Our family enjoys music and the children have taken (or are taking) music lessons throughout the years, on different instruments. They have all taken piano lessons for several years (a few years back). We were asked to review the
Music & Creativity Foundation Course by
Simply Music, so we gave it a try!
This piano course is a video-based course. The program requires that learners have a keyboard (48 key or more) available to them, as well as a reliable internet connection (for the streaming videos). They also recommend a sustain pedal and headphones and earbuds (and hopefully a connection to your keyboard to the earbuds/headphones so that you can practice without others hearing, and so that you can "layer" the sounds so that you can hear your part of accompaniments). Simply Music provides the learners with a practice keyboard (basically just a printable paper picture of the keys which some may choose to practice the finger movements on) as well a soundtracks which are used throughout the course, a reference book, and a publication called "Music and the Art of Long-Term Relationships." The e-book is a good way to help you understand the theory behind this music-learning program...I'd recommend that you read it to figure out why they do things the way they do.
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Reading their .pdf book, "Music and the Art of Long-Term Relationships" is essential
in order for you to understand this method of learning music. |
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This paper "practice pad" is available for students to reinforce the finger patterns
without being on the actual piano or keyboard |
The student begins the lessons at the "quickstart" section which has them playing notes along with the instructor in a pattern. As the lessons progress, the instructor gives more patterns and the student copies them and plays along with him. He does a great deal of talking, about theories of music and playing as well as tips for playing.
When a student completes a lesson, they click the button to mark the lesson as complete and then move on to the next lesson (and you cannot move on to the next lesson until you've marked the previous one(s) as complete).
These lessons are taught differently than you may be familiar with. The note names are not used, but finger position on the keyboard is used to describe which notes are to be played. The instructor gives diagrams to help the student visualize the patterns of playing (with numbers given to correspond with the fingers). The instructor begins by reminding the students to start with "five over five" (fingers over notes) in order to play what he calls the "finger sentences."
Each lesson combines lecture and practice on the keyboard. The thought is that the student will practice so that their fingers have the muscle memory to repeat what they have learned.
There is a lot of focus on the rhythm and how things sound good together. A couple of quotes which I liked were "...will make a difference in your creativity and that spills over into other areas of your life." and "A lot of times natural smooth rhythm will just emerge naturally."
(click play to get a little taste of the lessons!)
One of the things which we liked was that you can view the lessons on a device such as a phone. This made it easier to view the lessons while at the keyboard.
My 14-year old daughter was the one who tried out this program (I did as well). The program was not at all what we had expected, and we found it very full of the instructor lecturing, without a parallel amount of learning to play the piano. I did not like that the note names were not used, but rather a finger position was used to teach the student to play. I see piano lessons as a gateway to understanding and enjoying participation in music and it seems a bit limiting to not teach the names of the notes or music reading. I understand that this program (
Music & Creativity -- Foundation Course) is kind of focused on enabling the student to enjoy and use improvisation, but for me that would not work as well without a better basis. For my daughter, who is well into playing and reading music, it was frustrating that the lessons begin at such a basic level and that you cannot skip ahead without going through the earlier ones (at least to mark them complete). All in all it was not what we prefer and we would not recommend this program.
But hey, it might be what you like, and did I mention that this course,
Music & Creativity -- Foundation Course, is FREE? Yes, so truthfully, if you'd like to draw your own conclusions about the course, check it out, make an account, and try it out for yourself! I certainly admit that my opinions are not the only valid thoughts! :) If you'd like to read what other reviewers thought about this program, please click on the link below:
