Sean Atkinson

is an ambitious undertaking of eighteen video lessons in music, accompanied by a print book covering each class’s primary points and providing worksheets for students to use. The approach is marred by pedagogical and design failures.

I cannot determine the audience Sean Atkinson intended to address with these lessons. They begin at a basic level suitable for elementary school-age beginners, explaining beginning concepts such as the treble and bass clefs, the names of the notes on the lines and spaces of the treble clef, and sharps and flats. From there, it progresses to topics suitable for college-level music majors. I have been taking piano lessons for seven years, but the book advanced beyond my level of understanding in the 12th lesson.

I might have been able to grasp the advanced concepts were it not for the pedagogical failure of the book. Atkinson explains the concepts briefly, but each lesson moves at a pace that doesn’t permit reflection and gradual comprehension. It provides pauses during which students are instructed to try and complete some task, but Atkinson fills these pauses with music where silence would have been better. Even better would be suggesting viewers pause the DVD and resume when they believe they have completed the task. Of course, there is no opportunity to obtain assistance with the assignment or to evaluate your performance.

Another problem is the complicated musical scores used. Stripping information unrelated to Atkinson’s topic would simplify the concept’s illustration. Embedding the focal issue in ancillary, irrelevant details lessens the educational value of the examples. That is true of many musical performances that illustrate the focal points. Almost all seem to have been performed by Texas Christian University School of Music faculty members. At points, the project appears to be a recruiting tool for the TCU School of Music.… (més)