These are not your mother’s piano lessons

By Carol Purcell
Sun contributor
What if I told you there is a method that teaches you to play great music of many styles — jazz, pop, ballads, classical and blues —from your first lesson? What if I told you this broad-based music education method would teach you accompaniment skills, composition, improvisation, the ability to read music and to read lead sheets? Would you think I’d gone around the bend?

Four months ago that’s what I would have thought too.
I love playing the piano and I love to sing. I learned to play piano the way most people do: by using a reading-based, traditional approach. The traditional approach requires that the student be able to read music before they can actually play anything, including reading notes by name, note values (as in rhythm), knowing what the different clef symbols mean and even some words and symbols in Italian. If that sounds like a lot to tackle at once it’s because it is. This traditional approach fails more often than it succeeds, and so many people quit so soon after they began. A social anthropologist from Berkley California even stated that piano lessons have the highest failure rate of any taught subject.
The only reason I didn’t become one of those statistics is because my mother forced me to stick with it for the first seven years. It wasn’t much fun for me and it was probably less fun for my mother, and that’s largely why I’ve avoided teaching piano for years, even when asked to … until I heard about Simply Music.
Simply Music takes a playing-based approach rather than a reading-based approach. It is multi-sensory and uses its own unique set of concepts and language. The reading process is delayed until the students have a large repertoire of fantastic sounding music, and the reading is introduced in an equally unique fashion. Neil Moore from Australia developed this method. The main premise of Simply Music is that everyone is innately and profoundly musical. Its main goal is to give music to every individual as a companion in life — to able to sit down and play a large variety of musical styles and genres at any place and any time. Simply Music was born when Moore was asked to teach a young blind boy and came up with a system that works very well for everyone.
I am so excited to have been licensed to teach this method and I can’t wait to share it with others. How many times have I heard someone say “Oh, I wish I could play the piano” or “You’re so lucky that you can just sit down and play.” Now I can help people make that wish come true in a way that is fun and effective. Simply Music works very well with children, teens, adults and senior citizens, and it has also been used in prisons and inner city schools as well as at home and in the group environment. One of the many things I’d like to do is teach groups of adults. Can you imagine “adults night out” playing the piano?
My currents students range from children, to teens, to adults and they are all succeeding.
For example, I have an adult student who sustained a closed head injury 20 years ago. She is a traditionally trained pianist, but because of her injury she lost the ability to process technical data and, consequently, much of her piano skills. With the Simply Music method she will find a way to reprogram her brain so that she can regain her piano skills, like others with closed head injuries have done. In only five lessons my student has learned several new songs and arrangements. There are many inspiring stories about all kinds of people who have discovered the joys of successfully playing the piano with the Simply Music method, and you can read about them at www.simplymusic.com.
The Simply Music website is a great resource for students and teachers alike. All teachers of this method (currently in four countries) are connected by the ECL email communication link, meaning that anyone can share a question, comment or experience in cyberspace. Because we all keep records in the same manner and follow the same program, if I teach a student in Glen Arbor who moves to another city in the winter, that person can easily continue with the program with a different teacher. Or if no teacher is available the student can use a home video course until they return to Glen Arbor.
Only someone who has been licensed by the Simply Music organization and has gone through the training program with the founder can teach the SM method. Training is ongoing as the teacher learns new levels and supplementary programs. If I have questions or problems Moore is always available by phone or email and his many years of experience as a teacher and as a coach of teachers is invaluable.
I am currently conducting introductory sessions for Simply Music. An introductory session is an information event for people interested in finding out more about Simply Music. They are free and last about one hour. I’d be happy to talk to you in person, on the phone or to see you at an introductory session if you are interested in this method for yourself, for someone else or if you are just curios. Call me at (231) 645-5370 or visit www.simplymusic.com for more information.