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Welcome to Spotlight. I'm Ryan Geertsma.
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And I'm Robin Basselin. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand, no matter where in the world they live.
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Resonaari is a music school in the country of Finland. Like other music schools around the world, students come to Resonaari to learn how to play musical instruments. But Resonaari is not like other schools. Most people never expected its students to be able to make music. Today's Spotlight is on how the Resonaari Music Center helped these students play music by teaching in a new way.
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Learning to play a musical instrument takes lots of time and practice. And playing music requires many skills. A person must learn the musical language. The way that music is written is international. It is a system of symbols. These symbols show things like the notes to play and the speed, or tempo, of the music. A musician needs to translate that information into actions. This is necessary so that the sound coming out of the instrument expresses the written music. So a musician needs to understand the written music. And a musician needs to know how to make the instrument create that music.
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But Resonaari is different from most other music schools. Most of its students have mental or physical problems. These problems would normally prevent them from doing anything difficult. But at Resonaari the students' disabilities are not important. Instead, it is a place where people notice their musical skill and not their disabilities.
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Students often begin at Resonaari with no understanding of the basic ideas of music. Some can use only one finger to play. So it is difficult for these people to learn how to play instruments the traditional way. For some it is difficult to understand the written music. For others it is difficult to translate the written music into what the instrument needs to do to produce the sound.
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Two of the teachers at Resonaari recognized this difficulty. So, Markku Kaikkonen and Kaarlo Uusitalo began to develop a new method for writing down music. Markku and Kaarlo spent ten years developing and testing their new method. They call the new method Figurenotes. This is the method that the Resonaari Music Center uses to teach its students.
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Figurenotes is a system of writing down and teaching music. It uses small, sticky pieces of colored paper to show the students what to play. These "stickers" are different colors and shapes. Each color shows what note to play. The shapes show which octave the note is in, a higher one or a lower one.
Voice 1
The written music uses these shapes and colors to show the music. And the stickers can be placed on a piano, guitar, or other musical instrument. The Figurenotes sticker on the instrument shows the student exactly what to play when they see the sticker. Students learn to play by finding the same sticker on the instrument that is written on the music. Markku described this to the newspaper ‘Christian Science Monitor'. He explained how the student experiences the Figurenotes method,
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"In the beginning, it is only colors and symbols. But then suddenly it starts to be music. That is the miracle moment. When a person is playing for the first time in his life, and he understands, 'I played music!' ... I call it the big-smile effect."
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It can take many years before the students are ready to perform. But the teachers at Resonaari are very patient. And they celebrate every little bit of progress a student achieves.
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People with disabilities can understand Figurenotes more easily than traditionally written music. But Figurenotes can be helpful for anyone who is just beginning to play music - even very young children. Figurenotes gives the same information as traditionally written music. So it can be easy for a new musician to learn Figurenotes first, then, change later to traditionally written music.
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For many of the students at Resonaari the study of music is just the beginning. This study gives them courage. They begin to trust their own skills and gifts. It opens up the world of music to them, a world which they could not have taken part in before. Music can also improve the quality of life for people with physical or mental disabilities. For many of the students, Figurenotes begins a process of life-long learning. Markku shared an example with the Christian Science Monitor. It is about one of his students named Marko.
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"The student Marko Koivu began classes about ten years ago. When he arrived, he had only two friends: his mother and a nurse who cared for him. He was a very quiet boy who just let things happen around him. Soon, Marko was learning to play the piano. His mother called to say, 'Marko is teaching me how to play chords on the piano. Are these groups of notes real chords?' It was a great experience. The son had knowledge about something that the mother did not know anything about."
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Playing music gave Marko faith in his own skills. He began to feel like he could do more things on his own. For example, he learned about his local buses. Soon he began riding the bus to his music practices. He became friends with some famous musicians from Finland. These musicians joined him and other Resonaari students in a musical performance. Now Marko says,
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"Music is my life. When we have performances, it gives me a good feeling."
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The Resonaari Music Center has concerts every year. These musical performances give the students a chance to play for people. Many famous musicians join the students. The crowds that come to hear the concerts are always surprised. Before, no one thought that these students were able to create music. But using Figurenotes shows that even students with disabilities have the gift of music.
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The Figurenotes method is becoming popular. It is now being used in other countries - such as Japan, Estonia, Italy, and Iceland. Brian Cope is the director of Drake Music Scotland. His school will be the first school in Scotland to use the Figurenotes method. The school will be using Figurenotes for students with and without disabilities. He heard Resonaari students play a concert. Now he thinks that Figurenotes will change how people learn and teach music. He says,
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"The Resonaari music students are teaching us. They are teaching us that people with learning disabilities are able to do so much more in music than what we knew before."
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