Foundations of a Musical Mind

A 6-week course from the leading provider of musicality training, using Kodály principles to equip you with the mental models that let you feel like a “natural” in music.

This 6-week course provides day-by-day instruction and exercises which start from the very beginning and train you to:

Recognise note pitches by ear
Recognise rhythmic patterns by ear
Write down the score notation for music you hear
Sing or imagine music in your head directly from score notation
Improvise your own musical ideas

Each week a new module uses specially-chosen songs to:

Introduce Learn the new musical material which will be used to teach this module’s concepts.
Explore Start to play around with the musical elements to get an instinctive feel for how they work.
Discover Clear explanations of the key concepts behind these musical elements, enabling you to establish your new mental models.
Extend Go beyond the musical material used so far and see how these new ideas impact other music you know, including creating your own musical ideas.
Practice Independent exercises let you test your new knowledge, understanding and abilities.

The course material is all provided at your convenience online and compatible with any modern internet device.
Each module is broken into bite-sized chunks that make it easy to see your progress.
It’s designed to require just 15 minutes per day, and the timing is flexible so that you can fit it around a busy schedule.
Drawing on the principles of the Kodály approach, Foundations of a Musical Mind provides song-based learning – meaning that all musical concepts and skills are taught through actual musical material. You learn a song, and from there you explore its various dimensions to acquire a deep understanding of how the music works.
It is also a multi-sensory approach, so that you learn to relate the notes your eyes see on the page, to the notes your ears hear, to the pitches and pulse you indicate with your hands, to the musical ideas you express with your voice. By approaching the same ideas from multiple angles it becomes much easier to internalise the new mental models and make them a core part of your personal understanding of music.

Meet Your Instructor, Anne Mileski

Anne Mileski specialises in making music learning purposeful, sequential and joyful.

She is the founder of Anacrusic.com and host of The Anacrusic Podcast where she is a leading voice in modern music education.

Anne holds a Masters of Music degree in Music Education from Southern Methodist University and is a Kodály Teacher Trainer. Her teaching is informed by a wide breadth of experience and knowledge of best practices. As well as being Kodály Certified she has qualifications in all the other major musicianship methods including Dalcroze, Gordon Music Learning Theory and Orff-Schulwerk.

Over the 6 weeks of the Foundations of a Musical Mind course you’ll discover:

The powerful solfa model for naming notes by ear.
How to sight-sing music or imagine it in your mind from the score.
A systematic way of using your hands to help you internalise note pitches.
The rhythm syllable model which lets you immediately translate rhythmic patterns you hear into the corresponding notation, and vice-versa.
The relationship between pulse and rhythm, and how to always keep the two connected.
How to improvise your own musical ideas based on a song.
… and much more!

By the end of the 6-week course you’ll be able to instinctively make the connection between every note you hear, read, write, sing and play.

Price: $199

Case Studies

Watch:

Case Study: Charlie A.

Charlie is lifelong musician who plays the trumpet and sings. While not formally trained in music theory, he has been an active performer for many yearss. He’s been a member of Musical U for some time, having joined because he wanted to become a better performer. After 8 months he says he’s glad he joined because it’s helped him understand music more, especially through ear training. He found that he didn’t really have a full understanding of what he was trying to learn, like there was something that was missing. Then “along came the Foundations course”. He liked that the promotional videos teased that this course was something that would impact all of the things that he was trying to learn as a Musical U member. As he puts it: “This is a way of getting back to the roots of music where you can fill in the gaps of your hearing, fill in the gaps of your melodic understanding, and bring yourself up to a better set of fundamentals in your musical life.” This course has helped him see the “mind’s ear” in a different way. He says he now realizes that there are different pieces to his music knowledge and its the pieces that make up the whole of a musician. This has enabled him to realize that the pieces of music he plays all have a tremendous meaning and it’s up to him as the musician to interpret that meaning in his performance. The course also opened up new meaning to the word “improvisation” that has greatly expanded his understanding of how (and why!) to improvise.

Case Study: Christine P.

