Simply Music - A Breakthrough in Music Education - Simply Music

Danica Davidson, The Link Homeschool Magazine - 2007

Even as a child, Neil Moore had a great talent for music. He began his piano lessons at the age of seven and by the time he was fifteen, he was playing very complex pieces and composing his own music. He would watch the teacher play in order to learn, discovering that he had a highly- developed ear for music and by only watching he could memorize pieces. Besides having an unusually high gift, there was something else unusual about Moore: He didn’t learn to read music until he was in his thirties.

For a long time when someone is taught music, the first thing to learn would be notes. However, Moore thinks there are better ways to do this. He points out that people talk before they can read or write. It wouldn’t make much sense to make someone read before he could speak the language, so why should someone learn notes before they understood music? Taking these innovative ideas, Moore created his program Simply Music.

Moore’s lessons and ideas have been so successful that there are now hundreds of Simply Music schools in existence -- in the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. While students taught to read notes first usually take a good deal of time before they’re good, Moore sees his students blossoming and playing excellently almost at once.

There are lots of music programs out there, and most work in the same way. Likewise, most have students drop out or not do very well. That is not the case for Simply Music. As Moore says on his website, “Like most of the things that we learned throughout our lives and now do on a daily basis — tying our shoe laces, brushing our teeth, and driving a car, etc. — we learned by doing those things, experiencing them directly and not by studying the ‘theory’ of the subject or referring to notes. Similarly, Simply Music teaches students to play the piano by immersing them in the actual process of playing, and providing a subtle balance between guidance, discovery and direct ‘hands-on’ experience. This program uses an entirely new and far more natural approach, which transforms the entire music-learning process, and in addition, completely redefines who is capable of successfully teaching music.”

The students do learn to read notes — eventually. First, they find themselves quickly and easily picking up skills and being able to play about 35 to 50 songs of all different musical styles. And these aren’t simple songs they’ll be playing. Moore points out how quickly students of Simply Music are playing very sophisticated pieces. Indeed, they’ll be playing them in the same amount of time it may take other students simply to learn how to read notes.

“Although it is true that I had a developed ear as a child, part of my natural connection to music is that when I hear music, my mind's-eye naturally visualizes two and three dimensional shapes and patterns that correlate to it's structure,” said Moore. “I know that this can sound abstract, but I discovered in later years, quite accidentally, that I could explain these concepts to people in a way that allowed them to also naturally visualize these, easily lay them out on to the instrument, and immediately play great-sounding music!

“It's the distilling of music into these simple patterns, shapes and fragments, all of which unfold directly on to the keyboard, that produces our unprecedented results and that constitute the basis of what we define as a 'playing-based' approach (as distinct from 'reading-based' or 'learning by ear' as such).

Anyone can learn music from this program. In fact, many special-needs children benefit from it, including children who can’t see and even those with autism. It was teaching a blind boy to play the piano that helped Moore bring the idea of Simply Music into fruition. Moore taught him to play in no time and then found that the boy had turned around and taught his younger sister to play — a girl who was also blind.

Simply Music’s teaching success has led it to garner much attention, including being on ABC News and being written about in educational magazines. Dr. Anne Margaret Wright, (Psy.D), an educational consultant, is among Simply Music’s enthusiasts. “This is a wonderful music program and the results are astounding! Even if you don’t consider yourself musically talented, this program is designed for you! It is easy to understand and easy to play a full repertoire of beautiful songs from a variety of genres. I also think this program could be a major breakthrough for children with a variety of cognitive delays and learning disabilities. I love the Simply Music approach.”

By going to the Simply Music website, those interested can find out which teachers are closest to them. If this is not practical, there is no need to worry. Moore has come out with a self-instructional DVD series for the program. Simply Music, along with getting the attention of people around the globe, has received much love from the homeschool community. It’s no wonder why. People everywhere are finding they can play the piano after all and experience their own joy of music. It’s time to forget the idea that music is too hard to learn and only a few people can do it. Neil Moore has created Simply Music to prove there is a musician inside of everyone.

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