Digital technology as a favor for music education

7.

The second stumbling block, when reading musical text, is the temporal nature of musical language.

That is, the untrained eyes of a student are required to not only isolate distinct abstract objects on the staff (the notes themselves), which is already a significant challenge, but also hold in mind the duration of the object in relation to the other notes on the staff.

From the viewpoint of immediately gratifying a student’s cognitive requests, THIS approach to reading music pales in comparison not only to computer games, but also to the most difficult teaching materials used in secondary schools.

Only the musically gifted children can cope with such a complex task: relying on their musical memory, perfect hearing and good coordination. This explains why, at the completion of music school, most children do not want to open new sheet music and "disassemble" musical works on their own.

How the “Soft Mozart” program solves the problems of visualizing notation and maintaining the tempo of music.

As I mentioned earlier, by turning the Grand Staff vertical instead of horizontal, I managed to make the keyboard long instead of wide. I visually expanded the lines to the same width as the spaces between them because in the language of music, lines and spaces contain equally important information.

I created special stickers and key guides, which help identify each note with the piano key. I made music notes bigger and marked them with identifying colors and pictures. Thus I succeeded in creating music that even the untrained eye of a beginner could use to help divide and recognize individual notes.

But even with such simplification, I was unable to help students perceive notes as well as I wanted. There are always many different notes on a page of music, and they are not sitting on lines as words are in written language, but more like on a chess-board, all over the place.

At that moment, the idea was born to cross the Grand Staff with “a focus line” or “a visual line” to flash out the structure of the music vertically. On this focus line, notes were not only presented as notes, but also in an animated picture. When the correct key is found and pressed, the beginner sees a flower bud. It helps him to:

- fix his sight on the note;
- find the key, corresponding to this note;
- press this key and see if the action was correct (the interactive animation immediately helps to understand if the note was right as well as how to correct the mistake, if the wrong key was pressed);
- hear at once the exact pitch of the note played;
- understand and remember the name of the note, get the ability to say its name and even to read it;
- analyze the position of the note in the system;
- see the flower coming out, thereby understanding each note’s duration.



Such an approach helped make reading notes even easier for children than reading a book. Now even 2-year-old children can read at least from one to three notes at once. Moreover, playing in both clefs becomes a reality from the very first music lessons.

8.

It's hard to overestimate the importance of these skills for a child’s developing intelligence. With the “Soft Mozart” program, toddlers can develop the following important skills, which can be useful in their lives:

- manual dexterity;

- the ability to select small subjects;

- the ability to read line-by-line (to refocus from one small subject to another) without a pointer;

- the ability to listen to and remember sounds and how they are related to particular notes;

- the ability to play, sing and remember the note at once;

- direct interaction with musical text;

- the development of an ear for music, memory and musical thinking.

This list can be continued on and on. Today I have invited the teachers who use “Soft Mozart" system in different countries and with different types of students to add their ideas, too. They will help me expand this list, to enrich it with their observations and to share their experiences with you.

To sum up, I will review an important issue: How can we solve the problem of giving an immediate solution to a cognitive question in the “Soft Mozart” program?

In my opinion, this problem is the most important one for schools in this digital century. Luckily, the immediate feedback offered by the “Soft Mozart” system solves this problem perfectly. Almost before the child can wonder if he is playing a note correctly, he sees the animated icon telling him he is correct. If he isn’t correct, he immediately sees what to do differently.

Direct interaction with the Grand Staff by playing the piano keys and the ability to see at once the result of their actions—these are the instant answers to cognitive queries made by any “Soft Mozart” students. They can analyze their progress all by themselves.

Students communicate with the music hand-to-hand and get immediate and constant support of their actions from a very patient computer program that never lets its frustration show.

Thus the students not only improve their skills, but develop self-confidence and a feeling of control over their own progress.

[/b]

It increases considerably the feeling of confidence and self-respect as well as the desire to continue learning. In this system, students decide whether or not they want to receive an external grade from friends or professionals or other people around them.

As such, it becomes a well thought out and deliberate decision. Such interaction between a student and a teacher is more effective than just letting the student passively take in information, without really asking or getting answers to any of their important questions.


Evaluation system.

The combination of a computer and an electronic instrument has allowed us to make an accurate computation system. It doesn't only develop and improve skills, but it makes this progress fascinating and venturesome (in the finest sense of the word). The student's progress is counted accurately within a second and within a note.

Students get a fair evaluation of their actions; they see themselves gradually improving their rates of accuracy as they try again. This is an atomic stimulus for students. Our system today is useful for 16-month-old children, who first discover music in their lives, when finding the first note and the key that corresponds to it. Using our system, music school students while sight-reading can know exactly how many mistakes and rhythmical errors they have made, where they were made and how they can correct them.

Today I'm sure we have made the right steps to create a total music education. The results of using this system have shown me that we are on the right track, that we have to continue developing in this direction.