Tokyo 1954: Yamaha Corporation of Japan opens an experimental "Music Class for Pre-School Children." The curriculum centers on teaching musicianship through solfege and keyboard.
Fast-forward 54 years: The Yamaha Music Education System (YMES) has opened schools in 40 countries and produced 5 million graduates. Former students occupy a wide range of positions in the fields of composition, music education, performance and conducting. YMES now encompasses music courses for students of all ages, a Pop Music School, Grade Examination System, Teens' Music Festival, Electone Concourse, Yamaha Music Academy, Music Quest (support for emerging artists), artist promotion, Music Research Laboratory, music publishing and production and aid to charity organizations.
The Yamaha Method has significantly influenced numerous music education programs since 1954. In today's music education community, more and more teachers include singing, ensemble training, ear training and keyboard harmony activities in their studios. Children's Yamaha Music School is on the forefront of these developments. The training our teachers are required to undergo coupled with their extensive educational background allows them to effectively utilize the best teaching methods available to enahnce your child's development.
THE IMPORTANCE OF MUSIC EDUCATION
The necessity of a high quality music education cannot be over stated. The advantages such a education confers on students has been proven over and over. Children's Yamaha Music School provides a high level of music education that is so essential in the development of your child. Below is a small sample of the research that has been done on the benefits of music education.
Students in high-quality school music programs score higher on standardized tests compared to students in schools with deficient music education programs, regardless of the socioeconomic level of the school or school district. Students in top-quality music programs scored 22% better in English and 20% better in math than students in deficient music programs. Students in top-quality instrumental programs scored 19% higher in English than students in schools without a music program. Students in top quality instrumental programs scored 17% higher in math than children in schools without a music program. Students at schools with excellent music programs had higher English and math test scores across the country than students in schools with low-quality music programs. Students in all regions with lower-quality instrumental programs scored higher in English and math than students who had no music at all. MENC Journal of Research in Music Education, Winter 2006, vol. 54, No. 4, pgs. 293- 307; Examination of Relationship between Participation in School Music Programs of Differing Quality and Standardized Test Results, Christopher M. Johnson and Jenny E. Memmott, University of Kansas
Students of the arts continue to outperform their non-arts peers on the SAT, according to reports by the College Entrance Examination Board. In 2006, SAT takers with coursework/experience in music performance scored 57 points higher on the verbal portion of the test and 43 points higher on the math portion than students with no coursework or experience in the arts. Scores for those with coursework in music appreciation were 62 points higher on the verbal and 41 points higher on the math portion. The Student Descriptive Questionnaire, a self-reported component of the SAT that gathers information about students, academic preparation, gathered data for these reports. Source: The College Board, Profile of College-Bound Seniors National Report for 2006;
Harvard Project Zero (http://pzweb.harvard.edu/) researcher Larry Scripp investigated how intensive music study could serve as the basis for academic excellence. His research at Conservatory Lab Charter School (http://www.conservatorylab.org/learning.html) attempted to identify innovative ways to incorporate music into the curriculum and then measure its impact. Among his findings: notational skills in music, not musical performance, correlate positively with achievement in math and reading. According to Scripp, The ability to process musical symbols and representations, a skill relegated to the training of the talented few in the past, is a leading predictor of music association with learning in other subject areasĀ. He also found that musical pitch is more predictive of mathematical ability while rhythm is more predictive of reading ability.