Christine is a flautist, pianist, and singer. She shares that she had always thought of the way you learn to sing was by hearing the tune played to you, and the way you learned to play music on an instrument was by reading the music. The thought of just being able to look at the notes, and know how the music was supposed to sound was completely foreign to her. It wasn’t until she was in her forties that she realized that were all these other musicians that could “audiate” from the page, that this was something that people could just do. She says “The idea of ‘fundamentals’ of music, of being able to understand how music is put together at a very basic level and how to know, either by listening to music or by reading it on the page, to understand what that means really at a deep musical level, really appealed to me.” For Christine, the course was about learning to hear music. Learning to recognize patterns in the sounds and relations between notes in a way that lets me work things out by ear much easier than just “This note, this note. Nope, that’s wrong. This note, this note. Nope, that’s wrong.” She says that the community aspect – learning that you’re not alone in this, and that other musicians were going through the same thing that you’re struggling with – was “so freeing”.

Case Study: David W.

David was never “a musician” even though he has always appreciated music as a listener. From a young age, he was told that he couldn’t sing, which has resulted in him forever avoiding singing in front of people. Before the course, he was careful to never sing or express his inner musicality in front of other people. He was interested in Foundations because he had heard of Kodály before starting the training. He thought it seemed interesting, and a way to finally break through the many barriers that had been placed in front of his musical development in the past. “I’m self employed and heading toward 60. I’m starting to think about how to wind down slightly. I do think maybe I’ll have a bit more time, maybe I would like to do a bit more than just listen to the music and increase my understanding of things. I’m a lifelong learner.” He is continuously interested in pursuing this, even though it has eluded him up until now. He appreciates that this method has allowed him to “see the melodic contour of music”. And, best of all, the singing material included has resulted in him starting to sing for the first time ever. Overall he says that he has made tremendous improvements in his musicality and looks forward to continuing.

Case Study: Zac B.

Zac has been playing music his whole life, including multiple different instruments before discovering his love for DJing and production. What he likes the most about his musical journey is that he’s been able to use a variety of instruments and didn’t have to focus on just one. In the same way he likes to explore various genres of music and takes a holistic approach to listening to and learning music. He says that enrolling in the Foundations course was a gut reaction for him. He had been a member of Musical U prior to enrolling and said he has really came to love this approach to learning music. So when he heard about Foundations he was immediately excited and says didn’t need to give the decision much thought. Since going through the material, he’s discovered that this has created a new way for him to fully internalize music and the music is able to flow more naturally from him. Music theory became fun, and learning all the various techniques and exercises was “fun, easy, and amazing”. One of the biggest breakthroughs was that musical ideas began to make more sense and connect. He was able to take musical activities that seemed to be separate before, and incorporate them all into his musicality. Zac notes that other courses tend to separate composing, improvising, rhythm, singing, etc… but this course combined them in a way that he had never experienced before. Going forward he’s learning ways that he can be more productive in his music practice. While it may seem counterintuitive to do more steps when learning music, or slow it down, he says these extra steps to learning music get a musician to their end point much faster than the way he had been learning. Full Disclosure: We were so impressed with Zac’s contributions through the discussions in the course that we’re pleased to say we have since invited him to become a member of the Musical U team and help provide support to future members and course students. Zac purchased the Foundations course as a regular customer and provided this feedback and case study video before any employment was discussed.

Case Study: Steve L.

Steve has a long and varied musical background. He had a negative experience in primary school that made him decide that maybe music wasn’t something for him, even though he enjoyed it. As an adult learner, he’s found learning to be intimidating and disjointed. In his life generally he’s already a very technical person, but he ran into problems when he was trying to connect these various skills he learned about to his actual instrument. Nothing was able to fill the gap between learning musicality skills and actually creating music. Steve saidthat the Foundations course seemed to say all the things that he had been searching for. A way to internalize music and just be able to know it. “Forget all the theory and the technical chops, to actually be musical”. As he started the course, he was at first surprised by the simplicity of the songs. But as the course developed he was amazed at just how musical these very simple songs were. And by stripping away the complexity of the music he was able to discover more about phrases, melodies, and rhythms in a way that had never been possible before. Moving forward, Steve says he’s learned that you can take this method and techniques to get information from any music, and that this process of learning and experimenting with music is something that’s going to stay with him. One of the major benefits that he discovered was learning music by actually playing with it, rather than staying within technical definitions. Everything in music had seemed circular for him, as everything was defined in terms of itself or another technical concept. He’s now discovered that music theory is just a way to describe the music, and is still important – but not the starting point for him any more. Learning all of the concepts and songs was more of an experience, and he’s finally been able to experience the music in a way that he never had before.

