Simply Music

Firstly, this will be our last Newsletter for 2010. What a remarkable year it has been. As I look ahead to 2011, and all of the very exciting things we have coming up, I am reminded of what is possible when music is a part of our lives.

Recently a colleague reminded me of a letter that I sent out to all of our teachers in early 2009. Having re-read the letter, I think it is highly appropriate to finish 2010 by forwarding it to you all. The letter is a transcript of a Welcome Address delivered to freshmen at Boston Conservatory. The address was presented by Karl Paulnack, pianist and Director of Music at Boston Conservatory.

I did have a conversation with Karl, and he has given me full permission to make copies of the speech and distribute it to our Simply Music educators, students, families and associates. I take this brief opportunity to thank Karl for his generosity and commitment.

I also take this opportunity to thank you for your willingness to invest your time, your money, your attention, your efforts as well as the love and patience that is required, to sustain a relationship and commitment to music. Developing musicianship, and/or being the person who supports another in developing theirs, is an extraordinary commitment. Thank you all for that commitment to help bring music into the lives of others, and for sharing your own musicianship along the way.

I wish you all a peaceful closure to this year, and a wonderful adventure in 2011. I hope that all of us, here at Simply Music, continue to be a source of contribution in your lives.

Kind regards,

Neil Moore

Founder and Executive Director

Simply Music International

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Welcome Address by Karl Paulnack

“…. One of my parent’s deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn’t be appreciated. I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember my mothers remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school, “you’re WASTING your SAT scores.” On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they LOVED music, they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren’t really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the ‘arts and entertainment’ section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it’s the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works.

The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you; the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works.

One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet for the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940. Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940, sent across Germany in a cattle car and imprisoned in a concentration camp.

He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a place to compose. There were three other musicians in the camp, a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist, and Messiaen wrote his quartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941 for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in the repertoire.

Given what we have since learned about life in the concentration camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture, yet, art; it wasn’t just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, ‘I am alive, and my life has meaning.’

On September 12, 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan. That morning I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn’t this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost.

And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And then I observed how we got through the day.

At least in my neighborhood, we didn’t shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn’t play cards to pass the time, we didn’t watch TV, we didn’t shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York, that same day, was singing. People sang. People sang around fire houses, people sang ‘We Shall Overcome’. Lots of people sang America the Beautiful. The first organized public event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night.

From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part of ‘arts and entertainment’ as the newspaper section would have us believe. It’s not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can’t with our minds.

Some of you may know Samuel Barber’s heart-wrenchingly beautiful piece Adagio for Strings. If you don’t know it by that name, then some of you may know it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone movie Platoon, a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn’t know you had. Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what’s really going on inside us the way a good therapist does.

I bet that you have never been to a wedding where there was absolutely no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some really bad music, but I bet you there was some music. And something very predictable happens at weddings. There’s some musical moment where the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn’t good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why? The Greeks.

Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel even when we can’t talk about it. Can you imagine watching Indiana Jones or Superman or Star Wars with the dialogue, but no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in ET so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it wouldn’t happen that way. The Greeks: Music is the understanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects.

I’ll give you one more example, the story of the most important concert of my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than a thousand concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I thought were important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyed playing in Paris; it made me very happy to please the critics in St. Petersburg. I have played for people I thought were important; music critics of major newspapers, foreign heads of state. The most important concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home in Fargo, ND, about 4 years ago.

I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland’s Sonata, which was written during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland’s, a young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written program notes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out and play the music without explanation.

Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn’t the first time I’ve heard crying in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.

When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned its dedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.

What he told us was this: “During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team’s planes was hit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes that had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute chords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn’t understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle.”

How does the music do that? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?? Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationships between internal objects. This concert in Fargo was the most important work I have ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him connect, somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost friends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is why music matters.

What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year’s freshman class when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will charge your sons and daughters with is this:

“If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you’d take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you’re going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.

