CREATIVE MUSIC
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The Pitfalls of Traditional Music Education. Don't be another victim!
1. Ever wonder why after taking years of music lessons,
you still can't play as good as you want to?
2. Ever wonder how some can play beautifully,
and they don't even read music?
QUESTIONS:
ANSWER:
Those who can play beautifully, and can play any song without reading music have taken a different music education path.
A path that many people take that has not been documented until now.
The problem is that many people don't see the problem with traditional music education until many years down their education path.
Many do not even know there is a problem until it is brought to their attention.
CREATIVE MUSIC is the first company that openly exposes the problem and presents a formal solution that can be followed by anyone. Now anybody can play without years of boring lessons and reading music. Follow the same path that so many others have taken.
The "Adventures in Harmony Course" is the only course that guarantees results and formalizes a music education path that has been "underground" for hundreds of years. Our iphone app is a digital version of our course reference manuals. The full course is over 1200 pages in nine volumes.
THE PROBLEM:
Playing by ear is the ability to play songs on your keyboard instrument without reading sheet music.Imagine being able to play any song with beautiful chords without reading music!
I am sure most people have experienced an individual that can play a keyboard instrument beautifully; and it seems like that person can play anything, but the strange thing is that they are not reading any music. And more often than not, it also the case that this person cannot even read music.
How are they able to do this?
You may have even asked them how they do it; and their response is usually that they “Play by Ear,” and you walk away satisfied with that response.
Why do you walk away satisfied with that response? It is because in your mind, when you hear that response, you have a preconception that this was some sort of gift from God that enabled this person to play without music.
Even the words themselves “Play by Ear”, do not accurately describe what is happening when the musician is playing without music.
This is not a gift from god or some ability that they were born with. This is something that they have actually learned to do. It’s true that they may not have had any formal instruction, but the knowledge they have gained was sufficient for them to be able to play. What they have learned, was probably learned in bits and pieces in a non-formal setting.
They were able to put these bits of information together and achieve the result of being able to play without reading music.
The fact that their learning was in a non-formal setting further hinders their ability to articulate how they are able to play without music.
In short, they did not take the path of traditional music education, but the knowledge that they have learned consisted of only the essentials and they were able to put it together and create harmony.
The material that is presented in the “Adventures in Harmony Course” by Creative Music, formalizes this non-traditional path of music instruction that many individuals have experienced for hundreds of years. Nowhere else will you find this information formally documented step-by-step that will enable you to play the keyboard instrument without reading music.
Music education has not changed in the last century, and Creative Music is on the forefront of turning that around. The "Adventures in Harmony Course" is re-inventing how music has been taught for the last century.
Imagine trying to find this type of instruction and telling a piano teacher that you want to learn to play, but you don’t want to learn to read music.
This type of instruction does not exist, at least not in a formal environment. In addition, if you approached an instructor and said you didn’t want to waste time learning to read music they will probably look at you like you were crazy.
In the path of traditional music instruction, you will spend years learning about the different kinds of notes and notations. The way in which this information is taught in a formal environment is in the context your learning to play different songs.
You are essentially learning to read music, and you will spend many years learning this skill of reading music. This is not where you want to be. You want to learn to create music.
The music that you are reading has already been “created,” and your playing is nothing more than you repeating something that has already been created. After many years of reading music, you will become are a puppet or slave to sheet music.
The person that created the sheet music has the skill and knowledge that you need to acquire!
The person that created the sheet music has the skill to harmonize. Harmonization is the ability select chords that correspond to a melody. If you have the ability to harmonize a melody, there is no need to ever rely on sheet music.
There is no need to go down that traditional path of music instruction and waste all those years learning to read music. With the material in the course by Creative Music, you can be one of those individuals that have learned to play the keyboard in weeks instead of years. Now your focus can be on creating music instead of reading music.
Traditional Music Education – The Irony
If you look at the academic landscape of courses of study available, anybody can get a degree in just about anything. For example, an individual admitted to a university can choose to get a degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Bio Chemistry, or Nuclear Physics. No prior experience or knowledge is necessary, and the institution will provide you an opportunity to become an expert in a disciple of your choosing.
But wait a second, the one thing anyone cannot do, is get a degree in music! In order to get a degree in music you must already be an expert on your instrument of choice. You must already be able to bring that expertise to the table before you are admitted into a music program.
Hmmm, anybody can get a degree in for example bio-chemistry but not music?
What’s wrong with this picture?
QUESTION: If they already want you to be an expert, then where do you get this knowledge and experience?
ANSWER: On Your Own!
To be admitted to a music program for performance you must already be an expert on your instrument of choice!!!
They already expect you to know how to play!
QUESTION: Then what are you going to learn in college?
ANSWER: What you are going to learn in college is the theory and not how to play. They are going to teach you how to read all of those notes.
There are so many individuals out there that can play up a storm; but they do not know one bit of theory and many times cannot read a lick of music.
These individuals can usually run circles around anybody who was brought up in the traditional music education route.
The Pitfall of the Traditional Music Education Route
There exists a class of individuals who may have been taking music lessons or playing for many years. I personally know individuals who have been playing for over 20 years. They play beautifully, except for one thing. If you take the music away from them, they can’t play a thing.
It’s almost as if all their training has been focused on reading music.
With traditional music education that is where the focus of instruction lies.
READING MUSIC!!!! And there lies the heart of the problem!
History
Let’s take a closer look at the traditional music education path and see where some of the faults lie. This is usually the path that is followed after you find a teacher or book to provide instruction:
1) You spend a considerable amount of time learning all the different types of notes:
Quarter-notes, half-notes, eighth- notes, etc.
The learning of these notes is usually done in the context of a song, and with
each song you are introduced to more complex notes and notations.
Dotted notes tied notes, triplets, repeat symbols, etc.
2) So every week you learn a new song and get introduced to a new type of note
or symbol. The music gets more and more complicated and you continually
get introduced to understanding and reading new symbols.
3) Eventually you will get introduced to chords. There are tens of thousands of
chords. You may be unfortunate to go down the path of being introduced to new
chords at each lesson. This further prolongs the process of learning to play your
instrument. You find yourself in the situation where you cannot play a song
because you have not yet learned a chord that appears in the music. You then find
yourself referring to these Chord Charts and Chord Dictionaries to look up
new chords. If you had the proper instruction, there is never a need to look up a
chord. Any chord can easily be created simply by its name. There is a
method to being able to create chords; there is really never a need to refer to these
chords dictionaries.
4) In between all of this madness of learning about notes and chords there are the
dreaded scales, do-re-me-fa-so-la-ti-do, where you may spend weeks and
weeks playing and learning to play all of the scales.
This cycle can continue for years in the context of you being introduced to reading different types of music and learning new songs and chords. It can be a never ending cycle that can go on for years.
In playing a song that is written on a piece of sheet music, you are doing nothing more than playing a song that has already been harmonized. Harmonization is the process of adding chords to a melody. Therefore; in playing what is written on a piece of sheet music, you are playing a song that has already been harmonized. You are essentially going nowhere fast.
Here you are taking years of lessons and the person who has had no formal instruction plays much better than you and is playing in weeks and not years.
Your goal is to learn to play, all that technical stuff about reading music can wait until later.
In order to play by ear, you need to be able to do your own harmonization. Playing sheet music is nothing more than you repeating something that has already been harmonized by somebody else.
In short traditional music education is focused on reading music, and that is not where you want to be!
In the material presented by Creative Music, you are shown show step-by-step how harmonize your favorite songs with beautiful chord changes so that you will never need sheet music again.
Play by Ear Education
The instructional material in the Adventures in Harmony course by CREATIVE MUSIC goes against the grain of all traditional music education to date. There is no formal instruction on learning to play by ear as it will be presented in this course.
The method of instruction that is presented in the course by Creative Music is not very well accepted by the music education “purists.” They have the preconception that there is no other way other than the formal education route and that you must put in the years and hours just as they did. They believe that there is no short cut and that the long hard road is the only way.
They are so caught up on the academic and formalities and forget that music is an art. Creativity is the key and rules are meant to be broken. If traditional rules of music and harmony were not broken, many genres of music would not exist today.
If one were to strictly follow the rules that are taught in formal traditional music education and those that exist in harmony theory, the resulting music would sound very boring and bland. These individuals are so caught up on theory or formality they cripple the creative side of the art.
Their focus is on the wrong thing. Let’s not argue over the semantics of whether a note should be called (Gb) or an (F#).
That is not of any importance in the context of being able to play music.
In the material presented by Creative Music you are taught the bare essentials and not burden you with complicated music theory. The concepts are communicated to you in plain simple language.
As we mentioned earlier the words themselves “Play by Ear”, do not accurately describe what is happening when the musician is playing without reading music.
What is actually occurring is the person is choosing chords that sound good to their ear in harmonizing a melody. This is not some gift that they were born with. Anybody can easily learn to do this.
Until now, this act of “playing by ear” has not been formally documented. Creative Music will present it to you step-by-step so that you can easily apply it to songs of your choice.
