Music for Little Mozarts is a program designed to help your little ones develop a love of music. Learning music at an early age helps develop little minds and expands their cognitive ability. While listing to music can certainly help your youngster pick up songs, actually learning to play the piano can expand areas of the mind that are responsible for fueling later leaps in the childes education development.
This program was developed for the little ones attention spans in mind. It focuses on little creatures that both entertain and teach. By grasping the attention of a young child’s mind and engaging them with stories along with hands on experience, you can provide them with a positive experience that just may fuel a little Mozart in later years.
What Does This Program Offer?
Within this multi-book and multi-year lesson plan there are ten little characters that help draw the child into the lesson plan. These little creatures actually can be used to help the child grasp basic concepts n music. The series starts out in the preschool years and provides day by day lessons that can aid the child or a classroom of children right through early adolescence.
The series is a designed for both classroom and preschool use and for those at home with homeschoolers. It contains a series of books along with audio CD’s, flash cards, and other visual aids that can help very young children develop an ear and an eye for music.
Developing a Love of Music Quickly
It can be hard to hold the attention spans of children for very long. However, with the right creativity and the proper attention along with simple, easy to master daily lessons, most children will not only grasp music rather quickly, they will also develop a love of real music, not just banging on a piano keyboard and making sounds.
The short, daily lessons are planned out so that children learn to play music by ear. They focus on short, easy to master songs or song parts and gradually add more song elements in a quick progression. Children find that they learn to play real songs and master real passages quickly and easily. This element keeps them involved. They also master playing by ear and then later by reading rather quickly.
We all know how in wonder children’s minds are, and we know that if they feel they have accomplished something then they quickly learn to love performing that task again and again. This sense of accomplishment with easy to learn lessons helps children to develop a love and desire to play music. Music for Little Mozarts is designed to engage the child through the use of play and quick accomplishments while repetition and small victories over time help the child maintain the interest.
Adapting the Program for Home or Preschool
• If you are home schooling your youngsters or have preschool age children whom are not attending preschool you can still use the lesson plans. The books are designed for home or classroom use. You may find that your children at home can easily handle a few minutes every morning while their minds are still fresh, to learn music.
• If you own a preschool or day care you may find that adding a few minutes into your daily routine to stop and go over the lessons with your charges will prove very rewarding. You can easily fit in these short and fund lesson plans right into your daily activities.
Music for Little Mozarts was developed and designed by a team of expert pianist who have experience teaching young children and classrooms of students. It is designed for children ages 4 to 6 years old. The books not only teach piano, but also singing and a general love of music. They help develop listing skills and impart an appreciation for many different musical styles. If you decide to use the system in a preschool, day care, or at home you will be delighted to find how much fun your children find in playing music.
Starting a composition is a difficult task. Getting your inspirations, thinking creatively, applying your creative thoughts to your music and supplementing your ideas with additional composition are all difficult tasks to accomplish.
For starters, your current state of mind will greatly affect the music you write – whether you feel angry, joyful or sad chances are your musical composition will in some way reflect this mood.
Different times of day and different seasons affect your composing as well as current affairs and any stress’s you might have.
The varieties of factors that can influence your composition periods are immense and hopefully these few pointers will demonstrate some methods of breaking out of the psychological restraints placed on you.
• Colours – If you are looking to compose a piece of music based around a certain mood find a relevant colour that matches for instance orange gives the impression of energy and drive. Eventually you will learn to bias your mood to suit the composition you are aiming for.
• Character – it is well known for actors to really get inside the character they are portraying through their acting. Understanding key emotions and various behaviors help the actors ‘ live ‘ as their proposed character. If you are creating a theme for a character (think darth vaders theme tune) you need to be demonstrating and describing that character through sound. If you follow the same process as an actor would you will eventually unravel hidden details that will help refine your composition, make it more realist and detailed and allow for it to be much more creative and expressive.
• Nature – a lot of creativity and inspiration can be got by observing nature. From birds communicating through a song like speech to the rustle of leaves in a summer breeze. Trying to emulate nature is an excellent way to begin a sound-scope – or incorporating nature into a character theme for example to express an angelic quality, singing like the birds (fast trills on piccolo or glissandos on the violin)
• Memories – another great source to tap into is your memories. A lot of emotion will go into compositions that are personal in some way to yourself. Spend a few minutes reflecting on your past – try to imagine the memory in great detail – sounds, smells, colours the weather – anything that will give you a good image and story to compose about.
These are just a few sources for inspiration – use your imagination – it has never ending possibilities!
With so many possibilities to compose about and now that your creativity is running, the next area to discuss is music theory.
The last thing that you want to happen is to have all these wonderfully creative ideas for your composition but being held back by the lack of musical knowledge.
A rugby player could develop his passing techniques and his scrum techniques but if he doesn’t know the rules of the game he won’t be able to perform during a game.
Although music composition and as a whole is not bound by any rules you still need the knowledge of writing music – in the same way as a poet needs a knowledge of his language to write a poem.
Some of the key areas you should know about and be constantly revising are:
• The Staff, Bar Lines, Clefs, Time Signatures.
• Note Values, Rests, Phrasing, Rhythm
• Articulation, Instrument Specific Techniques (pizz, con sord)
• Key Signatures, Circle of Fifths, Accidentals, Cadences
• Major, Minor, Diminished, Pentatonic, Diatonic Scales
• Modes
• Chords, Extensions, Inversions, Sequences, Arpeggios
• Instrument Ranges, Timbres of Each Instrument, Difficult Areas of an Instrument (The break on clarinet for instance or seventh position for trombones)
Of course it is not absolutely essential you know about all of this but it will mean that your creativity is weakened due to lack of a means to fully communicate.
