Preparatory A (from 2+). Lesson 43

In traditional training, there are two approaches at the beginning of training - rhythm, meter and duration:

1. Teachers speak of symbols of duration and proportion. The student must remember how the signs look and what value each of them has. This approach is part of the lessons of music theory.

2. Teachers ask the student to repeat this or that rhythmic pattern using the same old mechanical muscle memory: clap to the beat or play by ear.

How do we teach note duration?

In Soft Mozart, we propose a different approach: the study of musical time in the process of interaction with musical notesound (my term).

Each note in each piece of music has a beginning, development and completion.

The girl in this picture is experiencing the completion of 2 notes. They turned into butterflies on the screen after the completion.

As a rule, the teacher in the "traditional" class tries to control this process, singing along to the student, exploding the rhythm, playing with the beginner synchronously and guiding him/her with all kinds of tips. In this case, the teacher plays the role of a “live” punching bag for a while, until the student either understands “how it works” or refuses classes.

This is a rather inefficient and thankless job.

In Soft Mozart, we laid the foundation of the process in a computer program.

Interaction with the keyboard using computer animation helps any person, even a 2-year-old child, not only to see, but also to feel the process of creating each musical sound with the fingertips.

The ability to control the duration of a note in real time, working with musical sound, has become a huge breakthrough in music education.

 Let's get back to our topic of pedagogy ...

 So ... Preparatory measures for the development of concentration and impact power are:

Note Duration ^® is a module helps make a gradual shift from visual to muscle attention. Initially, the effort of a student’s attention is directed towards the solving of visual problems (see note in a certain halo of color and bring it to the segment with the same hue by pressing the space bar).

If the student can handle this task with at a good rate with good timer numbers, he will switch his attention towards controlling the strength of impact force.

 
Guess Key^® 

Guess Key is a module that helps attention work on the key geography. It can be used for a smoother transition from stickers to tabs and from synthesizer to piano.

Video Sample:

Exercises.

Playing scales and exercises on synthesizer and piano helps attention learn to control the strength of the impact force, because muscles work on autopilot mode.The transition from synthesizer to piano will be smoother for the student’s attention, if he starts by playing the piano exercises that he previously worked on.

 

Gentle Piano^® With the help of this module, you can train the beginner’s attention to control the strength of the force of impact. The most important condition is the student’s ability to easily find notes and keys reflected in low timer rates.

Beginning of Coordination Development of Both Hands

Sound has a beginning, a development, and an end. This process can be shorter or longer depending on the length of the sound. For beginners, training attention to learn to recognize this information presents an additional challenge.

Animation in the Gentle Piano Module helps the student’s eyes to see when to press, hold, and release the sound.

 By playing notes with separate hands, the student starts paying more attention to rhythmic cues faster.  By learning to quickly shift his visual focus from notes to keys, he can switch his attention to read additional information.  Thus, attention starts to see when the student should hold (sound signal from Mr. Oops), release (butterfly) and replace (spider) the key.

The next step in hand coordination development is playing with both hands when one hand holds the note (blossoming flower) and the other one switches the keys (butterflies).  If a beginner is unable to perform this task, it means that his attention is not yet ready to coordinate both hands.  In this case, he should continue working on improving the timer reading and wait for his attention to be able to complete this task.

On this video at 1:06-1:16, little Titus is not controlling the movement of his left hand yet and spontaneously press it with the right one.  At 1:26 – 1:28 Titus gradually gain control over his movements and learn to press piano keys in one hand while changing them in another.

You have to watch carefully the timer and wait, when child's attention will be able to comprehend this task.

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