Music Malpractice: Parents Be Aware!

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Parents, this information is for you! Whoever is warned – is armed. It may turn out that you too will fall onto the list of Pinocchios, trusting strangers from the Land of Fools: your honestly earned money will be used to grow your child's "talent tree." Remember that story?

Private music lessons cost money. You have already decided on the choice of the teacher, bought an instrument and even visited the first lessons – or are you at the stage of just thinking about it? Or maybe you are na?vely hoping to gain knowledge in your child’s public school?

READ THIS!

You think that you are taking your child to learn musical literacy. For music literacy, you have in mind that your son or daughter will be able to open any song or piano piece -- and play it off the music score. Prepare to learn nothing like this!

That's the trick!

Your teacher will nag about round hands and steady feet position. If you have ever attended your child’s lesson, you may remember all the moves and dances performed by the teacher around your child. But then, at home, you sit near while your tries the homework, looks at the notes, and understands the simple and bitter truth: your child is at zero when he or she is 1-on-1 with music notation!

A familiar picture?

Congratulations! You pay for the teacher's personal performance. And the teacher will try his best. No doubt about that!

Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with musical notation. And the more your teacher realizes this, the more desperate he "dances." He will tell you about the benefits of learning music, about how many generations of musicians he has brought up and in what generation of family musicians he is in. He can shake before your eyes several university recognitions, competition awards and diplomas showing his own musical pedigree. He will sit at the piano, roll his eyes from the happiness of communicating with music and will play only for you. For you and your offspring. And you will pay for this performance. You will pay a lot!

He will not tell you the main thing, though: he does not guarantee that your kid will play like this or will ever learn how to sight-read music. And there is no money back guarantee.

He invites you to be involved in the "Russian Roulette" game, only this revolver is aimed at the finances of your family. Finances, though, are the least of what you are going to lose! Also at stake are the self-respect and self-esteem of your child. To how many of these people have you trustingly handed over your gold coins so they’ll be buried to grow a tree? And where are these trees?

Where are these forests, where people freely open sheet music and read piece after piece? I don’t see it. Do you?

The root of the problem.

The word “literacy” comes from the Latin word “litera”, which means a written character or a letter.

This is exactly what is in trouble in music education!

Where should I even start? We give our kids a big picture and a letter TOGETHER, at once! Why?

Here everything is fair: the child sees the letter and the picture. 1 + 1 = 2He says AAAple. He comes to the realization that the letter A is AAAA. We are all happy!

And now let's do this instead:

Give students one half with the letter A, and let another person control the rest of the information. Do you know what is going to happen? Every time students see "A" (as well as other letters of the alphabet), they will doubt their own ability to sound the letter. You will have to pay for someone to re-assure you that you sound right.

Do you know how many syllables, words and sentences are behind each letter? And while you figure out how it works (IF you figure it out, of course!), your money will be as Pinocchio’s coins under the tree. Whether you grow anything from that or not, the teacher is compensated!

It was the same story with learning how to read books. People paid someone to read and write for them, and this time was not so very long ago from now.

The picture nested with a letter turned literacy around! The sound and the symbol have to be together--hand in hand.

Without that, you give your money to feed music teachers and the music industry. They take payment for their work, but they do not give you any guarantees about the results. They wish they could! The risk is all yours and the longer you wait for results, the more you invest. Everything is in the power of fate.

Why don’t music teachers guarantee you results in reading and writing music?

In the very basis of music theory, everything begins with inaccuracy. If you open any tutorial or ask google for the word “Music Staff,” the information will be incorrect.

Why the Staff? Because music notes are located there. The Staff is the very basis of the of the musical language.

What do we see? All the textbooks of the world write that the Grand Staff is a “set.”

...the staff (US) or stave (UK)[1] (plural for either: staves) is a set of five horizontal lines and four spaces that each represent a different musical pitch symbols, while bar lines group notes on the staff into measures.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staff_(music)

The word “set” assumes there are different options. A Set can combine different things with no particular relation with each other. And here we read: Staff is just a set of lines and spaces and Grand Staff is a set of Treble and Bass clefs.

This is what is written about the music notation in all the textbooks of the world, in all languages!

And this is false information! This is where the harm begins.

The Grand Staff has nothing spontaneous in it. In fact, it is part of a system in which the second obvious part is the piano keys.

Why it is so important to define the words “system” and “set”?

Let's look again at Wikipedia:

A system (al-Greek σ?στημα "whole, composed of parts, connection") is a set of elements that are in relationships and relations with each other, which forms a certain integrity, unity.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System

What is the essence of musical training, which represents the Grand Staff as not a system, but as a "set"?

It is a tricky way with the aim to pump money out of you. Like the Fox and the Cat, this system is poor and barefoot; it survives and earns income from begging and lying.

Have you noticed how music institutions are moaning and crying and begging for additional funds from the state and sponsors? They appeal to our pity; they preach that music is useful and develops the brain. Why do they beg? Because we all know that these schools do not deliver what they claim: music literacy to all. Money goes to "music," because teachers need to eat. For a state machine, feeding idlers is a necessity, but not an honorable one. This is exactly why the funds for music in schools are being cut!

And private educators have to be trickier than that!

There is a saying: "Building the swimming pool and the dressing room on different sides of the road" expressing the stupidity of placing connected things in different places. The idea sounds silly. Yet any music educator not trained to present sound and symbol simultaneously offers you a daily dose of this stupidity:

So: in fact all these venerable, great, experienced music educators try to inspire you and your children with special “sacral knowledge” of how to transform symbols into notes. This “much ado about nothing” happens because turning the Grand Staff sideways is outside their own comfort zone.

You can believe their word and hand them your money. Maybe, the interest on your investment will be huge. But only on one condition: your child is gifted. Gifted kids develop against all odds, sometimes even in spite of their teachers. BUT! They will be sticking out from the crowd. It will feed your vanity. Maybe a steady income for prodigies in a deserted land?

Who is making a profit on whom?

When I, after graduating from a university, accidentally discovered that the Grand Staff was, in fact, a system, and not a set, I was indignant. How much time and energy had been wasted when I could have improved, developed, and comprehended new depths of musical language?

I decided to build the first model of the Grand Staff as a system.

I did not just connect the keys and notes. I made sure that they communicate in real time. Of course, it can’t be done without involving multimedia interaction because paper sheet music can’t express the beginning, the development, and the end of every sound in real time.

I called my system "Soft Way to Mozart" since the learning became very gentle, but very powerful.

And then all hell broke out!

I was accused of presenting a “gold-digging gimmick” by those who, day after day, year after year, from century to century, made their living from people's love for music and the desire to understand the music text!

And this topic -- the topic of making money on the program -- was exaggerated so often, with such zeal that it involuntarily made me recall the idea: Who loudest screams "hold a thief"?

The Thief Himself.

“How can I identify a good music teacher?” you might be asking.

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