PASO Music Academy

Why Teach Music? Music is relevant to the core curriculum Music is mathematical. It is rhythmically based on the subdivisions of time into fractions which must be done instantaneously, and not worked out on paper. Music helps us learn to read and develop creativity. Music teaches us to interpret meaning, to form lyrical, melodic thoughts. Music helps us to commit to memory-making learning more fun. Music is Science. It is exact, specific, and it demands exact acoustics. A conductor's full score is a chart, a graph which indicates frequencies, intensities, volume changes, melody, and harmony all at once and with the most exact control of time. Music is a foreign language. Most of the terms are in Italian, German, or French; and the notation is certainly not English - but a highly developed kind of shorthand that uses symbols to represent ideas. The semantics of music is the most complete and universal language. Music is Historical. Music usually reflects the environment and times of its creation, often even the country and/or racial feeling. Music is Physical Education Music requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands, arms, lips, cheeks, and facial muscles, in addition to extraordinary control of the diaphragm, back, stomach, and chest muscles, which respond instantly to the sound the ear hears and the mind interprets. Music develops insight and demands research Music is all of these things, but most of all . . . Music is ART. It allows a human being to take all these dry, technically, difficult techniques and use them to create emotion. That is one thing science cannot duplicate: feeling, emotion and yes if you will allow us . . . humanism. For all of these reasons and countless more, we are Teachers of Music. Don't we believe in the greatness that music instills in our students? Don't we believe in the discipline, the dedication, the development of self-esteem, and don't we enjoy witnessing our students becoming, literally, vessels of beauty? Yes, the planting season is upon us, (figuratively) once again. We drop our seeds of knowledge in their curious minds and then draw from them MIRACLES. We encourage our students to "weather" the seasons, in hopes that someday, they will become what they are meant to become... loving, caring, lovers of the art we call music.