The material and method that is presented has been used for hundreds of years by thousands of musicians. Up until now this material and method has usually only been passed on by word of mouth, and is definitely not the focus of any initial and beginning instruction on a keyboard instrument.
Are you buying DVDs to further your music education?
Then read the information below…..
THE DVD EDUCATION ILLUSION:
There is an extremely large market of websites that are selling DVDs as a method of instruction for learning to play piano. These DVDs tend to feature an accomplished musician as the “instructor.”
The musicians on these DVDs play extremely well. The thought is that since this individual can play very well, they can share their knowledge with you, and that you will learn how to play like them.
These DVDs tend to have very attractive sounding titles that contain such words as:
1) Master Class
2) Secrets Revealed
3) Instructional DVD
These DVDs also tend to be advertised with shorts video clips showing the musician playing. These video clips, in combination with the DVD title, and your desire to play like them are usually enough to lure you into making the purchase.
If you have not yet had the experience to receive or use one of the DVDs, there are q few things that you need to know. The content of these DVDs all seem to follow the same theme.
1) The first thing is that you will get a DVD containing video of the musician playing songs. While they are playing, the camera will be pointed at the keyboard.
This single issue alone deserves much discussion, think about what you just purchased; at first glance all seems well;
a) You are going to get a close-up view of what this musician is playing.
b) You are going to get to see it all.
c) Nothing will be hidden.
THE DVD EDUCATION REALITY:
But in reality that is all that you are getting; Just a video of someone playing.
- Just as if you had purchased a ticket to a concert.
- The only difference is that you have a good view.
The reality is you are not getting any instruction, and the sad thing about this is that you are probably unaware that you are not getting any instruction; we will talk about this more shortly. What you are getting is a “show” of the musician showing their talents. What you will usually see on the DVD is several videos of the musician playing various songs.
There will usually be two videos of each example song.
1) The first video will be a video of the musician playing the song. The song is played at full speed by the musician allowing you to see the end result. The
camera is pointed at the keyboard so that you can view the “performance.”
2) The second video is the “hook” where you think that you are getting instruction.
They usually call this video the “breakdown.”
This breakdown is a video of the musician playing the same song in “slow motion.” The musician will usually play the song for you chord-by chord,
one at a time. In fact they will usually even call out the notes in the chord note-by-note.
The funny thing about this is usually on the screen along with you watching the musician play, there is a digital representation of the keyboard on the screen that lights up all of the notes that the musician is playing as the play, and this keyboard has all of the notes labeled on the screen.
So there really is no need for the musician to call out the notes in the chord note-by-note. You can simple look at the screen and see all of the notes.
There is no need for anybody to call out the notes. We can all read. This seems like an insult to our intelligence and a big waste of time.
THE WASTE AND MONEY IN THEIR POCKET:
What better way to create a 2-3 hour DVD than to waste time calling out the notes in a song note-by-note.
A five hour DVD sounds fantastic right in the advertising right?
But most of the time is spent calling out notes! How silly!
We can all see the notes lit up on the on the digital representation of the keyboard on the screen, stop wasting time calling out the notes!
How about giving us some real instruction?
Let’s take a closer look at one reason why this is not anything of instructional value and why this is the wrong educational focus for anyone trying to learn to play a keyboard instrument.
The sad thing is that you are being steered in the wrong direction and not even know it! They are failing to give you a critical piece of information that would turn the DVD into instruction. With the current content of the DVD, you are doing nothing more than engaging in an exercise in memorization.
You are essentially memorizing how they played the song, so that you can achieve the end result of playing that song exactly like them. If you play exactly like them, and they sound good, then you sound good…….. You think so?
Sounds great right? Now you sound good, just like them! That is fantastic, right? WRONG!
Think about what you just did, you engaged in a grueling exercise in memorization. What did you really learn?
You learned how good or bad your memory is and this has nothing to do with advancing your music education!
THE ISSUES:
There is a whole list of issues with what just happened in your memorizing songs and the most serious I will save for last.
1) You just memorized a song (however painful that was), and now you sound good,
but wait, you can only play that song. Of what value is that?
a) Now you have to go through that same process again to learn another song.
That’s crazy. You will be on this endless cycle of memorizing songs.
b) You have to go through the effort of finding versions of songs that have
already been harmonized and chorded so that you can memorize them and
“sound good.”
c) You are essentially asking for chords. I am sure you have all been on websites
and forums where people are asking for chords or posting chords for
songs. Again nothing more than memorization exercises.
2) The songs and harmonization’s that are on these DVDs and forum postings are
songs selected by somebody else; they may not necessarily be the songs that you
want to play. So you find yourself on this endless search of completed song
harmonizations.
