Marianne Ploger  

Marianne Ploger is foremost a musical scientist and an original thinker teaching musicians how to overcome musical problems based on her observations of how the human mind and brain processes heard experiences. Not content with traditional practices of so-called ear training teachers the world over, practices often characterized as “fear training and fright singing”, Marianne insists that music needs to be learned in the same way that children learn languages by first learning to identify and name pitches, intervals, and rhythms by ear, then developing fluency in combining these to form words and finally complete sentences. Music is essentially about sound, not about dots and flags, just as language is about sounds and not about letters and punctuation. Three important discoveries that she made about the perception of musical pitches 45 years ago have helped countless musicians to recognize what they are hearing at the speed of music. One, she discovered the precise phenomenon that makes each musical pitch distinctive, unique, and identifiable, allowing her students to develop aspects of absolute pitch. Two, Marianne discovered that each musical interval possesses three subtle yet recognizable features or factors that allow us to distinguish one from another combinations of pitches or so-called intervals (a term she holds as perceptually erroneous) instantly recognizable. This eliminates the nasty practice of expecting musicians to know all this without having to be taught what to listen for. And three, she discovered the foundation of musical expression essential to efficient communication of meaning when performing music. This discovery underlies musical communication in all styles, genres, cultures, and levels of experience.