<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div>On Jun 19, 2019, at 8:10 AM, Phillip Gallo <<a href="mailto:philgallo@gmail.com" class="">philgallo@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div dir="ltr" class=""><div class="">Don, i agree with the philosophy of your "rant" (also the bag pipes as a practical case).</div><div class="">Isn't there a bit more, though ?<br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">The pedagogical tradition includes "play along" - student plays with the teacher.</div><div class="">The illuminated key clavier idea would seem a close cousin to the "play along" with Mel Bay 45rpm record that came with my Kay flattop?</div><div class="">I can play "Down in the Valley" to this day!</div></div></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div><div><br class=""></div><div>Every good teacher knows that, in the craft, you have a large number of approaches at your disposal; demonstrating for the student, critiquing their technique, explaining the theory, guiding the student to discover on their own, hitting them with a stick if they're doing it wrong, etc. And the best teachers know when to use each approach.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>Sometimes a "brain dump", sometimes the Socratic Method.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>Yes, playing along with the student is an excellent teaching technique. And play-along records are a great tool because playing with other musicians is a different set of issues than playing by yourself, especially with regards to timing. A metronome, also, great tool.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div>But if you're building a gizmo to help teach an instrument... well, there's an enormous tendency to do exactly the wrong thing. An engineer will often abstract the situation into "problem + technology => solution" and end up building a device that performs the very function that the student most needs to do on their own.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>That is the case for light up note keyboards, either in 1969, or today.</div><div><br class=""></div><div> -- Don</div></div><div class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Menlo; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;">--<br class="">Donald Tillman, Palo Alto, California<br class=""><a href="http://www.till.com" class="">http://www.till.com</a></div>
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