Suzuki method, the parent plays the most important role when influencing the child how to play the piano. This is why Suzuki classes start with a course for parents, extending over a few months, before the child is even allowed to sit by the piano. As I understand it, this is your philosophy as well (Mozart and Leopold and all that...)? Here, I have to admit, I simply can't learn how to play the "higher" pieces in Gentle Piano (even some intermediate ones) without knowing which fingers to use.

Suzuki method using parents, because they are unable to deliver results by their own teaching merrits. I was witnessing abuse among parents at home and chasing children with violins in class.

If you want to achieve your mastery as parent, you should learn piece and play it with teaching videos www.softmozart.com/forum/55-teaching-videos.html . You also have to follow my lesson plans and play a lot of exercises and scales to lay out the very foundation for your own fingers management. You don't need someone to control every step you make in your personal learning journey. In fact 'correct fingering' is very subjective thing.

If I don't know this, then I won't be able to teach my child, and if my child doesn't show any progress because of this problem, then why should I pay for the software?

You are not paying just for software - you are paying for your and your child's education. In our lesson plans we have all the subjects and curriculum that none of most prestigious schools have. Here is the Progress Diary of one of our student that learning for 4 years. She was following my lesson plans. What prevents you from doing the same and achieve the same results? Let me know, if she is skilled enough to teach to your opinion. www.softmozart.com/forum/2015-2015/18948...6-level-4.html#23565

As for the keyboard issue: I personally think that the difference is enormous when playing on a digital piano with weighted ivory or wooden keys, and so does my daughter, obviously. Comparing such equipment with a cheap keyboard is like day and night. If a child plays on a cheap keyboard with plastic keys and bad sound/pitch that may even distort her ear for music for a few years and then switches to a good digital piano, I'm afraid it would be like a bad habit that might be difficult to wash away. (Here, I keep thinking about Suzuki's anecdote in "Nurtured by love" about the nightingales they train from birth in Japan: If the birds hear "bad" sounds they will sing badly themselves.)

The historical fact is that most of the composers before second part of XIX century played 'bad' not touch sensitive instruments. Bach, Mozart, Hayden even Schubert didn't have any idea, what fortepiano - real fortepiano with all the functions is. Here is the article about it. I hope you will find the answers to your questions in these historical facts: pianolearningsoftware.com/pages/acoustic...-or-digital-keyboard

Actually, I found a third issue with the SM educational program that I would like criticise as well (you may call me a stariy vorchun if you like... ): You teach children that "girls live on the black streets, boys live on the white streets". This you have adopted from Montessori. Or not. You see, the problem is that in Montessori, things are exactly the other way around: Girls live on the white streets. When my daughter, who attends a classical Montessori pre-school and has actually become a good flute/recorder player, was told that "Anna (A) lives on the second floor", which was white, she became quite confused. From Soft Mozart she had been told that the boys live there.

Haha, you compare completely different things that have no common ground. Lines and spaces of Grand staff came from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guido_of_ArezzoGuido's fingers.

He showed choir's members line notes as his fingers and space between fingers. From that historical fact I took the idea for color coded line notes as red - blood and space notes in blue - space. Association with girls and boys stemed out from this creation that took place 1000 years ago. In fact in my Method you won't find any color or shape that hadn't been used in best practices of musicology. .

I doubled checked this with the Montessori teacher, who is probably one of the most experienced in my country, having worked as she has for over 40 years in traditional Montessori schools. And yes, that's the way it is taught. Therefore, my policy recommendation to you is that you simply change this, so that it would harmonize with the Montessori system.

Oh, really? LOL
I will think about that, when I will decide to change my career. Montessori don't teach music literacy. We do

You didn't quite answer my original question. I still don't understand why a child should first learn to play a piece using his/her own fingering and then, when a certain score has been reached in GP,

Concrete numbers of the Gentle piano and gradual visual tools (piano stickers, piano guides, and easy touch keyboard, digital piano with weighted keys and acoustic pianos) helped us to determine gradual stages of beginners’ development in playing piano.
These stages are the same as in natural environment upon neurological connections of human beings. Since most motor skills of healthy human beings developed in womb except visual and gravity adjustments you can clearly see how it affects the stages of piano skills’ development.