3) Another end result is that you are playing the song exactly how they played it. Why
would you want to do this? Why would you want to sound exactly like somebody
else? That person sounds like them, why can’t you sound like you?
THE TRUTH
You may not be aware of this, but you just purchased a DVD that is only showing you the end result. That end result is that the musician on the DVD has already harmonized the song that they are playing, and they are telling you resulting chords for the song that they are playing.
There is a step that is missing that they are not sharing with you!
They are not telling how they came up with those chords!
They are not telling you where those chords came from!
They are not telling you how they turned the simple version of that song as it was
originally written into the beautiful chords that they are playing.
They know how to do it! They are keeping this information from you! And they
can probably do it on any song instantly!
What you are getting and what they are showing you on the DVD are the only end results. They are not sharing this key piece of information with you, and that’s the instruction that you need! They have this knowledge and they are not sharing it with you. The musicians on these DVDs can already play and not telling you how they arrived at this end result.
They are simply showing you the end result.
As I indicated before, these DVDs are nothing more than a show. These DVDs are not providing the instruction that you need to get you where the person on the DVD is. Of course they want you to keep buying DVDs. If they told you this secret you would not need them anymore.
You need to learn to harmonize songs on your own
That is what they are doing. They are harmonizing melodies and creating beautiful chord sequences.
You would not need to purchase any DVDs ever again if you knew how to do this.
You are missing this critical instructional component that is going to put you in the position that they are in!
You probably didn’t even know that this piece of information was not being shared with you. You probably didn’t even know that this is the key to advancing your musicianship.
The real goal for you is for you to be able to harmonize the songs of your choice and not rely on anybody else.
If you knew how to harmonize you would never have to rely on anybody else again.
Again, harmonization is where you are able to take a line of melody notes, even a simple one finger melody, and add beautiful chord changes.
THIS IS NOT A GIFT THAT THEY WERE BORN WITH!
Again you are not getting a full description of what they are doing. And in this case it’s not that they are hiding anything from you, it’s the fact that they probably cannot explain the process.
The reason for this is because they did not learn to play the piano by the traditional method. They learned a different way.
They learned by a method that is not formally taught but has been passed on for hundreds of years.
You have seen this many times. There is a class of people that can play the keyboard who don’t read any music.
In fact, many of them cannot read music!
Here is a bit of irony on that issue.
There are individuals that have had years and years of music lessons. Give them a sheet of music and they can play anything. But, take the music away and they cannot play a thing!
If you put that person who can read music up against the person who cannot read music, the person that cannot read music can run circles around the person who can read music and has had years of music lessons. How can that be?
Again, the person who can play without reading music learned differently. They did not learn through traditional music lessons! They took a different path.
There are so many who play without reading music, BUT nobody is teaching this method.
This method is essentially learned in the streets, behind closed doors. No where will you find any formal instruction on this method. This method has its origins in the Black Church. You see it all the time; they play beautifully without reading music and usually can’t read music.
THIS TECHNIQUE CAN BE APPLIED TO ANY TYPE OF MUSIC.
It’s nothing more than harmonization.
As we mentioned earlier, the traditional music education path is faulty
1) You spend a considerable amount of time learning all the different types of notes, quarter-notes, half-notes, eighth- notes, etc. You spend A LOT of time getting introduced to all these different types of notes. Think about it, dotted notes tied notes, etc. Your learning these notes is usually done in the context of a song.
2) So every week you learn a new song and get introduced to a new type of note. This in itself can go on for years. The music get more and more complicated and you move on to understanding more and more of the symbols on the sheet music and you may get into learning chords. Again this can continue for YEARS.
3) The whole focus of traditional music education is READING SHEET MUSIC. This sheet music is the end result of music that has already been harmonized. Sound familiar? Why would you want to play the song exactly how it was written on the sheet music?
Just as an example, if you play exactly what is written in a hymn book, it is boring and uninteresting.
The musicians who are playing without sheet music don’t give a crap about whether a note is a whole note or quarter note. They have no interest in playing it how it was written.
They play it how they feel it goes. They may know the song already and have a pretty good idea of the melody. There is no need to read any music.
The person who plays without music has skipped this step!!
The person who plays without music is playing beautifully while you are still learning about notes. You are stuck in a box that you cannot get out of.
You are stuck relying on other peoples harmonizations and reading music!
STOP WASTING YEARS LEARNING ABOUT NOTES AND READING MUSIC.
LEARN HARMONIZATION
LEARN HOW TO PLAY NOW!!!
DON’T FALL VICTIM TO THE TRADITIONAL PATH OF MUSIC EDUCATION
LEARN HOW TO HARMONIZE!
