The Ketos Educational Philosophy

• All of our music academy offerings are built around our “real world” approach that values experience over pedagogical dogma. We believe that the old adage “those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach” entered the lexicon because the dominant educational philosophy in our culture is curriculum based and “one size fits all.” No one can truly learn to do something just from learning exercises and following a book. An outline of needed skills is important and books help but nothing can replace the experience that comes from actually doing what you are studying. The best teachers in any field are professionals who have chosen to develop the skill and art of teaching yet have also achieved at the highest level of their field so they can walk students from beginner through professional level. “Hands On” real world training. Do it for real to learn to do it for real.

• Our curriculum “Music as a 2nd Language” is designed around this philosophy. We use information you already know to learn music. For example, when you need to learn a rhythm from a song, instead of taking 6 weeks to teach you the standard music counting system, we give you an English (or other language) phrase you can use like “Jump the Mushroom and fall down” that matches the rhythm needed. You can immediately hear the rhythm in your head because you have been doing rhythm in language your whole life. That means you can immediately play it which equals more experience playing actual songs. Then, we slowly teach you the standard music counting system over time through the songs. Exactly like learning any other language. You start by translating from the language you already know. We take this approach to every single thing about our training program. We use information you already know to help you “translate” into music until you can become fluent speaking the language of music and therefore think in that language.