Sequence of pieces to practice

Comments of a slow adult learner
and Sequence of pieces to practice

I thought I'd write this to encourage some fellow slow, adult learners just starting out with SoftMozart.

I'm 66, an ardent fan of classical music, but a life-long musical failure. In at least three major tries, I never found the persistence to pass through the initial learning incline. Now with Soft Mozart, I finally seem to be getting somewhere. Hellene and her programmers broke down the initial incline into a much more graded learning schedule, and ever so slowly, I seem to be climbing the rungs.

I got the program a month ago, and each day, I do about half an hour's training with the various subsections. I ordered the subsections in the following way, according to my sense of difficulty:
1 Fruit school
2 Note alphabet school
3 Treble Staff Puzzle School
4 Note Duration School
These you can do without connecting the computer to a piano. Once you have it connected, you can do the other two subsections:
A Guess Key School
B Gentle Piano
I found I could benefit from doing the first set of exercises any time in the day (like at lunch break at work), and to save the second set for the times at home when I could connect the computer to a piano.

I like the ingenuity of the various lessons for learning the tones, the names, the keyboard as well as the staff placements of the notes. Special thanks also for the Note Duration School where you learn to make the various notes last intuitively the right length of time -- something that we beginners often have particular difficulties with.

I found that the learning is slow, but I can clearly tell that I'm progressing. Hang in there. Even if you have an ear trained by a life time of careful music listening, actually reading and "hearing the music" on the note sheet and playing it on the piano is quite a different thing. It requires a lot of training to get all the elements together, at the right time.

Also, I find it wonderful to apply my new learning of score reading to some classical music. I got NoteWorthy Composer (selected from various similar programs), and it does a good job of playing music while showing you the score, slowed down if you want to. The program will play out either to the computer speaker, or to your piano (on a reasonably fast computer).

I am full of gratitude to Hellene's insights of how to teach these matters to all of us, of any age. And I wish much joy to my fellow Soft Mozart learners.

Did I find the lesson plan helpful?

Yes, as a general guide. Of course, the plan is tailored to children who have more time and more patience, and we adults have to make some obvious adjustmentes as a consequence.

I personally have to work on my specific weaknesses in remembering the staff position of sounds and in identifying sounds, scales, relationships between the notes, keyboard placement, etc. I'm taking the lessons as I seem to need them, so as to be able to climb aboard the music wagon train in the first place.

Right now I'm working on durations -- which are still quite disastrous.

But the point ot the whole thing is that despite all the catching up I need to do, your games are fun, even for us grown-ups, and they let me come back to the exercises and the piano with a pleasant expectation every day.

Working with music is a wonderful way of turning away from the woes of the world for a little while. As we tire from all the dire news of the world, it's good to turn to a different perspective where all of us can find some deep enjoyment.

A few more comments from this grown-up SoftMozart beginner:

Hellene, you suggest doing 10 minutes per exercise. I suppose you mean by this, 10 minutes of real responding in the game, as shown in the lower left corner of the SoftMozart games.

I agree, that would be a nice time period -- if I could last that long! Currently I can do 5 minutes on each exercise. Some day in the future I hope to work up to 10 or 15 minutes.

Also, you suggest noting down the scores and watching them improve. Right, I couldn't agree more. Particularly if you get frustrated during the first few weeks when nothing seems to happen, this is a good way to show that you're actually going somewhere. Take down the score after you complete a set. So for example, do your exercise for 5 minutes, plus the time it takes to complete the set. Then when the scores slide down the page, note the score mentally, do ctrl-x to stop the program, and write the number down in an Excel sheet.

Hellene, in your post you speak about another duration exercise with butterflies and bugs. If you want me (or some of us) to try it out, just tell me. I'll gladly give you some feedback.

Hellene, you also say that some adults don't want to do "such silly games". This is a serious question which could determine future progress for the student, so please permit my ideas on this.

We adults should look "behind the game" to see what SoftMozart really offers us. When you look at the SoftMozart games carefully, from the point of view of both the music teacher and the computer programmer, you actually find a very sophisticated assisting device for learning the fundamentals of music.

Much thought has gone into every detail of this "game": the program slows down if you make too many errors, while it is "forgiving" when you just get one answer wrong. The programs also train all the various parts of learning separately: identifying the names of the notes, placing them on the staff, finding them on the keyboard, and distinguishing and identifying them by ear. Later, when you're more advanced, the program speeds up and you have to know all of these elements by heart in order to do well in the game.

One of the most exciting things I've experienced is that "my fingers knew faster than my mind". That is, I hear a sound in the "Guess Key" game, and my finger produces the correct echo sound before I can even think of the name of the note. This is like ten-finger typing, where you end up typing "and" or "to" before even saying it aloud to yourself. That's what the fundamentals of "the language of music" are. As far as I can tell, SoftMozart is one of the smoothest and easiest ways to get to that point of intuitive knowing.

For that reason, I have no problems playing around with hampers running after notes under a tree.

And just for clarity: These are just opinions of yet another SoftMusic buyer, I have no affiliation with Hellene or her company.

Only much gratitude. Thanks to Hellene and to all your helpers.