SUCCESS IN DEVELOPING INTELLIGENCE
Results of an IQ test given to groups of children (total: 144) who were provided with lessons in keyboard, voice, drama or no lessons at all, showed that the IQ of students in the keyboard or voice classes increased from their pre-lesson IQ score, more than the IQ of those students taking drama or no lessons. Generally these increases occurred across IQ subtests, index scores, and academic achievement. Summary by MENC; Original source: August 2004, Psychological Science, a journal of the American Psychological Society; http://www.psychologicalscience.org/pdf/ps/musiciq.pdf; Dr. E. Glenn Schellenberg (University of Toronto)
Children with music training had significantly better verbal memory than those without such training, and the longer the training, the better the verbal memory. Researchers studied 90 boys between the ages of 6 and 15. Half had musical training as members of their school's string orchestra program, plus lessons in playing classical music on Western instruments like the flute or violin for one to five years. The other 45 students had no training. Students with musical training recalled more words in a verbal memory test than did untrained students, and after a 30-minute delay, students with training also retained more words than the control group. In a follow-up one year later, students who continued training and beginners who had just started learning to play both showed improvement in verbal learning and retention. Summary by MENC. Original source: Ho, Y. C., Cheung, M. C., & Chan, A. Music training improves verbal but not visual memory: cross-sectional and longitudinal explorations in children (2003) Neuropsychology, 12, 439-450.
Young children who take music lessons show different brain development and improved memory over the course of a year, compared to children who do not receive musical training. The brains of musically trained children respond to music in a different way to those of untrained children, and that the musical training improves their memory. After one year the musically trained children performed better in a memory test that is correlated with general intelligence skills such as literacy, verbal memory, Visio spatial processing, mathematics and IQ. Dr. Laurel Trainor, Prof. of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Behavior at McMaster University, Director of the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind; Canada; published 9/20/06; http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060920093024.htm
YAMAHA TEACHING METHOD
Lessons are taught to a group of students(typically 8 to 10 per class) and, in the case of the JMC, one parent attends with each child. This format motivates children and provides an opportunity to develop ensemble skills and cooperation within a supportive community of friends and parents. With their peers, children become part of a musical team making music together. With their teacher and parents, the group becomes a musical community.
The group format, in conjunction with the musical content, brings joy and fun to the learning process. Students who attend class with their friends have extra-musical reasons to return every week. The camaraderie that grows contributes to tight, expressive ensemble performances at advanced levels and promotes long-term involvement in music.
Parental attendance facilitates accelerated growth. The parent/child partnership is active, not passive. Each partnership develops into a mini-ensemble, where co-learning, co-practicing and co-discovering can be enjoyed in class and at home. The entire family hears music shared between two members and often is motivated to join in the fun. In fact, when younger siblings of students become students themselves, we often find their sense of pitch is more developed than that of other entering students. They have heard the language of music at home and already have begun to absorb it.
The aural awareness of four- and five-year-olds is more developed than their manual dexterity and visual skills. Therefore, the Yamaha approach for this age group focuses on aural training versus emphasizing piano technique and reading. While early lessons cover the basics of keyboard technique, technical study is more actively undertaken in upper- level courses when students are developmentally ready. Likewise, the introduction of reading and theory takes place gradually in a timely and contextual manner. When students are intellectually ready, it is explained in academic terms what they have sensed and experienced musically at a young age.
The Yamaha Method employs "Fixed-Do" solfege (without altered syllables) in both ear training and keyboard activities. Fixed-Do enables a child to connect a specific pitch and syllable, such as middle Do (middle C), with a specific key on the keyboard. Aural training using Fixed-Do helps children internalize pitch, resulting in a strong relative pitch sense and, in many cases, perfect pitch. Consequently, in JMC classes one will observe students singing solfege by ear and eventually playing keyboard by ear.
Solfege is the core of the Yamaha Method; students absorb this musical vocabulary and use it in both beginning and advanced courses. Solfege becomes each student's first musical voice. In every class, teachers sing melodic patterns and chords that children imitate. Solfege sessions at the teacher's piano account for approximately 15 to 20 minutes of a 55-minute class. Through singing solfege, students begin to acquire a sense of pitch, rhythm, meter, harmony, form, phrase structure, key, articulation, dynamics and mood.
In advanced courses, students take weekly group and private lessons, where they build on the foundation of aural and keyboard harmony training by formally studying improvisation and composition. Private lessons include the study of piano repertoire and technique, even though the piano may not be a student's primary instrument in the future. While students work on the technical and expressive demands of repertoire, they also study each piece to gain an understanding of form, style and compositional devices. Through technical studies, students develop the physical and expressive facility to effectively communicate their own musical ideas.