One line pieces
- focus and find a note
-shift focus and find a corresponding key
-keep focus on a note and press the key with no looking at hands
-keep focus on a note and press the key in accordance with its duration
-move on to the next note and key without looking at hands
-to be able to notice music played
-playing a piece somewhat rhythmically
HERE MOST CHILDREN HAVE ROOM IN MIND FOR FINGERS MANAGEMENT AND SUGGESTIONS
-playing a tune with looking at notes and without
-playing a tune and keeping a steady rhythm
-playing a tune and keeping a steady beats
-playing a tune on weighted key instrument sponteniusely adjusting the application
-playing a tune with weighted key controlling the application
- playing a tune artistically

Learning a piece with more 2+ voices

- focus and find several notes
-shift focus and find several corresponding keys
-keep focus on notes and press the keys with no looking at hands
-keep focus on notes and press the keys in accordance with their durations
-move on to the next set of notes and keys without looking at hands
-to be able to notice what music played
-playing RIGHT HAND somewhat rhythmically
HERE MOST CHILDREN HAVE ROOM IN MIND FOR FINGERS MANAGEMENT AND SUGGESTIONS FOR RIGHT HAND
-playing LEFT HAND somewhat rhythmically
HERE MOST CHILDREN HAVE ROOM IN MIND FOR FINGERS MANAGEMENT AND SUGGESTIONS FOR LEFT HAND
-playing BOTH HANDS somewhat rhythmically
HERE MOST CHILDREN HAVE ROOM IN MIND FOR FINGERS MANAGEMENT AND SUGGESTIONS FOR BOTH HANDS
-playing a piece with looking at notes and without by RIGHT HAND
-playing a piece with looking at notes and without by LEFT HAND
-playing a piece with looking at notes and without by BOTH HANDS
-playing a piece and keeping a steady rhythm
-playing a piece and keeping a steady beats
-playing a piece on weighted key instrument spontaneously adjusting the application of hands to keys
-playing a piece with weighted key controlling the application of hands to keys
- playing a piece artistically

To be continued...

be "deprogrammed" and start to learn the correct (=most efficient) fingering. This simply doesn't make sense to me.

Teaching in blind mode disregard all these natural stages of building skills, go against beginners' nature and enforsing the fingering in the most harmful way building inner muscle clamps that most students and even most musicians have. The damage is as dangerous as talking to a driver when he/she drives in fog or darkness and demanding from him/her to perform any extra fine motor skills operation.

There is no 'deprogramming' in Soft Mozart since all skills being built in accordance with beginner's pace. The time bar is concrete indication if beginner ready to build new set of skills. If the number on the time bar is greater than amount of notes played, moving to the next level is premature.

If correct fingering is subjective, and if there were no such thing as a more efficient fingering, then how come many piano books change fingering between editions?

There is no 'if' since people have hands of different sizes and shapes. Piano books are 'one size fit all'. The piano book industry survives only by momentum. They don't do any good for beginners in learning to play piano. The fact that piano books a longer around is not an excuse for them. We used to beat people with stick on their heads to start surgery on them. So what?

One prime example of this is Suzuki's piano school books. Talent Education has been using the same songs throughout the years, but fingering has changed - to the better. I have experienced this myself. When I bought a new edition of the same book, I had to relearn some pieces, but it was actually easier to play them that way.

Suzuki school is the worst thing that ever happened in music education. It heavily relies on muscle memory and echoic memory (Solfeggio) with no consideration to eye-sight. You mechanically learned the pieces upon finger numbers and after that had to re-learn everything again, because the music wasn't fully imprinted in your mind - just sequence of muscle movements. From outside it looks legid, but in reality it is your waste of time, money and efforts. Bottom line is: you didn't collect any valuable skills, but one complicated and absolutely useless skill to recite one piano piece with certain finger numbers.

The eye-sight of any learner should be trained to sight-read notation, but Suzuki students have no opportunity to do that. When, after a lot of singing and mechanical playing they finally introduced to lines and spaces, they start memorizing piano pieces rather then sight-reading them.

