New description: Joan's Teaching Materials and Method

http://musicmethod.blogspot.com/

Suddenly many people are interested in the methods I have developed through the years to have fun with children during music lessons and still teach them music notation and interpretation correctly. I guess finally many families, ex-students, colleagues and theorists have discovered that many other methods are tiresome, overly strict, too demanding and narrow in thought.

I have been using my method with success for over 30 years now. My daughter is a pianist, singer and conductor who first learned to read music with my method. She has been working fulltime for over 20 years already as a professional musician, she is able to study her repertory very quickly and rarely makes mistakes while conducting. She just conducted a 3 hour opera at the Nordhausen Opera Theater without even one rehearsal, so something must be said about the method! I have also received messages on Facebook from many ex-students who tell me that they survive in the Music World on what they have learned in our choral classes at the Fiesole Music School (Florence, Italy).

The basic philosophy of the method is that one first perceives the LARGE picture of a musical line, of a score and grasps the general concept of how the music is to be interpreted - - up, down, long notes, short notes, no clefs, no time signatures, no names of notes, no sharps, no flats. Then gradually these details are added. There are 5 coloring books and 600 laminated colored plastic cards to use. Then there are 16 small volumes of 16 pages each, with easy solfegge choral pieces to sing, about 8 measures each, short enough not to present difficulties, long enough to offer sufficient practice that permits one to learn the topic at hand. The novelty here is the CONTEMPORARY IDIOM of all the music provided: the cards offer a chance for multi-rhythms and multi time signatures, the solfegge pages present dissonances and clusters.

to be continued . . .