General questions about our software and method. The answers to many frequently asked questions about the Soft Way to Mozart music and piano learning curriculum, explaining the specific approaches of the program as well as the philosophy of our system of piano and music education.

Click the questions below to expose the answer. If you don't find your particular questions, please feel free to contact us here.

About our music teaching method

1. Do we really need a new method for teaching piano?

If you think that general piano education is adequate, can you answer one simple question - how many people of your acquaintance are able to play the piano? Not one or two short tunes for two fingers, remembered from the school days, but the serious music of Chopin, List or Gershwin, reading it from music sheets, or playing it by heart. Moreover, how many people that you personally know can sit in the Christmas time at the piano and play a nice Christmas tune?

As a result of the ineffectiveness of the common piano (and music generally) teaching methods, most people are musically illiterate. The difficulty and inefficiency of the usual teaching approaches have created a wide public conviction that successful piano education is possible only for a few prodigies, or must be very expensive for an average student. This situation is amazingly comparable to basic education in the Middle Ages, when the ability to read and write was considered as a privilege of talented or rich people. In those days, the methods of teaching the Alphabet were often based on reading and memorization of large extracts from manuscripts, written in Latin. When education moved from the cramming of texts written in an unknown language to the usage of specially designed ABC books for children, it became really effective and affordable for the wide public.

We are sure that piano playing can also be taught as naturally and easily as reading, and become effective and affordable enough for anybody. We think that our new method of teaching piano is going to change children's notion that piano playing is something dull, complicated and incomprehensible. We want children, and all people, to consider piano performance as easy and entertaining as reading, video games or sports.

2. Is a computer program really able to teach music effectively?

For centuries, music education has been based on the individual approach, which has been custom made for selected music lovers. The difficulty of learning music with the old means, especially for beginners, has always required constant help and supervision from the teacher. New computer technologies with interactive forms of training, especially our unique program, are capable of providing effective help and control during self-study, group, and home music practice. Our software can relieve the teacher from all of the monotonous work of building essential music skills. The learning of how to differentiate music symbols and read the music score, and the training of eye-hand coordination require hundreds of routine exercises, where the presence of a music teacher is not any help, but is sometimes just additional stress for beginners as well as for the teacher. Using interactivity, the Soft Mozart software can effectively control and guide students when they play and learn songs without a teacher's supervision, checking the strict correctness of their performance, and helping them in difficult places with visual hints. The computer will allow you to make hundreds mistakes, and will correct them all, without even raising its voice. Our program doesn't dismiss the importance of the music teacher when it comes to improving and polishing the student's music performance. It is rather an efficient tool for group and home lessons, and an invaluable instrument for self-study.

3. Does your software dismiss the music teacher?

The Soft Mozart program may dismiss a bad teacher, who charges you thousands of dollars for lecturing you on what the Treble Clef and Bass Clef are, when all you want is to learn a song. Soft Mozart provides the student with effective training of the basic skills needed for playing piano and reading music notes, which you can do without any teacher during home practice. With this piano teaching software, it's possible to conduct an effective piano self-study by playing and learning songs.

However, our program can in no way substitute a knowledgeable and concerned music teacher who can give you a goal, bring your music playing to a performing level, and stimulate you to further achievements by being your most demanding audience. Such a teacher improves and polishes your piano performance, adding the technique and soul to it which can't be done by any software. Our software is big help for such a teacher, because it can relieve him from the long and monotonous work of teaching a beginner the essential music skills, like finding the correct key and distinguishing music symbols, and can drastically improve the student's home practice.

4. Is this program in conflict with all of the other traditional methods?

The winning point of our invention is that it doesn't conflict with any reasonable method of teaching music, and can be accommodated by all of the leading methods in the world. To the methods based on ear training, like Suzuki, the Soft Mozart can add effective training of reading skills. For the classical approach, our software can add effective music practice and ear training from the first lesson, in a group setting and at home. Any music teacher can easily use some, if not all, of the Soft Mozart computer games, to improve certain music skills of their students.

5. Do we really need to teach our children the piano so early?

The language of music is very similar to the language we speak. It is interesting to know that the two centers of the brain responsible for speech and musical development are located close to each other. The main development of those two centers continues until the child is thirteen years old. Dipped in a new language environment, a child can easily learn to speak it without any accent, which is almost impossible for adults. In music education, small children can easily build music skills, effectively develop their music ear, and intuitively absorb all of the important laws of musical art. The playing and hearing of music can become as natural and easy for them as speaking. You can't achieve the same results with teenagers and adults. Many famous pianists and composers were lucky to start their music education in early childhood.

