I wish I was musically inclined. I played the clarinet in elementary and junior high school, but was never very good. I have always wished I could play the piano or the violin. Since neither of those things came to fruition, I want to be able to give my children the chance to fulfill any of their musical aspirations. Unfortunately, music lessons are not very affordable or convenient when you have a large family. So when the opportunity arose to review the MusIQ Homeschool curriculum from Adventus, I was super excited.
What is MusIQ Homeschool?
It is a multi-level music and piano curriculum that is executed by connecting a MIDI keyboard to your computer. It consists of the following seven levels (with each level ideally taking a year to complete):
- Children’s Music Journey Volume 1 – $89.95
- Children’s Music Journey Volume 2 – $89.95
- Children’s Music Journey Volume 3 – $89.95
- Piano Suite Premier – $109.95
- Ear Training Coach 1&2 – $59.95
- Ear Training Coach 3&4 – $59.95
- MusIQ Challenger Game – $69.95
The curriculum is available as a monthly subscription of $10.95 per month with access to the software for all levels (it does not include a keyboard or lessons plans), or you can buy the software (CD-ROM) for each level individually at the prices listed above. You can also buy just the lesson plans for $29.95 per level and Adventus also offers bundled packages with some of them including a keyboard. The Children’s Music Journey levels are for ages 4-10 and the other four levels are for ages 10+.
For this review, I used the Piano Suite Premier level with my 8 and 10 year old sons. The Piano Suite Premier program allows the student to learn, play, and compose music. It is an interactive program that gives continuous feedback to the student. From the main screen of Piano Suite Premier, there are five different areas you can choose to visit:
- Piano Player – Here you can listen to and practice any of the 500 songs in the Piano Suite library.
- Theory Thinker – This is where you will find all the lessons and exercises.
- Composer’s Corner – Here you can compose, record, edit, print and save your own songs.
- History Happens – Learn about some of the world’s greatest composers and performers here.
- Games – This is where you can find some fun games to help with the learning process.
How we used MusIQ Homeschool:
Our thoughts on MusIQ Homeschool:
I had high hopes for this product and I really wanted to like it and really wanted it to work for us, so I tried, and tried, and tried to push through, and we kept hitting obstacle after obstacle. The download and installation process was confusing and difficult. I know my fair share about computers, but I had to call in back up from my husband to get the program up and running and connected to the keyboard, and even he thought it was difficult. So we weren’t off to a very good start. Then we ran into the issue with the lesson plans skipping around. We also had issues with the the program all of a sudden not communicating with the keyboard right in the middle of a lesson so we would have to leave the program and start all over to get it to reconnect to the keyboard. The hand positioning was very confusing for my boys – the program would have them start in one position and then for the next piece have them start in a different position without any notice or switch mid-song; this caused a lot of frustration for my boys. When my boys got to the point where they were to play two notes at once, the program would tell them they were playing the wrong notes, when they clearly were playing the right notes. When we weren’t having technical difficulties or problems following the lessons, we all (mom included) enjoyed learning and playing with the program. The program builds immediate confidence as it has the students playing familiar songs very quickly.
Overall I feel that the concept and ideas behind the program are brilliant. I love the idea of having my children learn to play piano in the comfort of our own home and for such an affordable price compared to traditional piano lessons. This program seems to have a lot to offer and a lot to explore and I don’t feel a 6-8 week review period can do it justice. This program required much more attention on my part than I anticipated; I was hopeful that I could get the boys going and used to it in a couple weeks and then only have to do a weekly lesson with them and they could practice the rest of the week on their own. All the obstacles we ran into along the way did not make that possible and this also caused my boys’ enjoyment levels to quickly fade. From our experience, this program needs more parental involvement than I am able to give (lots of little ones running around needing mommy’s attention more), so it is not a good fit for our family at this time. To see if it might be a good fit for your family, try out Adventus’ 7-day free trial before you buy.