The Playground
The Simply Music blog
Simply Music is a world-leader and pioneer in the field of playing-based music education. We're interested in developing programs and projects that fundamentally impact populations of people. Basically, we focus on causing breakthroughs in creativity for humanity.
Moshpit Memories
Billboard Magazine recently remarked that the year 2013 looks set to boast the most new U.S. Music Festivals launched in history. It’s easy to see why when music festivals have had a renaissance of sorts lately; in the past decade some of the largest ones…
Vocalist Richard Steighner Interview with Gretta Dunn
“If you can speak, you can sing” With the runaway success of Glee, Pitch Perfect and High School Musical, a cappella is riding high. What exactly is the appeal of vocal music? As beatboxer and star of NBC’s The Sing-Off Richard Steighner explains, “being dorky…
Improvisation Trainer Kat Koppett Interview with Mark Meritt
“It’s not a metaphor – it’s actually literally what we do all the time, this conversation, we’re improvising”. Kat Koppett lowered the curtain on a classical singing career when she discovered the joys of improvisation. Since then, besides founding the wonderful Spontaneous Broadway, she has developed…
Simply Music Teacher – Irene Stephenson
“Miss Irene” Stephenson has been a much-loved music teacher in her Ontario community for more than two decades. She discovered Simply Music when looking for an effective way to teach adults, and has since been inspired to create new opportunities for her students’ parents to…
Learn Beethoven’s 5th, Part Two
We are going to head into the next section of Symphony No. 5 in C Minor by Beethoven. If you are using the version from Free Scores, it is going to be more complex than what I am demonstrating here. The book I am working…
The Music Lesson – Review
Anyone who knows of Victor Wooten would have to put him in their list of greatest bass guitarists of all time. As a bass player myself, I regularly find myself dumbfounded by musical feats I have absolutely no idea how he performs. it’s no small…
Musical Inventor Linsey Pollak Interview with Caroline and Hannah Schmidli
“It’s a shame that we tend to live in a society where we leave music-making to the experts”. Not that Linsey Pollak is a non-expert, far from it. Having spent most of his life studying music and designing and making instruments, it’s just that he…
Simply Music Teacher – Shanta Hejmadi
Shanta Hejmadi is a classic case of someone destined for a musical career who finally found it in teaching. Although an accomplished singer, Shanta doubted her abilities as a piano teacher until she was introduced to Simply Music. Now she’s a very successful and much…
Story of a Song – The Rite of Spring
This new occasional series is already contradicting itself in the first edition by discussing not a song but a full-length orchestral piece. Still, the 100th anniversary of one of the milestone events in music is worth commemorating. There are few if any genuinely unprecedented new…
A Late Quartet – Book Review
An outstanding ensemble cast and the overriding theme of passion, both musical and romantic, make this movie a captivating experience. The Fugue String Quartet is celebrating its 25th anniversary just as the senior member and cellist, Peter (Christopher Walken), is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. The…
