Playing music, either on an instrument or by singing, is an incredible experience.  Everyone has the inherent ability to make music and to enjoy playing and listening to music.  It's fun, it's easy.

We've all seen the ads

Learn to Play Piano in 30 days
Learn all of the Guitar Chords in an hour
Master the Sitar in 10 minutes

No doubt, making music is fun.  But you can't even tune a Sitar in 10 minutes.  

Learning music takes time.  You have to learn the musical language and vocabulary.  This takes review and repetition.  It takes study time away from your instrument. Trying to learn something and apply it to your instrument at the same pretty much guarantees you'll run into trouble.  Many learners will then, improperly, attribute this failure to their lack of ability.  What they don't see is that it's the learning method that's wrong, not them at all.

The team of professional educators here at DSM and DLP have taken what we've learned through the years in teaching well over 250,000 individual music lessons to establish the DLP curriculum.

We've broken music learning into an easy and logical 3 step process;


1- Discover
2- Learn
3- Play

This expedites the learning process and assures music students, and parents, that they are learning the musical language as they learn their instrument.  This is not always the case, in music education.

But, this is no magical musical mystery short-cut.  That does not exist.  Learning the musical language and building the physical skills to play your instrument, takes time.  But the great parts of music are:

- there's no finish line
- you can enjoy the music you make at any level in your development.  Playing an instrument is fun.

In this blog we'll discuss STEP 1, Discover, learning the musical concepts.

Click on 1 DISCOVER (circled in RED above) to get to STEP 1 for your lesson.  You will then, see this;

Click on INSTRUCTIONS and listen to a walk-through of  STEP 1.  These instructions are at the top of each page, and should always be the first thing you do when you get to a new page.

The first thing we do is to encourage you to take your time and spend a lot of time on STEP 1.  It takes time to understand and remember the concepts for each lesson.  Lesson 1 has the most concepts to learn because we are introducing you to the basics of the musical language.  But, know that the educators at DLP have placed the concepts for the Kore Series in a logical and sequential order that, we feel, is the best path to follow in learning the musical language.

Take the time to read and review all of the text in STEP 1.  Review the diagrams.  You can even make flashcards, if that helps you to review.  Learning the concepts is the most important part of learning music.  You need to understand before you can apply it.  We also know that it's the step that most people want to spend the least time on, because it takes you away from playing your instrument.  But this is, without a doubt, the step that you should focus the most time and the step that will help you see faster development on your instrument.

You should also continue to review this material with any questions you run into on Quizzes (STEP 2) or problems you have with Songs (STEP 3).

Learning music is an incredible journey.  We're glad to help you with that.  Follow our road map, avoid skipping steps, don't spend too much time on scenic routes and you'll get there in good time.

Happy musicking!

Every DSM and DLP student has a private, secure, virtual workspace.  This is the hub for your music education.  You have access to the entire DSM Staff, who are glad to answer any questions you have regarding playing your instrument or the musical language.  Video and sound files, relating to your education, can be exchanged here. 

Login from the link at www.dsminfo.com.

You should have received information on your username (generally your primary email address) and password when you started at DSM or DLP.  Please use our contact form if you are not sure of either.

Hopefully, one of the first things you notice is that the entire DSM staff is a consultant on YOUR project!

We're all here to help you with your music education.  Submit a question at any time and it immediately goes to all staff members.  You may end up with several replies to your question and a few different ways to solve your problem.  This is not possible with a traditional method book!

At the top right, you can find another way to access your DLP curriculum material, our calendar of events at DSM and our extensive library of videos for all instruments.  These are both videos we have created and ones we have selected as containing good valid information for music learners.  Spend some time with these.  There is a lot of great information and our library is being constantly updated!

If you're a DSM student you will have a project assigned each week.  This is the; WHAT/WHY/HOW for your musical week, also known as an II Doc.  This is always listed as due at your next session, though of course, some assignments may require several weeks to complete.  But, the goals that your teacher assigns should be possible to accomplish in a week.
You'll find all of your II Docs in the Project Tracker of your workspace;

Your assignment for this week, and past weeks, appear in the Project Tracker area.  This is where you can view all of the comments for your "project".  If you hit Reply at the bottom, your comment or question goes directly to your educator.  You can also post a message that will go to all of your consultants.  This is a great place to post any general music questions you have, or questions on the DLP curriculum.

The message area can also be used to share MP3 files or leadsheets/worksheets for your assignemnts.  Simply click on ATTACH FILES to upload or DOWNLOAD FILES to download any files that your teacher attaches.  This is a wonderful way to expand your lesson materials.

Your private virtual workspace is a unique music education tool and is only available through DSM and DLP.  It's personal care and service using 21st century technology.  We're proud to be able to offer this to our students and hope this brief walk through helps you have a better understanding of how this educational tool can be utilized.

Thanks and keep checking back as I delve further into the DLP Series in future blogs.

- Mike