SENSAPITCH METHODS AND PACKAGES

I created SensAPitch with the full force of my lifetime of teaching students and teachers as individuals to learn Perfect Absolute Pitch. Even as I started, the ideas for how it would be utilized by the individual students didn’t fully crystallize until I started using it to teach new students again during COVID. I realized something big was missing. Yes, for the first time in history, we were easily and reliably teaching students Perfect Pitch. What we weren’t doing was teaching them how to use this superpower skill. 

I set about to compose a set of teaching songs, and what became several songbooks of compelling songs, all with multiple goals for introducing complex musical skills in a fun, entertaining, rhythmic, and memorable songs. I quickly learned that SensAPitch notation didn’t limit me to certain keys or time signatures. My first goal was to create simple seeming songs, that students would grow to love, from the first time they tried them, and even more as they mastered them. 

I first tried these new songbooks, one at a time, on my new students in August, 2021. I worried, at first, that I had made them too difficult for “beginners” to learn easily. I watched in total astonishment as one student after another, from preschoolers to older adults, not only liked them, but LOVED to play them… so much that they learned the fundamental skills included inside of them easily and with joy, giggles and laughter in every video they sent to me. In the first 

In my career with teaching the best of “traditional methods”, I used Faber’s Piano Adventures, I was clear that to completely train a new student through at least the end of Level 3B, took approximately 1-2 years per level. Primer, Level 1, Level 2A, Level 2B, Level 3A, and Level 3B. My committed students took about 6 years to get to this point of mastery. It’s the point of emerging competence, where the student becomes a confident musician, and can play intermediate piano scores of their favorite artists, while reading and understanding the details of the theory and the technique to play well. I worked very hard for 40 years to get students to this point of mastery as quickly and enjoyably as possible, so they wouldn’t quit lessons. I tried everything to keep them engaged and happy, teaching to the student’s interests first, and then modifying the method books just enough that they became palatable for each student’s personality types and learning styles. 

It is known that many students have a hard time learning to memorize music unless they practice doing it during the first years of playing. I sought accreditation from the National Guild of Piano Teachers and became a Certified Piano Teacher.  I added twice annual adjudications that did a four objective purpose of:

1) Giving the student an opportunity to present their hard work to an accredited and objective piano expert, 
2) Giving them the requirement of memorizing two pieces with all of the right dynamics and technical skills, presented with confidence, 
3) Gave them documentation of all of the skills they had learned during the previous 6 months so they had tangible evidence to present to scholarship and audition committees, helping to pay for their college tuition
4) Gave them tangible rewards for their hard work and tenacity for sticking with lessons

In 8 months, my new students have surpassed the skills demonstrated by my “Piano Adventures” students have shown after 6-8 years in lessons with me! At first I thought it was one or another of my new students, and that they were somehow more exceptional music learners. That worked with the first three children in a row… and then the next adult, and then the next 6… then two students with significant learning challenges like autism and hearing impairment. One after another got to level 3B or higher competence in 6-8 months, regardless of their age or “natural” abilities. Somehow, their unique and not first evident “natural abilities” showed up and they were learning with smiles and laughter in my teaching room! They played every day, on their own, and took themselves through the books, learning complex skills with complete confidence, and never “practiced”. 

THIS is something BIG. I know it to the core of my being. It’s the discovery of a new way of learning. I have always identified it as a “Whole-Brain Music Method”, but it’s more than that. It’s the way a human being was designed to learn to play music. It’s a very simple method to teach, and on the surface of it, looks and feels very easy. The learning disguised underneath is absolutely not easy, but I wouldn’t know it from the smiles on my student’s faces.

I realized that THIS is the way I wished my own children and grandchildren had learned to play piano. THIS is the way the human brain was designed to learn to play music. Quickly, easily, and completely self-motivated, and individually customizable to meet any student’s needs, whether there is current evidence of talent or not. 

This is what my students say about learning with SensAPitch:

“I took lessons as a child, and it was always hard work for me. I quit after 6 months feeling discouraged, untalented, and was told that I had a lack of discipline because I just didn’t feel like practicing.”  Claire Lockwood

“My little girl sneaks into the piano room when I’m not looking, and plays the piano. I hear laughter and come in to see her intensely  focused on playing. Sometimes the songbook, sometimes her own creations. Her sister is often in the room with her, pushing buttons on the keyboard and messing around with the settings. They laugh and start again. She’s so excited to be playing so well, in such a short amount of time, she has a hard time sitting down while playing because she’s so energized by it!” Kelly Piazza

“We were on a skiing trip last week with our friends, who’s son is also 7 and taking lessons with Bonnie. We were outside in the snow, and didn’t see the boys anywhere. We looked everywhere, and finally looked in the windows of the house to see our young boys playing a duet on the piano! We couldn’t believe it… they did it completely on their own while we were on vacation, with fresh snow everywhere around the house!!!”

Now I know for sure…. That’s why I wrote SensAPitch!!!