After that they face Achilles and Turtle problem and never able to reprogram that obstacle.

So, I guess that by trial-and-error, and by scientific evaluation, music professors change fingering in their song books because there is a reason for doing that?

There is no scientific evaluation possible for Suzuki and any traditional schools, because the science is where exect numbers are. We are the first scientific Method ever existed in music history. The answer to your question is obvious: there is no rules and fingering. They wanted to change something with no plan in mind. They 'feel like it' and you follow. That's all.

I don't understand what abusive parents, chasing their children with violins or bending their fingers, have to do with this. This is the parent's problem, isn't it?

No. Abuse is common approach in music education. Anyone's eye focus built the same way. This is exactly why all the languages on Earth are linear. Music notation requires multi-focus and memorization of notes' duration on top of that. It goes against the human nature. However, teachers make you to believe that you or your child absolutely CAN read 10 lines and more then 10 spaces at the same time. Most of such teachers unable to sight-read music fluently themselves, but still don't disclose this to their trusing students and parents.

It made every learner feel unadequit and shamed for not reaching to common standards. This is exactly why such expectations in classrooms as well as at home are extremely hurtful to students self-esteem. In class teachers perform silent abuse - at home parents cross the line more often, It is abuse by default.

Guido created lines and spaces for one line melodies. Therefore initially the notation was meant to be eye-friendly. 5 centuries later when first key instruments came to existance the notation was not re-investigated and adjusted. The problem was partially 'solved' by prodigies like Mozart. However, such solution backfired on us: it made music education to believe that music notation is for prodigies.

Stradivarius violins, i.e. really good instruments, were available long before that.

We are talking about keyboard instruments. The comparison with violines makes no sense here. Piano keys has their own mechanics and materials.

Some of the composers must have at least listed to those. But let's say that most composers played "bad" instruments (compared to ours), or actually quite good instruments for the time in which they lived. In those days, such instruments were the standard, and if they didn't differ much between them, then what is the problem? There simply weren't many else to compare with.

The problem is snobish uneducated 'proffesionals' that has no slightest clue about skills development and history of music instruments in conjunction to that. They bring all their 'theories' to look smart and to make you pay them big buck for low effective work. In any class at least 10% of people learn regardless of approach. Such 'professionals' use such students as show case. They fail to tell you that you may be in other 90%. They find all the excuses for you to invest in something expensive and stick with the method because you invested a lot.

Even if those instruments weren't touch sensitive, at least they didn't have light-weight plastic keys like modern keyboards do.

Oh, yes! They were very light-weighted keys because the weighted keys with double action was invented much later (read the article that I gave you!). Moreover, they were tuned differently, had metallic timbre, short sounds that didn't last long. Such old keyboard instruments of the past required constant tuning. Our modern 'plastic' keyboards having much better quality and a lot of timbre options then these old instruments. They are never out of tune! Plastic is not effecting any performance and this objection is completely irrelevant.

This is a big difference, I think. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I figure it would actually be easier to switch from the cembalo to the fortepiano than from a cheap keyboard to a touch sensitive piano?

You are wrong and here is my correction. Any complex skill require concrete combination of neurons in our cortex. Weighted keys for keyboard player requires extra net of neurons in addition to what is already there. Playing cembalo requires completely different muscles and neurons' set. To understand it better imagine writing couple of lines in addition to existing source code(keyboards to piano) vs building entire new source code.

Ah, okay. Sometimes it is a bit difficult to know what you are referring to since Soft Mozart is a mix of so many different things. You have said that it is based on Montessori, too, so I thought this was the case here. Still, this particular issue may be confusing for some Montessori children who play instruments.

I use to say: all the ineffective methods are ineffective in different ways. All effective methods are based on the same common sense rules.

From concrete to abstract
From simple to more advance
From general to details

This is what making Soft Mozart the best as ABC with pictures, format of books from ABC to novels. Montessori approach of free exploration and everything that works effectively.

Thank you for your questions! Hope I answered them all. Happy learning!