If you have had any kind of music training, you will probably remember the horror of learning how to read music. We have our cute little ways to remember which note is which letter, F-A-C-E, Every Good Boy Does Fine, etc. Then we learn to translate these notes on paper into a note on our instrument. The note on the paper = C, we do this to produce C on the instrument. The note on the paper = E, we do this to produce E on the instrument. It’s a fairly arduous process. So I went online to try to find some games for my son to play to help him learn music notes. I found a few little games, but none that really looked very fun. I’ll appreciate your comments if you happen to know any that are truly appealing to a child!

While in my searches, I tumbled into the YouTube vacuum. You know it. You look at one video, see something that looks amusing in the related bar… And an hour later you realize you’ve been clicking around on YouTube the entire time. Yep, that was me last night. My clicking was on piano playing, then I saw child piano prodigies (we can all wish, right?) then I came upon “Three year old playing piano” so I clicked through. Then I was transported into a whole new realm of thinking! Watch this video!

This child learned how to play piano by basically playing a giant version of Piano Hero. The color of the note on the paper is the color of the note on the piano. BRILLIANT! It’s like a game!

Modern piano theory has found that children will be more interested in playing a piano if they are playing fun tunes that they know. Wee lad has already asked me to show him how to play the ‘Star Wars’ theme. What if it was color-coded so he could do it himself? Yes, I am currently more than just a little bit excited about this idea. Remember the process I explained earlier, about note to letter to key? What if we remove the letter part, and it’s just note to key? It’s a LOT quicker! And over a period of time your brain will automatically translate from note on page to key, dropping the letter conversion step. If this can be done in the beginning, I really feel that a love of music can more quickly be fostered.

Now don’t get me wrong, music theory is very important to learn. I remember all the workbooks of notes that I had to translate into letters and back. It was a chore. And really, I couldn’t play very good piano until I could quickly do that mental letter conversion. Not that I play very good piano NOW, but I do know those letters now because of all the (grudging) theory work.

The one thing I would (and will) add on this program is letters on the colors. Not necessarily PUSHING the letters, but as the child looks down at the letters while they play, they will subconsciously learn the letter that belongs to the key. I hope. Black permanent markers are our friends.

Oh oh wait. Did you want to know where this awesome piano teaching method is?  It’s called the Rainbow Piano Technique, and it can be found at http://www.rainbowpianotechnique.com/. From the website the book is $20, or $40 elsewhere. This totally beats the heck out of piano lessons, and would be a good start to finding out if your child has a musical talent. And it doesn’t require you to know a thing about it. You can pick up a cheap electric keyboard at thrift stores, eBay, or on Craigslist (I would recommend at least four octaves). Why not invest a little bit to bring a new experience (and possibly a lifetime of music) to your child?