Family Day 2015

Welcome to Family Day 2015

We hope that you enjoyed the musical performances at the opening ceremonies today. We are so happy to greet you today and welcome you to NCSSM. We love taking this opportunity to give you some information about the courses your child is taking and for you to get to know us just a little bit better.

One of the concepts that I encourage students to consider in music classes, particularly in our classical piano and guitar course, is that of music performance as fluency. That is, learning to play a musical instrument is very similar to learning to speak. When we learn a new word as a small child, we use that word over and over until it's simply becomes part of our vocabulary. It's very similar with our beginning piano and guitar students. When they learn the notes and rhythms of a song, it is imperative that they continue playing that song and those techniques over and over so that they become part of their musical vocabulary.  Reading is another part of that skill.  It comes along at a different rate than the performance side and that is fine.  Some folks read with fluency early and others take more time to get there.

This is the same for advanced musicians and more difficult music as well. We are never finished working on the rudiments of music just like we are never finished considering strong grammar when we speak. The learning process involves adding new words and ideas to our vocabulary on a daily basis while practicing those that we added yesterday, the day before, the week before, and the month before.

So, that will give you a quick idea of one of the important concepts that we cover in music at NCSSM. We hope you have a wonderful day. I look forward to speaking with each of you throughout the day safe travels, and please know we love working with your kids and we will continue to nurture them in their musical development, as well as their development as young men and women.