Brain-Based Learning & The ThumMusic System

What Is Learning?

Consciously and unconsciously, the human brain continuously (a) scans its current and remembered sensory input, trying to find patterns from which it (b) builds and tests mental models, with which it (c) makes predictions of cause and effect. Learning, at its most fundamental level, is the process of constructing and testing such mental models. Because your mental models reside in your own brain, no one can build your mental models for you. You have to construct them for yourself.

Educational Materials

However, educators play an extremely important role in structuring and organizing educational material – that is, sensory input – so that the student's brain can (a) easily extract the material's most salient patterns and (b) efficiently create accurate mental models.

Those educational materials are most effective which (1) present the same pattern simultaneously through many different sensory channels, and (2) describe the most accurate mental models with the least information.

The ThumMusic PLUS System and Music Education

The ThumMusic PLUS System has been designed to maximise the rate at which students of music can build accurate mental models of musical cause and effect. Using a ThumField as a tangible, concrete, note-controlling reality, students can see, touch, and hear the fundamental consistency of musical intervals. They cannot escape the essential sameness of a major third here and there, in this key and that key, higher and lower, in this scale and that scale, or even in this tuning and that tuning. They can see, touch, and hear the fundamental consistency of scales, modes, chords, chord progressions, and entire compositions, across keys and tunings. The ThumMusic PLUS system feeds simple, consistent patterns in to the student's brain through many different sensory channels simultaneously, bringing more grey matter to bear on learning tonal music.

Even while engaging more of the student's brain, the ThumMusic PLUS System requires less raw brainpower to master. Because the essential facts and rules of tonal harmony are embedded in the geometry of the ThumMusic PLUS System, the student simply has fewer facts and rules to memorize. Alternatively put, the ThumMusic PLUS System requires less information to describe the mental model needed to accurately predict cause and effect in tonal music.

ThumMusic…MINUS?

While the ThumMusic PLUS System delvers more musical understanding for less student effort, students aren't the only actors in the music education system. Teachers, administrators, and curriculum officers often have very specific guidelines that they must meet, which may preclude their wholesale adoption of a new musical system, no matter what its benefits.

The ThumMusic System (Pitch-Names) – without the “PLUS” – is entirely compatible with existing music education systems. Indeed, by using standard computer keyboards as MIDI-compatible ThumFields, the ThumMusic System can slide right into an existing music education curriculum with nary a ripple. It is an easy first step on the road from the Common Western Music System to the ThumMusic PLUS System.

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