Allegro Multimedia's edutainment title Piano Wizard teaches gamers how to play the piano through a video game. WomenGamers.Com had the wonderful opportunity to speak with CEO Chris Salter about the product and the company behind it.
WG: What other methods do foreign cultures use to teach kids music that our society does not employ? Have you found a notable difference between cultures in how kids are taught how to play music?
Chris Salter : My thesis at UCLA for my master’s was that some cultures learn music as if it were a native language, not using the abstract gateway of notation, but nevertheless becoming fluent in extremely complex forms, for example South Africa, Brazil, Indonesia all have vibrant musical cultures that are not restricted to an elite group of musicians, but rather music is considered a birthright, like the ability to speak or read, and are great joyful ways to bind the community. I chose Brazil for a number of reasons, the richness of its musical culture, its African roots, and their carnival tradition that would allow me to see the music making in groups. What was the breakthrough insight for me was when I joined a “Samba school” called Portela, one of the oldest and most famous of the groups that parade every year, consisting of hundreds of participants and thousands of members. I was the “gringo” doing a documentary, and so even though I had no experience playing percussion, they tolerated my efforts to join their “bateria” and learn their one song that they practiced for months before parading. That may sound simple, but it was not just learning, but mastering in sync with these master percussionists. Though it is called a “school”, you don’t get in to the band portion unless you are already good in a country where everyone can play a little. I played the tamborim, a tiny drum head that had one of the more complex parts, but we stood in front of the big bass drums called “surdos” which is also the name for “deaf”. It was deafening. To be in front of 50 of these invoked an almost involuntary physical reaction when all of them came in on queue at once. It hit the pain threshold, and I began to bring earplugs to try and save at least one ear, but soon had them in both. This forced me to WATCH the other drummers rather than try and learn it by ear, and only then was I able to pick up the nuances and anticipate the beat instead of always being behind. I then saw that all the drummers used visual cues to watch the leader of their section so they would not miss an entrance. They also just played this song over and over and over, maybe 30 to 40 times a night, until all 100 drummers were TIGHT. This reminded me of the Suzuki philosophy of deep repetition, so deep that the player not only learns the one song (Twinkle twinkle little star is the one for Suzuki) but they absorb holistically and subconsciously the underlying feel and logic of harmony, melody, rhythm, phrasing, dynamics inherent in all music.
I learned that song, and saw also that dance was the first way to teach rhythm, and it is of course based on visual modeling, a learning mode that is embedded in our DNA.
Later I videotaped about 30 sacred rhythms in Bahia and visually transcribed each drummer’s parts from slow motion video analysis, and learned this sacred repertoire completely from those transcriptions. That was when I realized that if we could find a way to visually anticipate the next note or beat, we could very easily and fluidly play along, and learn even complex pieces without so much pain.
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