Case Study: Ian H.

Ian is a retired music school teacher who had been playing music his entire life. He’s a great believer that everything in music can be taught, and that musicianship is something that is accessible to all learners. He came to Musical U and the Foundations course because he had always wanted to follow up on his musicianship training. Since joining MU, Ian has been impressed by the systematic way that musical learning is approached. The Foundations course appealed to him because it was built around the methods of Kodály, which he was already familiar with. He saw the course as a way to refresh his existing knowledge and kick himself back into action. Ideally, to be able to teach aural skills to his students. After years of teaching and having the answers right in front of him at all times, he saw this as an opportunity to challenge himself, improve his skills, and go further. Ian shares taht one of the most enjoyable aspects of the course was that he was encouraged to listen to music in a progressive way, building upon the musical ideas without becomign overwhelmed. “This is a structured method that is not only useful while learning in the course, but can be applied to everyday music and practice sessions. It makes more music accessible, even if it’s not something that they thought they could handle. It’s a very empowering method that will enable the learner to become better than the teacher at some point.” As a music teacher, this was always his goal and he finds great joy in his students progressing to the point where they no longer need his instruction. Ian says “Whatever the skill it is that you want to pick up, you need to develop listening skills, you need to develop musicianship skills. And Musical U and Foundations of a Musical Mind are very good at giving you the foundations and the confidence to go ahead and do that.”

Imagine how your musical life would be transformed if you had the kind of musical mind that you always thought required “talent”.

No more confusion and frustration in your music learning.
No more feeling overwhelmed, or like you’re just wasting your time.
No more painful struggling to learn things that deep down you know should be as easy and natural as music itself.
Instead imagine having the musical mind that just instinctively understands every note, rhythm and chord you hear.
Imagine having the musical mind that lets you confidently and intuitively collaborate with other musicians in any situation.
Imagine having the musical mind that makes all your musical activities (and even music practice and learning) simply a joy.

In just 6 weeks, for the price of a cup of coffee per day, that musical mind can be yours.

Foundations of a Musical Mind
Is Opening Soon!

Places Are Limited.

We’ll be providing unlimited personal support and guidance to make sure you succeed with this training course – so places are limited.

100% GUARANTEED

We are so confident that you’ll love this training course and be delighted with the new foundation it provides you that we are covering it with a 90-Day 100% Money-Back Guarantee.

So if you’ve ever felt like learning music was harder than it should be…

If you’ve yearned for those free, creative, expressive skills of the “natural” musician…

If you’ve felt held back, or like you just “didn’t have what it takes”…

Or if you’ve worried that it might just be too late for you…

Ask yourself: have you been missing the foundation you needed?

The foundation that provides the mental models which make it easy to learn even the most impressive musical skills.

Put that new foundation in place – and see the transformation on every aspect of your musical life.

“Everyone I talked to and most people on the web all recommended Musical U as the best there is. And it seems they were right.” – William P.

“I’ve been very impressed by the level of care the team takes for us.” – Luke B.

Frequently-Asked Questions

Q: When does the course begin? Is it flexible?

The course begins on a certain date, depending on when you enroll. It’s structured as a 6-week program providing daily training and it’s expected to take on average 15 minutes per day.

You have flexibility about when you do each day’s training (e.g. no problem to do Tuesday and Wednesday’s exercises all on Wednesday) and you’ll have access to the course materials in perpetuity.

So although the course will run “live” with a set start date, you are free to begin the program whenever you like and proceed at your own pace.

Q: What happens at the end of the course, can I keep the material?

Yes. You’ll have access to the web material even after the 6 weeks are over, for as long as you need.

Q: Is this suitable for beginners?

Yes, absolutely. We’ll be starting from the absolute fundamentals, and the course will have valuable material both for those who are totally new to music learning (or just to musicality training) for and those who’ve been learning for a while.

Q: Do I need to know music theory?

No. This course is designed to teach you all the essential concepts from scratch.

In fact, this is how “music theory” should be.

There’s not going to be tons of arcane terminology and classical music theories you’ll never need to know or use.

Instead you’ll learn the fundamental concepts that will benefit you every day in your musical life.