Use music theory books – go through them and notate comments on the pages, take notes on to blank flash cards to memorize scales and extended chords, use past music theory exam papers to test and analyze your knowledge and then act on your weak areas, purchase a aural perception CD to recognize different cadences and the general sounds achieved from different combinations of notes and chords – there are many ways to learn all of this but find the way that you are comfortable with and stick to it.
Finally the last piece of advice in this article is to keep your composing active.
Aim to compose a short piece of music each day, maybe before you go to bed you can reflect on your day through a composition. Mix it up – compose for different orchestrations and different abilities.
Composing is challenging but by keeping active like this will greatly benefit you and your compositions – and you never know – you may accidentally stumble upon your masterpiece!
Practice makes perfect. These three words are heard every day and time after time these words are ignored. But why? Music is such a vast subject that for anyone, even the professionals, mastering it is near impossible. With years of work one can be very knowledgeable in specific areas of music but it would take more than a lifetime to fully understand every aspect of an instrument or music theory.
With that in mind hopefully people should start to understand that having a one hour lesson once a week is not even close to enough to gain substantial progress and development on a musical instrument.
This series of articles offer tips on practicing music which will hopefully demonstrate the benefits, enjoyment and fulfillment that can be gained through practicing music.
1. Goals are key. It is human nature to take pride in reaching a goal whether a promotion at work or winning a competition. If you have a set goal to reach you will be more willing to put in the work required to achieve it. Some examples of goals could be to learn the latest song you’ve fallen in love with, to be able to sight read in a certain key, to develop faster, more technical playing or to reach a certain exam grade before a certain period.
2. Little often is better than a lot occasionally. One key point to remember is that repetion is the quickest way to learn something due to your brain and muscles ability to develop and store a so called ‘muscle memory’. It will take a substantially longer time to learn and retain your new knowledge if you practice for a long period but only occasionally. See tip 3 on how to easily incorporate regular practice sessions into your daily routine.
Another benefit of practicing a little often is that your concentration levels are kept up throughout your practice session. Brass players will understand this the most – after playing a trumpet or any brass instrument for approximately an hour your lips start to feel numb which in turn begins to restrict your playing abilities. The knock on effect of this is that the longer you practice without a break, the more harm ultimately you will cause yourself – both mentally and physically – it will knock your spirit and could even do damage to your embouchure. Obviously this applies to all instrument groups; as is well documented repetitive strain injury is common among musicians. The primary cause of this is improper technique but as the name implies too much repetition through a movement can create serious effects. Therefore if you are practicing for longer periods be sure to take regular breaks – 5 to 10 minutes for every 50 minutes for adults and 10 to 15 minutes for every 25 minutes for children.
3. Routine. Imagine this – every morning you wake up, maybe make a cup of coffee or sort through the post and eventually at some point you will go to the sink and brush your teeth. Now most people do this without any thought – it is just something that gets done. This is the effect of getting into a routine. If you set aside a time each day to practice, away from distractions if possible, you will get into this routine making it much easier to practice, it becomes a part of your day to day life.
4. Practice with a partner. Most humans love competition – especially if you know you are the winner – and by tapping into this you’re making your practice session less of a chore and more of a game. Set challenges between you both and find some reward for the winner. The other benefits are that you gain an outsiders opinion and criticism on your playing, the opportunity to practice duets and you will have some company rather than being locked away in your bedroom.
This is just a glimpse at the different methods you can adopt to improve your practice and in the next article I will demonstrate some more music based tips to help you improve; using a metronome to develop your internal body clock, a fun method for scales and arpeggios and how and why you should be incorporating sight reading and music theory into your practice sessions.
For now just focus on your desires and on the reasons why you started music and give the tips above some thought.
When you are thinking about how to use your interest and talent in music for a professional purpose, you will find that there are many different options open to you. One of the most attractive jobs that you might be interested in is that of film score composer, but how is this job that you are going to get? As you might suspect, this is a position that pays extremely well and is amazing resume builder if you can get it; there are many things that make this job extremely attractive, but what you do you need to know to see if it is something that you are capable of doing?
In the first place, you need to know the genre. Composing for film is much different than composing for any other genre of music, though it has some correspondence to orchestral composition. When you are looking to break into the industry, you will find that you need to listen to what other people are doing and learn what you can. John Williams, Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer, Thomas Newman and Danny Elfman have routinely pulled down many of the major scores over the years, and getting accustomed to their work is something that any aspiring film score composer should do.
You should also be aware of the fact that you are going to be working from a storyboard version of the film or from a first cut of the film. With that in mind, you will need to figure out what moments are going to call for musical highlights and what sort of emotions the score needs to help the movie evoke. Although the score is something that is a part of the background, it is a very important tool when it comes to making sure that the people who are watching the film get the right idea.
When you are writing music for a film, always remember that you should write more music than is called for. Assume that the scenes will run the longest that they can run and never shortchange a scene when it comes the music. To get some experience with this, you will find that working with aspiring film students can help. Offer to do scores for them, or try rewriting the scores for movies that you are familiar with.
Remember that a rock solid background in music composition at the university level is extremely important as well. Listen and learn and remember that this is a position that takes a great deal of work!
