Creative Music Method: Make Your Own Music

Publisher Marketing: David Paul began piano lessons at age 6, violin at age 8. He studied both instruments privately, then focused on violin through high school. After High School, David took two more years of piano at Minnesota's prestigious St. Olaf College, for a total of ten years training on piano, practicing 30 minutes 5 days a week through 9th grade. He also practiced violin, starting with 30-45 minutes a day when younger, then stepping up to 60 to 90 minutes a day in high school, then to 2 to 3 hours a day in college and 4 to 5 hours a day in graduate school at Rice University in Texas. Boy does he wish he'd known The Creative Music Method back then. As a sophomore at his ebraska high school, David's ability on the violin earned him the honor of becoming the youngest musician to play that instrument with the University of Nebraska orchestra. At age 16 he won his first solo music competition, and performed with a regional orchestra as his reward. He attended All State Orchestra 3 years, and was Concertmaster in his senior year of High School, as well as a National Merit Scholar. At St. Olaf College, David graduated with departmental distinction and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. While at St. Olaf, he studied with the Concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra, won the concerto competition as tour soloist his junior year, and served as Concertmaster of the school's orchestra in his senior year. David learned the hard way. And he's spent 20 years developing an easier way to learn. But first, look at all the work it took to get there. Following his graduation from St. Olaf, he moved to St. Paul and continued to practice, waiting tables to pay the bills while he honed his musical ability. There, he won the MacPhail School of Music concerto competition, and the privilege of playing the Tchaikovsky Concerto with the MacPhail orchestra. He also received a double graduate fellowship Honors String Quartet and Graduate Teaching Assistant at Rice University, where he studied with Ruben Gonzalez, Concertmaster of the Houston Symphony -who went on to become Concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony. David attended the Aspen Summer Music Festival for 3 years, serving as Concertmaster of their 3rd level orchestra his second year, and assistant principal second violin in the top orchestra the year after that. Then, following graduate school, he played in a New York City professional training orchestra (sort of like being a minor league baseball player), and played in Carnegie Hall with the orchestra on two occasions. There, he auditioned against 40 other violinists for a job in the Nashville Symphony and also the Jacksonville Symphony. Offered positions in both, he chose Jacksonville. After 7 years with the Symphony, where he was a first violinist, he taught at the renowned Douglas Anderson School of the Arts Magnet High School. For 20 years he had been working towards a better way to teach music and open the natural creativity he saw in those who were attracted to music and music learning. What David learned by teaching others turned into a tested and proven method to make almost any player a better musician and any student more interested in learning and inspired to create their own music. Contributor Bio:  Paul, David David Paul was born in Weymouth, UK, and went to secondary school in Dorchester, and graduated with an M. A. in Social and Political Science from Trinity Hall, Cambridge University. After teaching EFL in the UK, he went to teach in Hiroshima in 1980 and has been based there ever since. In 1982, he began his own language school, 'David English House', which became the largest school in the area after a few years. Since 1981, he has written a number of best-selling course books, run teacher training courses throughout East Asia, set up franchise teacher training centers in Korea and Thailand, and been a plenary or featured speaker at many major conferences in the region.