You’re not here to become an entertainer, and you don’t have to sell yourself. The truth is you don’t have anything to sell; being a musician isn’t about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevies. I’m not an entertainer; I’m a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You’re here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don’t expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that’s what we do. As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives. ….”

Dr Catherine Crock is the dedicated physician from Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital who has created the Hush Collection, a project bringing support to children’s hospitals through the medium of music. The music on this popular collection of CDs from some major artists is designed specifically to aid and comfort patients, parents and staff during difficult times, and the proceeds of their sales supports the hospitals themselves. And the music is wonderful too! Gordon Harvey met with Catherine in a Melbourne cafe to chat about this inspiring project, what led her to begin it, and how it contributes to people on multiple levels. The interview ends with ‘Illuminated’ from the newest Hush CD, featuring guitarists Slava and Leonard Grigoryan.

You can learn more and order Hush CDs at  http://www.hush.org.au/

Download the Interview

Class one starts with a student who has refused to demonstrate at home that he can actually play at all, but then surprises everyone by playing both hands together perfectly for his teacher.  Class two is a breakthrough because a non-verbal student has said his first sentence.  Class three features a student with severe echolalia who had not been able to express his needs but when asked, makes eye contact and says “yes”.  A student in class four has moved the majority of his songs to his “independent list” and proudly displays that he no longer needs his mother’s assistance.   Welcome to a typical working day for Cathy Hirata, Simply Music teacher and maker of musical miracles.

Cathy’s down-to-earth manner hides a strong formal musical background, including high-level classical voice and piano training and performing with the San Jose Symphony and San Jose Opera throughout the U.S. and Canada.  A scholarship recipient and graduate of San Jose State University, she has a Bachelor of Music Degree in Vocal Performance, and has taught music in both elementary and high school music programs.  She is currently completing her certification in autism studies with the University of California Davis Mind Institute.

In addition to being a Senior Associate Simply Music Teacher, she is a Certified Signing Smart Educator and is the music director for Autism Tree Project Foundation in San Diego.  Cathy is a Kindermusik Maestro recognized for her work with children with special needs.  Her studio was nominated for Heroes of Hope and she has won several awards for Best Music Studio in the East Bay Area.

We asked Cathy to tell us a little about her teaching life.

What do you think drew you to pursuing a career in music?

My family has a long history of music teachers, performers, singers and college professors.  My great-aunt was a pianist for the silent movies.  My ambition was to be a classical concert pianist so I studied for years to that level.  It’s not an easy thing to do, I remember long 6-10 hour days of rehearsals.  It’s like being an Olympic athlete.  I was also an accompanist for many shows in the Bay Area as well.  But I was a better singer, so I turned to opera, which I was better at and enjoyed more, but I could tell it still wasn’t a passion.  Believe it or not, for me it became a choice of becoming a chef (a hobby I still enjoy) or a music teacher.  Once I started my student teaching in college I became absolutely clear that performance was not something I wanted to do – it didn’t make me feel whole or complete, but when I was teaching, I felt at home, like I didn’t have a job.  I knew it was what I was supposed to do.

My sister introduced me to Simply Music.  Her son was taking lessons and I clearly remember her showing the program to me and immediately dismissing it because “they don’t learn to read”.  She kept pushing me and I finally relented and said “okay, I’ll look into it”.  I ended up buying the Learn at Home Program for my son.  He called me about 3 hours later and said “Mom, this is exactly what I wanted to do-listen”.  He played almost every song in the book.  I was completely baffled.  I had to know more.  Now what I realize is how much I missed.  When you learn classically you are so restricted and so limited.  I had had no exposure to blues or jazz.  I now enjoy playing even more than I did before.

I love seeing the results in my students, knowing that I can have a long lasting effect on them and make a difference.  Watching them grow and be successful in performance and their day-to-day lives.

You have a particular interest in working with students with special needs.  How did that interest come about?

