Occupational Octaves Piano: A New Musical Language

Occupational Octaves Piano™, an 8-book series featuring a curriculum of over 250 pages of music, replaces the complexities of traditional music with a special needs user-friendly system.

Traditional music, with its combination of black and white lines, dots, and curly symbols, can be confusing.
​It requires a great deal of visual discrimination and decoding. 

Here's "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" written in traditional notation:

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​However, the set of instructions contained within its symbols is critical for truly learning to play the piano. The musical language in the Occupational Octaves series arranges colored letters inside rhythmically designed boxes while preserving the three major instructions of music: notes, fingers, and beats.

Here's "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" written in the Music Box Method:

What are the basic musical instructions?

 For the first time, an alternative language of music exists that provides the same three basic musical instructions as traditional notation:

1. Which note to play
2. Which finger to use
3. How long to hold

The note "C" in traditional notation

The note "C" in Music Box Method™ notation

What makes it special needs user-friendly?

The clarity of the method makes the musical instructions that are normally hidden within the complex structure of traditional music functional and easy. This allows the student to focus less on decoding complex symbols and more on motor coordination and fun.

Once motor skills begin to improve, a student can move on to reading traditional musical notation.

The Piano Circle of Cognitive Gain

Most people believe that a neuro-typical learner reading music follows two repeated steps - read the note and play the note. However, advanced classical players actually take FIVE important steps while reading music: translate, process, instruct, play, and return eyes.

It is our belief at Occupational Octaves Piano™ that students who benefit cognitively from reading and playing the piano benefit from these five steps in repetition as opposed to benefitting from reading traditional music itself. We believe that the actual step of translating the music is a challenge, but one that musicians master to the point where reading the notes eventually becomes as easy as reading English. Once a neuro-typical student is reading traditional music notation with that sort of ease, he/she can focus on all five steps of the Piano Circle of Cognitive Gain and become a musician! 

In order for these five steps to work as smoothly and repetitively as they would with a classical pianist, translating the music must be handled functionally and easily so that the other steps may have equal attention. Lee Stockner's Music Box Method™ allows special learners to functionally and easily handle the translation process and experience the Piano Circle of Cognitive Gain.

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"If a child can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way that they learn." -Ignacio Estrada

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