Book 'What is Music and What Is Noise'

Written by Hellene Hiner and Benjamin Wurts, Illustrated by Nikolay Krutikov Copyright Music Vision International LLC 2015

Dear parents and teachers!

This book is the part of my scientific work, which focuses on the most soft and gentle, and at the same time most effective ways to learn music.

In this fairy tale, we plant the seeds of very important and valuable ethical and theoretical concepts, which are the foundation for true music education. These concepts are usually taught later in life when students are in college or university. This story was created to teach children gradually how to listen to the sounds around them, assess their quality and determine the difference between what one might call “music construction” and “music destruction”.
Once your child has read What Is Music and What Is Noise, he or she will have become familiar with the foundation upon which all music education has been built. Just like we teach our children good hygiene (brushing teeth) early on, we should also be teaching good musical health and your child can start with this book.

Music is a life long journey. To learn these perceptive skills at an early age will help children to choose wisely and to naturally question the music that surrounds them in their daily life.

This book instills the ethics of respect and care for musical instruments as well for the ears of other people. To build and nurture self-esteem, we introduce the notion of hearing “Mr. Oops”, which means to admit one’s own mistakes. It is critical that we teach children not to be afraid of making mistakes, so you will be seeing Mr. Oops frequently in our subsequent stories.

We also introduce a little bit of abstract music terminology (mostly associated with the character’s names) that in the future will be very handy and will be transitioned into more complex music concepts through training and hands on experience. These characters include Mister Tuning Fork, Whole Rest, Queen Tonic, King Dominant, and Princess Sub-dominant.

In our Soft Way to Mozart Academy, we treat dry, abstract information with caution. We follow the common didactic rules that were laid out by Teacher of Nations, John Amos Comenius, several centuries ago:

From simple to complicated

From concrete to abstract

From general to detailed What is Music And What is Noise has already become part of our Academy lesson plan. We have also created a puppet show with the same exact content. We offer this video free of charge and you may watch it on line here: Watching this video will enhance your child’s perception of the story. Seeing see the characters in action with Joseph Hayden’s Surprise Symphony #94 (First movement) as the score enriches the story even further.

You may often read about the importance of music appreciation for early learners. We have developed a very smooth, soft, gentle and gradual system that helps children develop their deep inner understanding of advanced forms of music. We use an interactive learning approach that allows children to perceive music through different channels (ear, voice, sight and fine motor skills) simultaneously. Below are several links that will help you understand our approach.

Perceiving the music of the Surprise Symphony through Gentle Piano Module:



Students of our Academy can start learning very early on, beginning at 24 months. They will very quickly learn how to play theme from Surprise Symphony using our Gentle Piano application from our interactive software. You can buy a subscription to our computerized curriculum by going to this link:

Playing the music that is used in the What Is Music And What Is Noise helps beginners to develop their sight-reading skills, their own musical ear and voice and their fine motor skills (including both hand coordination).

Many studies have shown that practicing these skills vigorously are extremely valuable to the formation of a child’s musical and general intelligence.

Students learn the Theme from the Surprise Symphony by voice and by the names of music notes with the help of Soft Mozart cards:



Students learn the same theme by sight-reading music using the Gentle Piano application of the Soft Way to Mozart software:



Mastering music repertoire by making music with one’s own hands is the very basis for the development of music erudition and is what plants the seed that will ultimately blossom into a strong spiritual love for classical music. And with this love we can introduce and foster interest in different composers as well as an superior understanding music history from different epochs. In turn, such interest will lead to an interest to general science and spark the cognitive activity of children’s minds.

Join us and you will in fact adopt the most effective and most optimal path to learning music and building better minds for our children. Through music, we will help anyone and everyone to achieve more advanced goals in understanding the world around us. There will be many wonderful surprises, new teaching ideas and wonderfully positive changes, which will all contribute to your personal development as a parent and as a professional educator. Find us at: softmozart.com – Our Community – Forum – Soft Mozart Academy (Академия, Academia)

Happy learning!

Sincerely yours,

Hellene Hiner

 

Praise for Soft Way to Mozart teaching approach

“I had, for many years, thoroughly enjoyed conducting classes using the a traditional approach (typically based on the Orff, Kodaly and Dalcroze approaches) but I felt that though the children enjoyed themselves, they were musically underachieving. I wanted something that could both retain the high standards of musical rigueur and yet provide a pleasant and exciting musical experience for the children. In my opinion, the Soft Mozart program is able to merge these seemingly diverse goals.

- Goh Khee Meng, Piano Instructor and founder of ‘Musikal Genesis’ school (Singapore)

 

“I can only recommend Soft Mozart for any teacher willing to have an invaluable aid in teaching what for so many people is the reason to not have continued with piano education: boring approaches or just the intrinsic difficulty of beginning the learning process.

- Victoria López Meseguer, Piano Teacher at the Conservatory Joaquín Turina, Madrid, Spain and Pedagogical Advisor of Escuela de Múscia Acción Piano



“I was witnessing deep practice happening before my eyes with a six-year-old who was led into it by the format of Soft Mozart!”

- Karla Hastings, piano instructor and the author of Anybody Can Play Piano (USA)

“As a teacher/practitioner, I can safely say that the innovative program Soft Mozart is a great discovery of the 21st century.”

- Alla Dudina, piano instructor at a school for children with special needs (Russia).