Honestly?  They came to me.  But as I look back on my life, I understand the reasons why things occurred the way they did for me.  When I first started teaching Simply Music, I would get calls from parents who thought it would work for their children, so I thought why not?

What was disturbing was the stories parents would tell about how traditional teachers would refuse their children because they had some sort of disability or their IQ wasn’t high enough.  Or because they couldn’t talk there was no way for them to understand the instructions.   I was embarrassed and could not believe that my colleagues would discount the education of an individual because they were missing a hand, were blind, had autism or some other developmental disability.   When did we get to be so arrogant?  Clearly they had forgotten the research done on the long-term effect of music education and the brain.  Everyone deserves the opportunity to play an instrument, learn about music and just have fun.  Just because someone can’t speak doesn’t mean they can’t learn.  It’s as simple as that. That’s all it took for me.  I felt driven.

Even though I have a mixed studio of students, over time people kept telling me this was my calling and I needed to pursue it further, which is what I’m in the process of doing right now with my expansion.  It feels right – my vision is very clear now.

What do you most enjoy about working with special needs students?  What’s unique about them?

Knowing that with Simply Music I can and do make a difference.  I know traditional methods very well.  Most students struggle with them, let alone those with concrete thinking patterns.  Seeing students talk for the first time, seeing the connections made that affect their lives in all areas is really a gift for me.

And it makes me happy to see the results I can get from these children.  Parents who were inquiring about lessons would cry on the phone saying, “My child just wants to learn.  Will you please try?”  Or out of sheer desperation, they would lie about their child’s condition, then bring the child in for an assessment, apparently thinking I would not notice.

Having a child who is severely hearing impaired, this really hit home for me.  I could easily empathize with these parents.  I made it my mission to make sure that I was educated, and understand the learning ability of each student so I could go to the core of their needs and help them progress in a way that was clear and concise to them.  I relied on books, internet, movies, whatever it took, including discussions with other parents to help my understanding of how to move forward.  I had to because even the founder of Simply Music had no knowledge of working with autism.  It was up to me.

Unique?   There really is nothing unique.  They are as varied as typical children.  Each and every child/student is unique in their own way.

How much do you need to ‘tailor’ the program to the needs of each student?

That depends on the student and what their learning abilities are.  Sometimes I tailor it a little, sometimes I just start with getting their fingers moving, or doing rhythm, dance, some exercises, whatever it takes to reach the student.

What does music provide for special needs students?

The ability to do something they are often told they can’t do.  As strange as that may sound, here anyway, life is black and white in special ed classes.  They are right or wrong.  There is no freedom of expression, so often children will come in to class afraid to try.  Once they understand that’s it’s okay to enjoy piano, lessons become fun and engaging.   But I think more than anything I see confidence, socialization, motor skills, increase in abstract thought processes, language, all of the modalities of learning presented in single thought processes.

How does it make a difference for parents?

When I have parents say to me, “please just take my child, all he wants to do is learn” it’s really heartbreaking.  I have a hard time telling parents I don’t have times available.  Parents actively participate and create their own diagrams, learn in class, understand what’s going on, will ask me do you think this is okay to try?  It’s great to see their participation.  Some have formed somewhat of a bond supporting newer parents and talking about what works for their students etc.  It’s great!  But more importantly, my studio is all-inclusive.  Parents want their children treated in the same way as others.   Parents really appreciate this and they tell me frequently.

Can you tell us about a few of your students?

The first story that always comes to mind for me was a particular Saturday.   This student has autism, speaks only in broken words and has a lot of echolalia (repeats tv commercials etc).  He was thumbing through a Disney book while his mom and I were talking.  He found a song called “Someday” he wanted to learn.  He put in on the music stand took my hand and put it on top of his, pointed to the song with his other hand and said “Teacher help me.”

I recall another time when I had a student who hated music as a child, refused to listen to it or hear his mom sing.  At his first recital his mom was very nervous, but I knew he could do it.   After finishing The Pipes he jumped up and down exclaiming, “I did it, I did it!”

