I have received several PMs asking about Soft Mozart so I am just going to post my reply here. Just to give a little background, I took several years of piano lessons at the insistence of my mother and HATED it! I loved music in general but just absolutely hated my weekly piano lessons. A large part of the reason was because I had so much difficulty sight-reading music and I was so frustrated with not being able to read music quickly and fluently. After finally getting my mother to agree to let me quit, I never even looked at another piece of music or touched a keyboard again - until I started teaching Ella. I always knew that I would like Ella to learn an instrument (or two), but I wanted to find a way to make her want to learn and have fun while doing it - very much like my approach to teaching her to read, to do math, to memorize ancient Chinese poems, etc. etc.
So when I first read about SM on this forum more than a year ago, I was immediately intrigued. People keep asking me why we chose SM over PW. Here are our personal reasons: (As a
disclaimer, I would like to clarify that I only saw videos and demo versions of PW and have not used the program itself, so if I say something erroneous about PW, I apologize and please
do correct me.)
- SM teaches solfegge as well as alphabet note names while PW does not.
- Both programs use colors and stickers initially to teach the child to play and recognize notes but I thought that the coloring system of SM was more logical and simple. SM uses only green and brown (for the treble and bass clef), enlarges the lines of the grand staff, and turns it sideways. These are all done to make it easier for children to see the position of the notes - which I think is analogous to Doman using really large red fonts to help babies see the words. (I remember trying to read sheet music as a young child and having so much difficulty trying to see whether the note falls on a line or a space, all the while trying to use the correct finger to press the correct key!) Then, as the child becomes more adept at reading notes, SM gradually transitions the child to reading regular sheet music much like Doman eventually reduces font size to more normal proportions as the babies' visual acuity develop.
- While PW uses one color for each note, SM uses a simple picture for each note that is related to the first syllable of its solfegge name, e.g. door for Do, rain for Re, mirror for Mi, ladder for La, etc. I thought it would be easier for Ella to learn to sight-read and sight-sing with SM. It would be more intuitive for Ella to see a note with a picture of a door, look for the key with the door sticker on it, press the key while singing "Do" at the same time. Rather than - see a red note, look for the key colored red, press the key, think and remember that red = Do, and sing "Do" at the same time. In my opinion, SM has made it really easy for her to learn to play the piano and sing solfegge at the same time.
- Based on the many videos we watched of kids playing both programs, we thought that the chances of Ella learning to sight read sheet music would be higher by using SM. That is, after all, the goal of using these programs, isn't it? To teach them how to sight read
regular sheet music and not just to be able to play by using crutches such as pictures or colors or by ear.
- SM also has games to teach music theory and perfect pitch. (I am not sure whether PW has these too.) I found that I can use the Guess Key game for ear training and that I could show level 4 of the Gentle Piano game for showing all the music pieces exactly like the Genogee videos from the Prodigy Mozart program. I liked that I can teach all of these by using just one program.
- The SM curriculum was laid out in a very concrete stepwise manner which I felt was doable even with the limited time I have for teaching.
That being said, there are several things about SM that could definitely use some improvement:
- The user interface is outdated! SM uses the computer keys for choosing options within the program rather than a mouse e.g. ctrl X for exit, F for choose a song, S for listen to a song, etc. It's not a deal-breaker for me (I just printed out a cheat sheet and taped it to the piano for easy reference.) but may be cumbersome for other people.
- The graphics may not be exciting for some children who are used to watching animated cartoons and 3D effects. Again, not a big deal for me since Ella does not watch a lot of cartoons. She definitely loves a good story, though, so in order to get her excited to play the Guess Key game (in which the object is to collect as many "fruits" into a basket as possible by pressing the right piano key), I made up an intricate tale about her favorite doll getting captured by a wicked witch and she has to collect as many baskets of fruits as possible to give to the witch everyday in exchange for her doll's freedom... something like that. I threw in a couple of dinosaurs and some flying monkeys for good measure (she is currently obssessed with dinosaurs and the Wizard of Oz)!
- I believe SM uses only Fixed Do and does not teach Movable Do - which is entirely fine by me as I happen to also believe in only teaching Fixed Do
in the beginning. But some people may have different ideas about this. I have decided to teach Ella using only the absolute system in the beginning because I think it is nearly impossible to explain Movable Do to a very young child. It is analogous to using the whole word approach in teaching babies to read because it would be impossible to try and explain phonics to a baby. Eventually, I do believe that she will need to learn both Fixed Do and Movable Do but I do not want to wait until she is old enough to understand the relative system for referring to pitch-class before starting to teach her. In the same sense, I believe that the best way to teach children how to read is to use both whole-word and phonics.
As to some other questions as to how difficult it was to set up, I am not particularly tech-savvy but did not have any problems with the installation and set up at all. You will need a piano keyboard with MIDI capability, a MIDI-USB connector, and a computer. Basically, we just plugged in the keyboard to the computer using the MIDI connector, plugged in a USB key that came with the SM package, installed the program, and ran it.
This is the piano keyboard that we have:
http://www.amazon.com/Yamaha-YPT-310-Sensitive-32-Note-Polyphony/dp/B000YC05AE/ref=pd_sxp_f_i We decided on this one because:
1. It has a MIDI connection for connecting to the computer.
2. It has a Touch Response feature (striking a key harder will produce a louder sound, striking it softer will produce a softer sound) and responds like an acoustic piano.
3. The keys do NOT light up which was what we were specifically looking for to make it less distracting for a toddler.
4. It did not have a sustain pedal but we could get one cheaply and connect it to the keyboard easily when the need arises.
5. Great product reviews on Amazon.
and we have this MIDI-USB connector:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000I1Q58W/ref=oss_productOur long-term plan for Ella's music education is:
1. continue SM for teaching piano and sight-reading music
2. start Suzuki violin when she is 3 - 3.5 years old
3. start formal piano lessons once we think she has gotten all she could out of the SM program.
4. have her decide eventually which instrument she would like to pursue (maybe she will want to do both!
)
5. introduce her to traditional Chinese orchestra instruments like the guzheng (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guzheng) and the erhu (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhu) and see if maybe she would be interested in learning how to play one.
Digg
