In my studio, 100% of my beginners sight-read their notes and rhythms perfectly by their 2nd lesson.
No exceptions. Even 4 and 5 year olds.
And - this was NOT just a short-lived “trick” simply because the music was easy.
The way that I teach children allows them to keep this ability through their method books. In general, kids didn’t struggle with notes or rhythms in my studio.
When I first mentioned this back in 2016 on my blog, I got a ton of messages:
I went as far as making recordings of a brand new student and showing the process.
Every single thing that I did, said, and demonstrated for this 8 year old student.
I went as far as to create a training for other teachers that summarized and taught how I did this.
How I Got Kids to Learn So Quickly
One of the primary points I made is that I changed how I taught lessons…
Early in my career, I would teach to the child’s brain. I would teach for understanding. I would load them down with theoretical, abstract information about what a quarter note is or what the staff was.
Later in my career?
I would skip that stuff… and just teach directly to “their hands.”
If it didn’t directly contribute to the child’s immediate ability to play the song, I didn’t teach it (at first).
I gave them the bare minimum of information necessary to perform what they needed to perform.
I had a simple realization.
For the child to play the first quarter note song in any method book, a child does NOT need to intellectually understand:
What a quarter note is
What a beat is
What rhythm is
How to draw a quarter note
How to define a quarter note
What measures are
In fact, they didn’t even know how to read music (Tim Topham demonstrates this in his new No Book Beginners program)
So - I went from spending 5 - 15 minutes on all this abstract knowledge… to having a child play the first few quarter note songs in a method book within minutes.
After a week or two, I would back-fill the theoretical information… which the student quickly assimilated.
Here is why my students excelled:
(A) I gave them a low-information diet.
(B) I only told them what they needed to succeed.
(C) I focused on EXECUTION… their ability to DO rather than to KNOW
(D) If there were problems, I would determine what their problem was and the simplest way for them to overcome
(E) I gave them instant feedback and helped them perform the action so they felt like a winner!
There’s a lesson to be learned here…
Information Overload
The world is drowning in information right now.
It’s a terrible cliche’… but every single day humanity is capturing and recording more information digitally than was captured in the ENTIRE HISTORY OF THE WORLD before the year 1995.
You would think that we would have solved our business growth problems at this point.
But - just like my piano students - studio and school owners experience information overload.
They don’t know what to do with the abstract knowledge they have about policies, retention, hiring, marketing, and getting students to perform better.
At a certain point, we have to admit that…
If more information was all we needed, then we would have solved our problems by now!
And this is the reason I created the Six-Figure Roadmap!
The Roadmap is part of our Accelerator coaching program.
It is a 1-to-1 coaching and mentorship program for music studio owners who want to eliminate the toughest challenges and obstacles from their professional life.
Over the years, we’ve had scores and scores of studio owners go through this program.
And we didn’t load them down with a bunch of:
I’ve been hitting on this point hard the past few weeks, because it’s true…
As an industry, we don’t need more memberships with tons of information!
We need mentorship on what to do with that information.
Just like our music students… We need high-quality feedback on our actions.
For someone to come into the situation, to find the obvious errors, the missed opportunities, the easy wins, and the low-hanging fruit that will make an impact on our income and career.
Registration for the program begins this coming Monday, February 5th.
Only those who apply will get the invite.
If you’d like to signal your interest, just click the button below.
And (optionally) you can leave me feedback on what would make the program a no-brainer for you!