I recently started a 5 year old with autism who only talks when he wants.  His mom said to me that he never responds to his teachers at school.  But he immediately started talking to me at his first lesson.  His mom and dad couldn’t believe it.  He repeats instructions, sings songs, calls himself silly and says I’m silly.

Another student, Casey, has been with me for about 5 years.  She has autism, is 16 years old and a straight A student, and has been composing music since age 3.  Her mom had tried traditional lessons but they didn’t work.  Casey immediately began to vary the Simply Music pieces to her liking.  In fact in 2008 when she met Neil, she played Sit By My Side for him.  She asked him if he could tell where she changed it.  He said yes and asked her why she changed the piece.  She said “because I like mine better.”   She has had difficulty expressing her needs and communication can be difficult for us when discussing abstract subjects.  She never liked to perform in public but does now without any fear.  She is an amazing composer and can complete a 5-7 min piece in about 1 1/2 hours.  Her songs have always been complex.  She just completed a piece called “The Haunting” and was runner up in her school music contest.  Casey is currently writing a book for children about Simply Music and her experiences taking lessons.

One of my students with autism has severe echolalia.  Before playing he would say “and now a musical interlude.”  He was verbally unresponsive but I would occasionally get him to look me in the eye.  For the first time a few months ago I explained a hand position to him and he said “pinky on C.”  He now requests practice time at home and asks to go to lessons.

After two months of lessons another student played and sang Dreams Come True at a recital for an audience of approximately 700 people, and brought tears to many eyes.   He stood up after and applauded himself because he was so proud.

Many students with autism suffer from high anxiety disorders.  When one of my students first started with me, she was afraid to touch the keys of the piano, spoke very little, and apologized constantly.  She has since asked her parents to not sit in lessons anymore because she wants that time for herself.  She has also performed in recital.  I was recently given the gift of her singing Over the Rainbow to me in class.  This was a huge accomplishment for her and a moment  I will always cherish.  And this past January she stood up in front of all the Simply Music teachers at Symposium and said “No Woo Hoo’s but clapping is ok”.   During a school field trip to a local hotel he asked to play the piano and played his entire repertoire.  But the most startling revelation to me was when his mother said that he was now teaching his sister how to play.

Some students show remarkable abilities in the area of composition.  One of my students is quite advanced in this area, wanting to own a studio and write the background music for movies.  Her mother had told me that there was no way traditional piano lessons would work for her due to the anxiety it was causing from having to study multiple concepts simultaneously.  In the five years I’ve had her as a student, she has composed over 40 pieces in various forms, all musically complex.

Another 7-year-old student with autism after three months of piano decided he wanted to play in a talent show at school.  In front of his peers and all their parents he chose to play and sing Dreams Come True.  Upon walking onto the stage he turned to the audience and said, “Quiet please.”  He then played and sang his song, stood up said ” I love you all” and left.

Another student, Jaegar, was asked to perform at an autism fundraising event.  To our great surprise he was asked to accompany and sing with Grammy Award Winner Michelle Williams of Destiny’s Child.  At the time of his performance, Jaegar had had 27 lessons and never accompanied anyone.  In addition, this was his first public performance ever with over 200 people in attendance.  I couldn’t have been more proud.  He was absolutely perfect.

You also teach Kindermusik and sign language classes.  How do you juggle these responsibilities?  Do you do any other work (as if that wasn’t enough)?

Due my expansion right now Kindermusik and American Sign Language are on hold.  I hope to bring them back to the studio in the spring.  The way it has worked in the past?  My daughter Lindy, who is also a Simply Music teacher, is my ASL instructor.  She runs an ASL program for hearing infants & toddlers.  This has been very successful, and the results she has had with apraxic students is remarkable.  She also teaches Kindermusik and I have had a Kindermusik teacher work for me in the past.  My focus has to be on Simply Music right now due to my expansion.  I have just hired new teachers and have just opened my new location in San Diego.

