Preparatory B (from 3 to 5). Lesson 42

DEVELOPING CHILD'S MEMORY

If you never used a letter H in your Gentle Piano before, it is about time to start using it. Hot key 'H' stands for the word 'hide'. You can hide music notes of a segment or entire piece, separate or both hands.

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 disappointingly 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, your child 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 your child'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.

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