The background
Melodics was founded by Sam Gribben in the summer of 2014. He worked with some of the biggest artists in the music industry. He started to notice how popular pad and cue point drumming were becoming. He had a hard time developing the skills needed for finger drumming. Now Gribben provided us with an app that teaches us how to play keys, pads, and drums (electric).
Practice what you don't know
In the book Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology Reiser & Dempsey (2018) pointed out that motivation to learn is promoted when learners believe they can succeed in mastering the learning task.
Learning a new instrument like the drums can be daunting, and Gribben wants to make practicing and learning fun and exciting. He wants the student to be in a state of flow while performing the lesson. If the material is too difficult the student will give up, if it is too easy the student becomes bored and lose interest. This is shown by the chart below. The Flow is in between being frustrated because the challenge is too difficult and being bored due to the challenge being too easy. The key factors determining the level of expertise achieved were neither natural talent nor IQ. Practice does not guarantee success and can lead to stagnation. This is why many people who try to learn an instrument end up putting it down and not picking it back up. However, deliberate practice is designed to transmit a well-defined set of skills that the best performers in the field have honed, and for which proven practice techniques exist (Giraud, 2021). Skills are acquired as the learner develops detailed mental representations through repeated, focused efforts and mental exertion just beyond the edge of the learner’s current abilities (Giraud, 2021). Slowing things down, zooming in, and focusing and repeating are the key steps to achieving the student's goals. Skills are acquired as the learner develops detailed mental representations through repeated, focused efforts and mental exertion just beyond the edge of the learner’s current abilities.
Gamification Fun
As the student complete the steps and lessons, they earn rewards, trophies, streaks, and feedback. Much like playing a game at the end of each level, the student will get a score on how they did and where to improve. Feedback is among the most powerful factors in the relationship between educational interventions and learning in general (Sailer & Homner, 2020). This is used to encourage the learner in a positive way to learn the material. They can choose to practice the sections they need help with or keep going to the next steps to learn the song as a whole. By choosing a song the student would like to learn gives them the motivation to achieve 100%. Self-determination theory has been successfully applied in the context of games and gamification. It postulates psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and social relatedness (Sailer & Homner, 2020). The gamification strategy to learn an instrument allows the learner to anticipate and experience the satisfying outcomes of the learning task as Reiser & Dempsey stated (2018).
Learn By Doing
Melodics teaches the foundations of the instrument of choice by simply playing that instrument. Instead of just learning music theory and playing scales, the student can choose any genre and song they like. This app gives the student real music to play from. When I learned how to play the guitar, I didn’t want to learn chords I wanted to play a song. Not a nursery rhyme or a made-up song from the lesson book, I wanted to play a real song that I heard on the radio. It makes it genuine for the learner that they are gaining new skills and building confidence while playing real music. Motivation to learn is promoted and maintained when learners employ volitional strategies to protect their intentions (Reiser & Dempsey, 2018). Melodics utilizes a learn-by-doing concept. Students pursue not one but multiple goals aimed not only at learning but also at a variety of positive experiences (Reiser & Dempsey). Making the lessons authentic for the learner gives them meaningful goals. Now not only are they learning to play the keys, but they are also learning to play a song.
Reference
Giraud, C. F. C., Fawcett, S. E., & Fawcett, A. M. (2021). SPARRING: A deliberate practice pedagogy for business education. Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education, 19(4), 229–240. https://doi-org.oclc.fullsail.edu/10.1111/dsji.12248
Melodics. (n.d.). About melodics. Melodics. Retrieved February 13, 2023, from https://melodics.com/about
Reiser, R. A., & Dempsey, J. V. (2017). Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology (4th ed.). Pearson Education (US). https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9780134237039
Sailer, M., & Homner, L. (2020). The Gamification of Learning: a Meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 32(1), 77–112. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-019-09498-w
YouTube. (2019). What is Melodics. YouTube. Retrieved February 18, 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knUmk_PzrKw.
YouTube. (2022). Melodics Songs. Play for real. YouTube. Retrieved February 18, 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egsbe3kaA3Q.
Flow states
Learning to play a musical instrument is different from learning material from a textbook in that it relies on the use of the hands. Practice is still fundamental for learning an instrument, but the type of practice is different in that it requires more repetition. For some learners, this repetition can quickly become uninteresting. Melodics utilizes the theory of flow states to keep learners engaged. Entering a flow state essentially allows a user to hyper-focus on a task allowing them to become fully engaged in the task. The beauty of flow states, as the name implies, is that the effort seemingly flows through the participant in what feels effortless. Melodics aims to keep its users in a flow…
Being able to teach something that you master makes it easier to explain to others. It is easy to motivate and understand the possible deficiencies that students are running into. Learning by doing gives a better understanding of how to create strategies that inspire others to learn. This article explains that people get frustrated when they do not see fast learning progress, for example, when they sign up for a music class hoping to learn a specific song. Still, they have to learn other things, like the basics, instead of knowing what they want right away and starting from how to hold the instrument rather than how to play it in the first class. When a person signs up for…
Learn by Doing
Educators may use a range of instructional strategies, including project-based learning, experiential learning, and simulations. They may also emphasize the importance of reflection, encouraging learners to think critically about their experiences and to identify patterns and connections between different tasks or activities. Ultimately, the goal of the "Learn by Doing" approach is to help learners develop the skills and knowledge they need to be successful in the real world. According to the approach of Learn by Doing, learning occurs through a cycle of experience, reflection, and abstraction. In the experience phase, learners engage in some sort of activity or task, putting their knowledge and skills into practice. In the reflection phase, learners reflect on their experiences, examinin…
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