I’m also the co-chair of the International Simply Music Teacher Symposium which I do each year with my pal Bernadette Ashby – we love putting on this event for the teachers. But the most exciting thing is that I am working on a collaborative study with Arizona State University and Simply Music and will measure the effects of Simply Music and autism.  That study is due to launch in January 2011.

From Mark S Meritt

However long you’ve been taking Simply Music piano lessons, it’s probably safe to say that you’ve achieved far more than what you could have in the same amount of time with other methods. Maybe you’ve even achieved far more than you imagined you could.

In your best moments in the program, you’ve seen the possibilities. You’ve seen how a fantastic result can come together fairly quickly and easily. You’ve had that feeling of mastery that comes from playing an older song that’s become second nature, maybe even the amazement of playing it with your eyes closed. You’ve recognized that true musical creativity isn’t just for the Mozarts and Beatles of the world, that even you, just months or even weeks into lessons, can be creating your own original music and even improvising something brand new in the spur of the moment.

You can connect the dots between these experiences and the profound benefits that are yours to have in your relationship with music. You can sense that that’s where the path leads. By following the Simply Music method, you can get there. The method works.

If you follow it.

You’re aware that the closer you get to fully following the method, the more success you’ll achieve, that there is still room for success even if you can’t reach that ideal — and that there is some point where putting in not enough effort can only lead to an end to your relationship with music. As long as you’re in the success zone, you’ll be fine. At the same time, the farther into that zone you can be, the more you can find even greater success in the program — and live up to your own potential.

Neil Moore says that the difference between a student who does 99% of what is asked and 100% of what is asked is astonishing. So you can imagine how valuable it is for you to do as much as you can to follow the program, especially during times when you aren’t able to do it all.

To get there, it helps to know where you are already, so that you can see what else there may be for you to do to keep improving. A great way to do this is to use my Formula for Success.

As you’ll see, there are ten success factors. For each, you can rate yourself from 1-10, 10 being best. When you achieve all 100 possible points, you’ll experience the greatest success and the quickest, easiest progress. The first page provides a simple form that you can print and fill in, while the second provides a description of what a 10 would look like for each of the success factors.

Since we are always changing, it would be great to check in with the formula periodically. Monthly might be ideal, but you could do it less often — or even more often. Even if you do hit 100 at one point, it’s still worth continuing to check in with yourself regularly, because the one thing we can say about a long-term relationship is that it’s always changing.

When you rate yourself, be as honest as possible. The numbers have meaning only as a guide to help you keep becoming a better learner, and they can’t do that job for you if you fudge them. If at any time you fill in the numbers you feel sad or frustrated because you wish they were higher, let yourself experience those feelings, and then remind yourself that all the success you’ve achieved so far goes hand in hand with those very numbers. Celebrate that past success, and see the gap between your current score and 100 as what it really is — a fantastic opportunity for you to achieve even more success!

The Simply Music message is simple: We want the whole world to know that they are “musical”. And what better way to share that message than through stories. Stories about…

· a blind person’s journey in becoming a Simply Music teacher

· an autistic child’s ability to musically express themselves through piano playing

· an adult who made the decision to teach before he could even play

· the healing of a stroke victim through Simply Music.

The new book release, A World Where Everyone Plays, by Bernadette Ashby, is a collection of inspiring Simply Music stories that will encourage and challenge students, parents, and teachers, alike. It’s for anyone who has ever doubted – it’s a book about achieving dreams and breaking barriers.

PRODUCT DETAILS

· Paperback: 288 pages

· Publisher: Efting Press; First Edition (2011)

· ISBN 978-1-60330-001-8

Retail Value: $19.95 Special Simply Music Price $16.95

Imagine a culture where people of all ages easily and readily acquire and maintain music as a lifelong companion…

This has been a dream come true for a student commencing her musical journey at the age of 71.

