|
|
|
|
|
Musique Savante™ |
|
Fall 2010 |
News Issue No. 10 |
|
In This Issue
Contact Us Phone:
Email: info@musiquesavante.com
We Want To Hear From You! Share a funny student story with us. We may even print it for others to read. Click on link below to submit your anecdote.
Did you miss a previous newsletter? Click here to view |
Hi from Musique Savante!
There’s not much autumn left here in the Heartland, except for a few brave oaks that just have to hang on to their leaves. This season of harvest reminds me that sometimes our students seem to learn in secret, until the right moment when we see the good results of our efforts.
Lucy Chu was our featured inventor in Issue No. 9 of the Musique Savante News. This newsletter includes my conversation with Sarah Lyngra, owner of Yellow Cat Publishing.
One More Thing: Thanks to Carol Lancaster Donigan of California for her feedback on using the Toss-a-Tune Notespeller: “At workshops I am teaching music history, appreciation, listening, performing and have a composer-of-the-month. The students, ages 6 to 17, love your game and want to play it every time!” You can contact Carol at carol@lancasterpiano.net.
Notes from and Inventor: Sarah Lyngra. Sarah Lyngra is the creative mind of her company Yellow Cat Publishing. Her Piano Keyboard game teaches the geography of the keyboard in a very engaging way. She really wanted, however, to talk more about the development of her teaching method, which uses the Piano Keyboard game as well as her many other teaching tools. You can view them at www.yellowcatpublishing.com.
Sarah: “My piano method was the eventual outcome from years of working with children with learning disabilities. An 8 year old girl came to me with such serious learning problems that her parents had no expectations of her learning much. They just thought that music would be good for her. In teaching her the musical alphabet, she didn’t respond to letters. However, learning with colors was a different story!
I wanted to do more with colors. My mother is an artist and happened to be spending a summer with us in Copenhagen, where we were living at the time. She created illustrations for me to use with my piano method. When we moved to Saudi Arabia I kept using colors in teaching, but it wasn’t until 2006 at a convention in Austin, TX that the next big push in color coding music happened. I had been using Finale, and was able to speak to the Finale people at that convention about what I was doing with my method. They were kind enough to point me toward Sibelius, which was doing more than they were with color. Now I have a plug-in for Sibelius which enables us to color code music much more quickly.
Last March we made the decision to make the method available for downloading online (ycmused.com). As for all the books and games that we have printed to date, we ended up building an extension on to my parents’ garage to store them.
I will say that without good marketing, it is difficult to sell materials, especially since color isn’t really accepted as a legitimate way of learning for mainstream students. I’m now working on developing a worldwide market using the internet, because unless you can get your product to market, inventing creative games or innovative ways to teach isn’t enough to be a successful company. And living in Saudi Arabia is a bit of a hindrance as well, since there is a miniscule music community here. I do my major networking at both the MTNA and MTAC (California) conferences.
Otherwise, if success is measured in one’s students I am doing pretty well. There are around 120 students in this community who are benefitting from my work.”
Thanks to Sarah for her ability to not only examine the different ways that students learn, but also for doing it with so much energy and joy!
Next Issue Next issue’s topic is TBA. Until then, have a safe and happy holiday season.
As always, if you have a humorous story about your students and “Toss-a-Tune,” or any other funny comment or situation involving your music students, send it to me at info@musiquesavante.com and I might be able to include it in future newsletters.
Until then, I wish you courage and success in the next quarter.
Susan Kight, M.Mus.Ed. ©Musique Savante, Fall 2010 |