Ages 5+ | in groups of 2-3 students |
45 minute classes
Begin the journey of learning piano the way children naturally learn music - by immersion through listening, movement, singing and other essential activities designed for music development.
What is in a beginning
singing + piano class?
Music Moves for Piano approaches piano the way children naturally learn music: to hear and play with understanding. Like learning a language, music must be learned in the proper sequential order to meaningfully learn music long-term. Research-based activities that are essential for their musical development include:
• Rich Musical Content
Songs in various tonalities
Chants in duple, triple and uneven meters
• Movement and Body Awareness
Rhythm, meter and other musical elements are first felt in the body
• Tonal and Rhythm Patterns
Building vocabularies of musical content
• Listening with Musical Understanding
Readiness for reading standard notation
• Healthy Keyboard Technique
Emphases on weight, alignment and forearm movement
Start with 3rd finger playing
• Playing Short Pieces
• Creativity and Improvisation
Additional guidance to support learning with at-home activities on Google Slides will be provided.
FALL SESSION
9/9/2024 - 1/30/2025
Mondays 2:45-3:30 2nd year students or new 8+yo
Mondays 3:30-4:15 1 spot left
Mondays 4:15-5:00 full
Tuesdays 4:15-5:00 full
Wednesdays 2:45-3:30 2nd year students or new 8+yo
Wednesdays 3:30-4:15 full
Wednesdays 4:15-5:00 full
Fridays 2:45-3:30 2nd year students or new 8+yo
Fridays 3:30-4:15 full
Earlier times for preschool and homeschool students can be arranged.
Private piano lessons are 30 minutes.
Tuition $110/month Sept-June
15 weekly classes per semester
Location 1070 Pleasant Street, Worcester
(First Congregational Church in Worcester
across the street from Tatnuck Magnet School)
“A musician who audiates must internalize music and not merely imitate it or memorize it. Imitation–even perfect imitation–is shallow and fleeting. To audiate…they must process musical information. And to do that, they must learn to understand music. A lifetime job.”
— Eric Bluestine from The Way Children Learn Music
A Music Learning Theory (MLT) approach to piano
A need for updated music instruction
How a child begins their piano studies will directly impact their relationship to music and any instrument for life. At Song’s Keys, students will be given the essential tools to learn music the way children naturally learn in order to meaningfully understand what they hear, sing and play.
Goals + Skills of MLT-Informed Beginning Piano
• Learn to hear and think musically
• Sing and chant in multiple tonalities and meters
• Develop pitch awareness and tonal accuracy
• Develop rhythmic elements of flow, pulse and meter
• Build a vocabulary of rhythm, tonal and harmonic patterns
• Move and play to steady beats in two different meters
• Coordinate the body, arm and hand using healthy technique to play the keys
• Explore and create with keyboard sounds
• Play short pieces and improvise with patterns
• Differentiate between beat levels, duple and triple meters and other contrasting elements
Beginning Piano with Traditional Methods
X Wastes time and energy teaching non-essentials while sacrificing what children really need musically
X Dependent on music notation and the 5-line staff without musical understanding
X Introduces 5-finger playing prematurely
X Lacks exposure to a variety of rich musical content
X Implements the wrong order of how we learn music
X Not built on evidence-based research of both musical development and overall child development
X Misses the most important skill of musicianship - to hear and play music with understanding
Learn more about MLT-based Piano with this video by Felicity Breen
What and how should a child learn music? What makes a good piano lesson?
Perhaps you picture a child learning the musical alphabet and reading notes on a staff. Or you may remember learning middle C at your first piano lesson. In contrast, Music Moves for Piano classes are designed with vastly different goals that are developmentally appropriate for starting to learn music and is an ideal setting for a beginner at any age (starting at 5 years old) to learn piano. The body is our main instrument, and children learn by moving, listening with understanding, singing and creating. Beginning with what is most essential and with the focus on developing audiation (to hear and think music with understanding), active and engaging activities foster children’s innate musicality and creativity.
When do they learn to read music?
Let’s compare reading language to reading music. When we read words and sentences, we already have a basic understanding of the language with years of a speaking vocabulary. When children learn to decode notes on the staff before establishing aural understanding of music, it is not true literacy. While it may seem as if they are reading music, they are simply decoding abstract symbols. Meaningful understanding of musical syntax is absent, and when the “reading” becomes more challenging, children quickly lose interest and connection to playing. Even traditional ear training usually misses developing audiation.
With Music Moves for Piano, while students will experience exposure to visual symbols, they will acquire a wealth of comprehensive skills and musical understanding in the optimal order with Keyboard Games A, B, and Book 1 before beginning formal reading and writing in Book 2.
Learn more about Music Moves for Piano by Marilyn Lowe
What is the best way to learn a language? By immersion. Same with music.
The learning sequence for language (and music)
1 LISTEN -> 2 SPEAK (perform) -> 3 THINK + CONVERSE (audiate + improvise) -> 4 READ + WRITE
How do we learn language by immersion? First by listening, imitating words, conversing, then going on to read and write. This sequence applies to how we learn music. The field of piano pedagogy is largely dominated by old-school tradition rooted in the late 1800s, yet traditional methods have not fundamentally changed with the same general goal: to learn music by reading. Imagine if we taught our youngest children to read before they could speak! Thankfully, the music education field has come a long way in research and applying evidence-based methods. Edwin E. Gordon is one music educator who devoted his lifetime to researching how we learn music and developed Music Learning Theory (MLT). Sequential music learning and audiation (listening to music with understanding) are two tenets of MLT. Audiation is the key to musicianship in order to successfully play any instrument, to perform in groups with others, and to truly understand and enjoy listening to music. Reading standard notation before establishing aural understanding actually obstructs musicianship. We use an audiation-based method with Music Moves for Piano to provide a strong foundation for developing musicianship, because “without music language, music instrument lessons will be attempts at decoding meaningless music notation” (Music Play).
