I am really glad to see that you have a contact person available and a system in place for handling tech issues.
Yes, we handle technical issues by emails or phone calls.
After reading your book and spending the better part of the last 2 weeks doing "research" - reading through several piano teaching forums and music teaching forums online that were discussing and reviewing the various methods (traditional, suzuki, soft mozart, piano wizard, etc.) - I am leaning heavily towards Soft Mozart as the best introductory program for teaching piano to my toddler.
I am glad that you had been conducting such a research! Education is our power!
The only two issues that were bothering me were
1) the availability of tech support and the quality of after-sales customer service and
Well, we are a small company. It means, we don’t have 24/7 support, BUT we treat our customers like family and friends. I am personally always reachable for teaching advice and Valeri is very helpful in technical support. We maintain the relationship with our clients for years,
2) the relatively smaller library of available songs for download.
Well, the purpose of the Soft Mozart system is not a ‘fish’, but a ‘net to get it’. We teach students to read music. Of cause, the library is going to be extending, but we’ll always keep the ultimate goal in mind.
Although I am barely musically literate (as per your definition of music literacy) and I don't have any background whatsoever on music pedagogy, a lot of things that you explained in your book made sense to me. I was reminded of the time when I first encountered Doman's philosophy and was reading his books, I was also NOT a reading teacher and had zero experience in teaching children to read. But Doman's (and Dr. Titzer's) theories just made sense to me. They also had their share of detractors (mainly those who were teaching reading using the "traditional = accepted" method) and they also did not have scientifically conducted long term studies to back up their theories. I found that those were also the two s people kept harping about in the forums when criticizing SM.
I believe that all the effective methods in different fields look different on surface, but they all… the same using nothing else, but common sense!
On the other hand, I did find some very honest and useful reviews from long-time piano teachers who have been teaching by traditional piano methods who then subsequently switched to using SM - and those were the reviews that influenced my decision the most. Anyway, I think I have the answers to most of the questions I have after reading through the other forums. There are just a few more that I hope you can answer:
1) When working with a 27-month-old, what is the recommended teaching schedule? Of course, I understand that every child is different and to always follow the child so that learning is fun, but I just want to know if you have a suggested schedule to use as a guide. I will be teaching her myself initially so I would like to know what the time commitment is like.
If you familiar with Maria Montessori approach, it would be a right way to explain my philosophy of teaching kid at home. We have to surround your child with materials and let him/her browse through it whenever interest occurs. BUT, once a day it should be ‘lesson time’! When I have students that young, I use many games from the system and we play them 1-2 minutes to switch for another one. I will email a year lesson plan to you – it would give you an idea, what is the best way to juggle them. As soon as the child is being introduced to all the games, the algorithms will take care of the rest. Child will compete just with oneself and your role in a process to monitor results and to reward.
2) As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am planning to eventually have her take piano lessons, preferably from an SM-trained teacher, but if I can't find one, will she have difficulty going into a traditional piano method? How long can she learn piano using SM before she needs personal instruction by a piano teacher?
As you probably had read already, Soft Mozart IS a traditional method. It is not in any conflict with any conventional approaches, Therefore, our students are not having any problems with any other teachers. You also may recommend your piano teacher in the area to contact me for training. It doesn’t take long, it is not costly and it is pretty beneficial for teacher’s career. Certificate is getting issued upon some test results.
How long? It is very interesting question. Soft Mozart is being used even in university level for sight-reading improvement and ear training.
3) When teaching young kids, how long do they usually take before they are able to transition to reading normal sheet music? How about adults who are learning piano for the first time?
It is very individual! I have some 3-4 year old kids who reads original notation in couple of months and I have adults who struggle with elementary notation for a long time. My personal observation is – it depends of coordination and fine motor skills, but I don’t have any research on that.
Here is a video of a girl from Madrid. She is not my student, but student of my trainee, a pianist performer:
<![CDATA[<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/DjuJEIfR2XA&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/DjuJEIfR2XA&rel=1</a>]]>Thanks for reading this long post!
Thank you for writing it! I love to deal with people like you, who care and learn. Feel free to contact me any time!
Digg