The notion that children should start serious music learning only when they are 7 years old, and maybe even older, after they can fluently read and write, may be explained by the inefficiency of the usual teaching approaches, and lack of effective home piano practice. The usual method of piano teaching is quite straightforward and designed for a student with an already developed sense of abstract thinking. For a small child, such an approach is very stressful and ineffective. Also, if the student's parents have no music education, it has been impossible to provide a productive home practice until the child is big enough to do it by himself. The fact that many children of musicians start to proficiently play on the piano at a young age shows what you can achieve with regular home lessons and a considered approach.

Apart from the enjoyment of playing music, and even prospects of a future music career, piano lessons give the child the much needed boost to their mind development. Piano lessons develop the child's cognitive ability, concentration, memory, and train their fine motor skills, when their mind coordinates the complex motion of two hands and all ten fingers.

6. Are the lessons with the piano keyboard "real" piano lessons?

The most common public misconception about the piano is that the PIANO is something big, wooden, and preferably of black color. This notion is taken from movies and concert halls, and chiefly based on the fact that a very limited number of families have any piano at home, and an even smaller number of people can actually play on it and do it regularly. This misconception may be eagerly supported by a sales staff in a piano shop who would like to persuade you that starting piano lessons on a piano that costs less than several thousand dollars is just a waste of your time. Everybody looks at the piano keyboard merely as a toy for children, or a loud teenager's instrument for primitive tunes. Some teachers even support the opinion that playing a keyboard can spoil a child's playing apparatus and forever ruin their piano playing technique. It's interesting that for the guitar, a more widespread instrument, people are not so concerned about material and size it is until the instrument produces a good enough sound. And nobody says that, if you take an electric guitar in your hands, it will ruin your ability to play the acoustic guitar.

We found that a modern piano keyboard, even the cheapest one (we do not mean the toy-pianos) is a very good instrument for any beginner, especially for children, to start piano lessons with. Having a "light" touch, it relieves children from the additional stress of the need to press the piano keys with enough strength, and helps to focus their attention on finding the correct keys. After playing and memorizing a song with the piano keyboard, a student can easily be moved to the piano and concentrate on the "hard" touch of the piano keys to produce the needed sound. In several lessons, even a small child can freely play the song on the piano.

The most invaluable feature of the electronic piano keyboard for music education consists of the possibility to connect it to the computer, and to use the power of interactive learning software. In this way, it's possible to enhance private piano lessons, introduce effective and inexpensive group piano lessons to wide public education, and realize a long dream of all piano amateurs for really easy and productive piano self-study at home.

The types of electronic piano keyboards range from the simplest portable keyboards to evolved digital pianos that closely simulate the real piano in all aspects, and even can surpass an average piano in sound quality. Nowadays, even inexpensive piano keyboards have a good enough sound to be a serious musical instrument for learning and self-expression. After mastering the piano keyboard, you will be able to appreciate and enjoy the sound power of a good piano, and will not let it peacefully collect dust in your main room.

7. Will keyboard playing skills spoil the ability to play the piano, because of the difference in touch?

It is a myth that beginners MUST start with the piano in order to correctly develop a piano playing apparatus. This myth originated from the elitism and conservatism of modern piano education that focused only on raising of a few concert performers. In reality, playing on any other musical instrument, including the piano keyboard, can only improve the piano performance of your child.

More over, we recommend that children start learning the piano with the piano keyboard. The regular piano is very physically challenging for beginners, because it requires physical strength along with advanced coordination and perfect orientation on the piano keys. The majority of problems with piano techniques start with the lack of confidence in beginners. When the student has built his eye-hand-fingers coordination by playing on the piano keyboard, the task of mastering the "hard touch" of the real piano is much easier to handle. Freedom and flexibility of the apparatus appear gradually with the confidence of the student. Being a 3-year-old child, Mozart started with the harpsichord (with the touch of a modern keyboard). It didn't spoil his apparatus at all!

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About the piano learning software






9. Is the Soft Mozart software for small children?


















13. Isn't your teaching software excessively supportive to piano learners?








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Music reading
























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Piano stickers





23. Will the stickers ruin my piano keys?




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Playing the piano




26. How long should I practice?



27. How far can I advance using your software?


28. Does Soft Mozart teach music theory?


29. Does Soft Mozart help teach the rhythm of songs?



30. How can I learn the right fingers?


31. Does Soft Mozart provide ear training?






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Music theory games















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