The Ploger Method: Crafting a Fluent Musical Mind, Paperback

For over forty years, Marianne Ploger has been teaching music lovers of all ages, interests, and aptitudes to discover their own musical gifts. She has found that it is not the ear that requires training-it is the mind. When the conscious mind knows what it is supposed to do, it effortlessly syncs with natural aural perceptions. In this book, Marianne shares the secrets that have helped hundreds develop more fluency and musicality in hearing, performing, reading, and writing music. Essentially, music is made up of few basic elements: 12 pitches, 11 di-chords, and rhythms grouped into two and/or three beats. Concrete descriptions of what to listen for in each of these elements, discovered by Ploger, will help you to develop the mental and aural skills needed for fluency and musicality. Techniques are provided to help you avoid common psychological pitfalls in the learning process. Find out how easy it is to read in any of the seven clefs, while developing skill in the French fixed syllable system employed at major conservatories throughout the world. After establishing familiarity with the basic elements, learn how to use your newfound knowledge and skill to identify more sophisticated forms, such as chords, modes, scales, polyrhythms and mixed meters.

Marianne Ploger is the Associate Professor of Music Perception and Cognition and Director of the Musicianship Program at Vanderbilt University, Blair School of Music. She studied with famed pedagogue Nadia Boulanger in Paris and received her MM in Piano Performance from the University of Michigan. Since 1980, her interest in neurology, psychology, perception, and cognition led to her original observations involving "real time" recognition of musical intervals and pitches. She developed her fluency-based method to train the musical mind in a way that is appropriate for all musical genres and levels of experience. It is employed by thousands of musicians around the world.