“I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning.” – Plato
Patterns. Shapes. The geometric simplicity of the chord matrix on the piano is an infinite fountain of music, once one is familiar with it. And yet, so many are not. It’s so simple in its construction, with a finite number of fixed parts that move by the physics of numbered tones. It’s like a jungle gym you can swing on and whose intricacies can be learned and demystified. And yet most people learning music out there aren’t shown this incredibly fundamental information and miss out on most or all of the context behind what they are playing. And it doesn’t have to be that way.
By learning to read notation, students are learning a skill to phonetically reproduce what is on the page by a system of dots and lines on staff paper. It is meant to turn the player into a sort of human phonograph needle, as that is how music was “recorded” before electricity. However, unless there is separate instruction in the basics of music WITHOUT notation, often students don’t know there is anything else there to know or be aware of. Then they wonder why all they can do is play sheet music and have no ability to improvise, write music or play by ear. That can be very frustrating and it unfortunately happens to a lot of students who take traditional notation-based music lessons.
This is all easy to remedy, starting with the notation-free book/DVD The Key of One, which gives you the basics for understanding music with no sheet music involved at all. If you are scratching your head because you thought that sheet music IS music and can’t imagine what else there is, then you’re a perfect candidate for learning The Key of One way! Isn’t it time you learned how to truly PLAY the piano and explore the music within you? Learn how chords really work and how shapes and patterns overlap so we can find the commonality everywhere and boil it down to the simplest formula. Plato knew the value of the “patterns in music” as a most important key to learning. There’s no better time or reason to open the door to music and enrich your life! Learn more HERE.