Simpedia

Cheryl G., Pennsylvania

I have several students in the Reading Program now. The results have been varied, but in general I can say that they have more than made up for the time that they waited to begin reading.  In other words, they begin reading much more quickly and are farther ahead of where they would be in a traditional approach, in my opinion.

The students who are the ‘better’ students (meaning they practice more and push themselves more), naturally progress more quickly. But even with the slower students I feel that once they ‘get’ it, they are able to figure things out well independently.  I feel it’s important, when they don’t understand something, to keep asking them questions to get them to think about the music, rather than to feed them the answers.

With my best students, it’s like Wow! They are reading all kinds of music on their own. I think it’s so important to read lots of music because even though sight-reading proficiency is not a declared goal of SM, it may be an outcome when the student reads lots of music.

Because students have gone through the Accompaniment Program and have an understanding of chords, I really like that the songs in “Time for More Music” are in so many different keys. It’s so nice to be able to talk about different keys and chords and have the students understand. This is a big advantage in overcoming the fear factor of reading flats and sharps.

One of my ‘slow’ students wanted to play the Natasha Bedingfield song “Unwritten”, which i had never heard. I got her the music, thinking it might be too hard (being popular music), and true enough, when I saw the music I thought, Wow, this would be hard even for me to play. I really didn’t ‘get’ it myself until I listened to the CD.  Anyway I wanted her to be able to do it because she was in a slump about piano, I think because of the difficult transition into the Reading Program and she wasn’t crazy about the SM songs.  She was not making the kind of progress that I wanted and I think she was feeling discouraged. So we started working on ‘Unwritten’ — just the rhythm, and processing just a few measures a week. After a few months, she can play the entire Right Hand on the piano, with all the correct notes (this is 7 pages of rhythmically difficult music!) and now we are starting to add the Left Hand. So this is a real feat for a beginner to be able to play this kind of music.  She has also played songs from “Accent on Gillock” Volume 2 by Wm. Gillock which she likes.

For me as a teacher, helping the students with reading is not as straightforward as when you can use a graded method book.  It’s more wide-open, more scary, but more exciting.

I hope this is enough to give you an idea of how it’s been going for me.

Dena M., Iowa

I have experienced the same question from parents.  What I did was let them glance at the books from the Reading Rhythms and Reading Notes Programs.   It surprises my parents so much that this is where Simply Music starts, that they end up telling me their child isn’t ready!

Last week I had a mom ask me when we start reading, so I asked her why she was asking.  She was asking because she didn’t want to get involved with that for quite some time.  Normally I would have assumed it was because she was worried we weren’t reading notes.

Karen G., Tennessee

One of my first students, an adult, came to me with much skepticism about SM. He had tried to learn to play piano many times. This was an adult male in his mid-40s at the time. He had a performance background (magician, comedy, musical theater). He could read rhythm fairly well. He was thrilled to death when he started learning to play the SM way.

We got to Reading Rhythm, and he did fine. After all, it wasn’t really that new to him so he eagerly met the challenge.  Reading notes was a different matter entirely. He had failed at learning to read notes the traditional way so many times, I think he was afraid he would fail again.

It was nearly Christmas and he had pulled out some Christmas music. He’d ask his wife (who could read music) where the song started, and then he was able to pick out the song (playing chords in his left hand.)  He was beginning to figure out the intervals even though we hadn’t gotten there yet.  I finally told him he just HAD to move forward, or he’d figure it all out before I had a chance to show him!

He flew through the notes program… and feels confident in reading. He once truly believed learning to read music was beyond him.  Thanks to SM, the world of written music is now wide open for him.

Mary V., Cailfornia

My oldest son and I are truly benefiting from Time for More Music even though we already read notes.

My 13 year old son, Jacob, has been with SM with Sheri Reingold for 2 years now. He is in the Time for More Music and Level 7. I had taught him informally prior to SM. He was already reading notes and playing Scott Joplin’s Entertainer and working on Canon in D on his own. We often played classical duets together. He told me what he wanted to play, I’d play it for him and with little help he figured it out. The rag is easier for him than Canon in D. What he played, he played wonderfully. I’d often ask myself, “Who taught this kid?”  He learned naturally. All this before SM.

Jacob and I have realized that he was naturally beginning to count intervals and see patterns and with his young brain, was able to “just memorize” the entire Entertainer – something I wouldn’t be able to do without SM.  Jacob now with SM experience freely describes to people the benefits from SM, “Now I see patterns and positions everywhere and it’s easier to figure music out across the pages.”

Having finally spent more time “life coaching ” Jacob over the past few weeks with Time for More Music program, I am discovering a wealth of benefits! There is now a step by step strategy in figuring out a piece of music.  The shapes around the black notes, the looking at the naturally occurring 3’s and 4’s, the journey up the keyboard, etc. enables our brain to have some kind of “key” as we map out the piece and so learn it more quickly and even memorize it!  Jacob and I are no longer dependent on just one strategy of figuring out a piece – identifying every single note!

Of course, none of what we are experiencing now would have come about without all the learning clues we’ve learned through the foundational levels.

Jacob says it makes him smile now when his homeschooling peer who takes traditional lessons (for several years now) never touches an available piano and says, “Oh I can play that too if I had my book.”