Lesson Feedback

Catherine Schmidt-Jones, author of Understanding Basic Music Theory, was kind enough to offer her feedback on JiMS (lessons 1-6) in a recent email exchange.

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I suspect that what you have so far goes way too fast and too far without being grounded in what the student wants to do. In other words, the average person who can get through that much theory without getting to play anything and without losing interest has probably already learned traditional music theory. You introduce a lot of concepts very quickly, and this could get to be very intimidating for the beginner.

If you want to go for the people who want to make music but want an "easy way" to do it (and I agree that that is the ideal target population for you right now), you need to make sure that you show them as soon as possible that figuring out what you are talking about is going to "pay off" in terms of being able to reach their goals as musicians.

I would introduce the "you can play your computer keyboard" idea much sooner (as soon as is reasonable, actually), and have more exercises that let them get comfortable with doing that. If you can relate the exercises to the theory, so much the better. If you don't do this, then when they do get to the keyboard, that whole long string to play "Twinkle, twinkle" might also look very intimidating and hard to actually play. Don't scare them off; make it fun and engaging to hook them, and I believe they will sign up for more. Keep me posted!

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To which I responded (in part):

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I am toying with the idea of writing a Guitar Hero-like game using (a) the computer-based JiMS note-layout for a controller, and (b) piano-roll notation on the JiMS staff. With stickers on the appropriate keyboard buttons, color-coded (as in Guitar Hero) to match the corresponding staff-locations, students could start playing music pretty quickly -- without understanding any of it, of course, just as with Guitar Hero. Still, the game would allow me to introduce JiMS' piano-roll notation "under the radar," so to speak.

With such a game in place, the lessons could bounce back and forth between "lectures" (like the lessons I've already got) and "labs" in which one plays songs that illustrate the concepts presented in the lectures.

Writing such a game is a non-trivial programming challenge, so I've been putting it off until after my programming skills improve sufficiently. Your comments have ratcheted up my perception of its importance, though.

In short: everything you wrote was right on target, and I will change my priorities to take your feedback into account.

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Her response:

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I do think the guitar-hero-type playing-lab is a really good idea, even if the main musicianship goal is composition, since being able to play the "instrument" well makes the composition process go much more smoothly.


In fact, I believe that the reason composers tend to play piano or guitar is that being able to easily play and hear your own explorations of harmony theory is really important to developing the musical intuitions of a good composer, which suggests that your approach should work really well for composers. Improvisers too, if you can ever get somebody to build and sell an actual instrument. Maybe if your lessons develop a loyal following! Keep me posted, Kitty

I appreciate her candid feedback, and look forward to receiving more of it.  Yours, too!  ;-)