Teruko Bowen arrived to live in Perth, Western Australia from Japan in 1974 with her husband and two children.  In early 2008, while reading a local Perth newspaper, she was impressed by an editorial claiming that anyone from 7 -107 years of age could learn to play the piano with a revolutionary method called Simply Music.

An intrigued Teruko tentatively rang the teacher, Sonja Kay, and asked if being  70-plus  was too old to start, considering she had no prior learning experience. She shared that she had always secretly desired to play the piano from a young age, but never had the opportunity to just try.

In just two and half years of learning to play, Teruko has built a repertoire of an amazing 120 songs.  She has recently completed Level 7. She attends a shared lesson with another younger Japanese woman on a weekly basis.

Teruko’s favourite pieces are the classics – Fur Elise, Ballade, Sonata in C, Canon in D and Minuet in G. Being able to master all the chords through the accompaniment program and exploring the arrangement and composition programs has created skills she’d never imagined in all her years of dreaming to play. The journey of learning to read rhythm and notes the Simply Music way has opened up many possibilities. Her days are filled studying a wide variety of pieces.

As a student she is always so thrilled to take on pieces that have a lot of meaning personally for her. These include music from her Japanese culture, church hymns, and of course a number of classical and also folk songs from the 50’s and 60’s – songs such as Sukiyaki, Sakura, Just a Closer Walk with Thee, What a Friend We Have in Jesus, Die Moldau, Scarborough fair, One Day at a Time, Marianne, Que Sera Sera, You Are My Sunshine, When the Saints Go Marching In.

A huge asset through learning with the Simply Music method has been the ability to see patterns and utilise the tools and strategies in unfolding new music scores. Teruko has become very adept at seeing and learning patterns and she loves her daily practice. She considers herself very fortunate to be able to have the time to study and play the piano at her stage in life.  She often comments how good it is to keep her brain active and she feels very happy about that.

Recently her teacher Sonja was invited to be guest speaker at The Ideas Place, a community based activity group in Perth. The presentation featured how easy it is to learn the piano using Simply Music’s playing-based method. And how this produced unprecedented results for people of all ages. The age group of the audience was between 50- 80 years.  Sonja invited Teruko to participate as living proof of what could be achieved. The audience was truly captivated by her ability to play without music, and so fluently considering she had only been learning a short time.  She inspired a number of people to take up lessons due to her example of what is possible for anyone willing to ‘give it a go’ for whatever reason.

The Glee phenomenon has been one of the biggest musical stories of recent times. This runaway television success has spearheaded a rediscovery of songs you can really sing, and has reminded many people that a memorable melody and well-sung harmonies can be one of the most uplifting listening experiences you can have.

The simplicity of the chord progressions in many of these songs gives us the opportunity to lay down a piano accompaniment without too much effort. Maybe you could get together with some friends and be the musical director of your own glee club.

Don’t Stop Believin’ was originally a top ten hit for Journey in 1981. The Glee arrangement adds rich harmonies, but the tune remains the same and sounds fine sung by one person. You will find the sheet music at http://www.simplymusic.com/PrintSheetMusic.

Rhythmically, you can play the whole song with a simple 1:2 ratio.

To play the chords, you’ll use the shape-based approach you’ve learned with your Simply Music teacher, starting with G major (straight line) and D major (triangle). The next chord, E minor7, is easily found by starting with the E Major’s triangle shape and bringing the middle note down by a half-step and the bottom note down by a whole step. The next chords are C major (straight line) and G and D again. The B minor is just the B major (curve or boomerang shape) with the middle note down a half-step. The cycle finishes on a C major, and we just repeat that cycle another four times.

On page 4 is the B section or bridge, which uses split or slash chords. For those who haven’t yet learned about split chords, they are chords where the left hand plays a different note than the right hand chord. Oddly, the left hand is written to the right of the slash, and the right hand to the left. You’ll get used to it, but be prepared to sometimes get it round the wrong way for the first little while.

