The Rhythm of Humanity

I have been teaching my 10 year-old piano with the Simply Music® method since the beginning of October. She can play about 17 or 18 songs up to this point. And she's having a blast. She'll play for anyone who will listen.

I was listening to her practice the other day and marvelling at how smooth and even her rhythm is. Once she has a song comfortably in her fingers she plays it perfectly evenly. Now, understand, I am not teaching her rhythm per say. She has no idea what time signatures are yet, or that she is playing eigth notes, or quarter notes. She isn't counting along while she plays.

If you've had a traditional piano background I know this makes no sense at all. But that's the way this method works. Now, she will learn time signatures and note values and be able to read music like a champ. We just don't start there. And if you are thinking, "well, I don't know. It doesn't sound real." Then ask yourself this: how many piano students who start off trying to learn to read music from the beginning can play 18 songs with both hands after 4 months of lessons?

The reason this works is that we all have a natural rhythm. In fact, we have so much natural rhythm that we couldn't function or even survive without it. Human beings, every one of us, are deeply musical. That doesn't mean that we could all win American Idol or Dancing with the Stars. But we all have deeply ingrained musicality.

We use it all the time- with the beat of our heart and with every breath we take. And those are involuntary! Think of all the things we use our natural rhythm for: walking (just try to do that unevenly), brushing our teeth, cutting with scissors and on and on.

I have a family member who considers himself completely unmusical. But over the holidays I heard him chopping an onion with one of those choppers you can buy in the mall - the ones where you push on a plunger and the blades rotate against the cutting board. Anyway, the perfect, even rhythm was almost comical. He would do 7 plunges and rest for exactly one count. It was perfect. You could have danced to it.

The problem isn't that people aren't musical. The problem is that people are so profoundly musical that many of them don't even notice.