All about the Piano Fun Method Series

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About the author 

MDA Piano Academy uses revolutionary, Japanese-developed piano methods for beginners, known as Piano Fun.

The author of this method, ITO Yoshimi, is an Alexander Technique–licensed pianist and piano pedagogue,

and the founder of the Integration Alexander Academy.
She is also the originator of the Integration Piano Method®, which forms the conceptual foundation

adopted in the Piano Fun series.

Her extensive research, which includes body mapping and neuroscience, resulted in a novel method of teaching piano that promotes healthy musical development in young children through proper piano technique.

Main feature of Piano Fun

1. Cute & Fun!

When humans come across something interesting, their brains produce dopamine.
Dopamine stimulates curiosity and supports motivation and focus, creating seamless pathways to learning.
This is the most efficient, productive, and effortless learning process.

2. We can raise more creative, happy, and intelligent children by adapting to brain development

Our brains undergo their own developmental stages.
The key to children’s future success is to stimulate them appropriately while not disrupting their progress.

The Piano Fun method encourages children to use their hands and fingers, such as adding stickers to their music, before engaging in tool-based activities such as writing with pencils and crayons.

3. They will want to practice on their own!

Lessons are given using familiar tunes that children have heard somewhere before, without any pressure.
This creates a virtuous cycle of “practice is fun” and “practice makes you better.”

4. Good technique from the start!

Piano Fun is suitable for children as young as three years old.
It teaches healthy piano playing techniques based on human anatomy from the start, giving all students a comfortable beginning in terms of their physical development.

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What are all the features of our primary method, Piano Fun?
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Limited verbal explanations

This method limits verbal explanations to a minimum, as our brains use slightly different pathways to comprehend verbal explanations and to learn physical actions.

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The best way to learn physical action is to observe and imitate the teacher’s demonstration.

Observation

Students must pay close attention to the teacher’s actions in order to emulate them.
Paying close attention improves concentration and helps students stay focused on their current task.

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Observation produces strong focus.

Learning all elements together, one at a time, without separating them

Playing the piano requires understanding pitch, duration, and location on the keyboard, as well as reading music and determining which fingers to use, with all of these elements combined simultaneously.

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When these elements are learned separately, they cannot be fully reintegrated in the same way as when they are taught as a whole.
For this reason, the most efficient and understandable method of learning is to learn all elements together, gradually building them up one by one from the beginning.

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Playing the piano requires performing multiple tasks at the same time.
Learning each of them separately does not result in successful integration.

Coarse motor skills and fine motor skills

🤸🏻 Gross motor skills: large movements that use the whole body (walking, running, jumping, etc.)

Stage for developing the body’s core
♪ Including maintaining posture
♪ Sound play with percussion instruments
♪ Rhythmic exercises

📝 Fine motor skills: precise movements using the hands and fingers (drawing, writing, using chopsticks, grasping small objects with the fingers, etc.)

Stage of developing peripheral nerves, such as those in the fingertips
♪ Drawing and writing
♪ Using utensils such as chopsticks
♪ Picking up small objects
♪ Doing different things with both hands

🎹 Delicate finger coordination requires good control of the trunk (the body’s core), wrists, arms, and shoulders.
In other words, it is critical to develop core strength beginning in childhood.

Following gross motor activities (using the entire body to feel and move to music), children can smoothly transition to fine motor activities (playing the piano).

Proprioceptive Sensation and Tactile Sensation
Those are two essential senses for piano playing.
 

These are two essential senses for piano playing.

🎼 Proprioception (kinaesthesia): the sense of knowing the position and movement of each part of the body; reducing the likelihood of playing wrong notes on the piano; enabling delicate keyboard control, precise speed control through keystrokes, pedalling, etc.

🎵 Exercises to develop proprioception:
Balance balls, balance discs, standing on one leg, catching a ball, etc.

🎼 Tactile sensations (tactile sensory processing): sensations received through the skin, or how the brain interprets and uses information from the sense of touch in order to produce delicate touches, such as determining how much pressure to apply to the piano keys.

🎵 Exercises to develop tactile sensations:
Touching and holding various objects (objects of different hardness, texture, weight, and size)