The pattern for this section turns out to be very straightforward. The first four chords are just D, C, D, G with a C in the left hand. Then it’s D, G, D, G with a G in the left. Play these four times, then at the top of page 5 the section ends with a little tailpiece. The only trap here is that in the second measure there are three chords where you’d usually play two. just play the first two (D & G) once each and the C with the usual 1:2 ratio and you’re cool.

Then you’re back to lots of repeats of the A section, giving you a chance to sing your heart out!

Once you’ve mastered the basic accompaniment, there’s plenty you can do to make it more fun. You can make it more like the original by breaking up the chords in the right hand. Play the top two notes and then the bottom note.

If you’re a bit more ambitious, you could use the left hand to play a version of what the low voices sing. Essentially, they are just singing the bottom note of each chord, and finding a way of travelling up or down to the next. I’ll give you the first few moves, and you can work the rest out by ear.

From the G to the D, play A, B and D – really, you’re just moving up through the notes of a G chord, but passing through an A. From D to Em7, play E, F# (the bottom of the three black keys) and back to E. From Em7 to C, play F#, G, C. Remember that these are not the only notes you can play – if you want to play something different, or if you can’t work out exactly what the notes are on the recording, no problem, just play what sounds good to you. You’ll be in safe territory if you stick to white keys, with one exception – play the F# instead of F.

For the B section, it’s nice to really emphasize the difference by changing the rhythm. If you’re a Simply Music student, you might have learned the Arrangement for Ode to Joy. The same rhythm (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +) is used here in the right hand. Meanwhile, the left hand can play its note 8 times per measure. It’s a great effect. Finally, for this section, here’s another way of playing the G chord which sounds better: from the D chord, just move the top two notes up to the next two white keys, so you’re playing (from the bottom) D, G and B.

I recommend you play along with the recording, to help make that rhythm slot easily into place.

In the Key of Genius: The Extraordinary Life of Derek Paravicini – Adam Ockelford

Derek Paravicini is one of those individuals who open our minds to the world of what’s possible, just by being naturally himself. He was born very premature, and as a result grew up with an array of disabilities, including blindness, learning difficulties and autism. But, miraculously, he discovered very early an affinity for music. He would spend hours attacking his small keyboard with fingers, arms and elbows, pounding out his own complex versions of tunes he had heard a little as once.

At around 3 1/2 years old, he visited a school for the blind. Hearing a piano lesson going on, he broke free from his parents, shoved student and teacher out of the way, and launched into a typical playing frenzy. The teacher was Adam Ockelford, who was so astonished by Derek’s unique gift that he took him on as a student, and went on to become Derek’s long-time mentor and life coach. He also went on to write this book, which, as well as being Derek’s biography, is also the story of their shared struggle to mould Derek’s amazing talent into something manageable and of value beyond his own inner domain.

It also talks about the role of music in Derek’s life, and the way it replaces those communication skills that most of us take for granted, but which elude Derek. In one very moving passage Ockelford describes helping Derek express a state of frustration by duetting with him, guiding him through a journey in which they took “Ain’t Misbehavin’” to dark and dissonant places, through a slow and sustained phase, before finally arriving at a happier version of both the song and Derek.

Ockelford writes in the first person and brings the personal experience of his time sharing Derek’s unique world to life. He has worked tirelessly over many years to have Derek present himself to the world, not as a novelty, but as a true musician with something unique and genuine to offer. Yet we can barely imagine how the world must occur for Derek – music is a very different place for him, where, as Ockelford explains, each note has a distinct personality, blazing in technicolor. It’s as though every expressive experience the world offers that he can’t access is directed toward music, making it come to life with sights and sounds that the rest of us can barely conceive of. He is still incapable of looking after himself, struggling even with telling left from right, yet music allows him to, as we say, go forth into the world and be wonderful.

Buy the book from Amazon.com

Derek Paravicini Website