PLAYING AN INSTRUMENT IS LIKE A SUPERHERO QUESTan interview with Meridee WintersMusic is a Language- - What's your take on when to actually be serious about learning. Sometimes we want to take on more advanced concepts that are not that fun to learn in the moment we are learning. Especially if someone wants be a really great musician and go to a conservatory or something of that nature, how do you find that balance of having fun and also serious study? - -When we have a young student, if they want to become a serious musician that will probably emerge after some initial successes and we don't need to transfer our own ideals on to them. That will emerge in it's own. They'll have to take the initiative for that. So we don't need to overlay that pressure early on. And what we do need to do is get results. Music is a language. So, when we think about learning a language, first we learn a couple of words and then baby talk and start by just playing around. We would never set a child down and say, "You can't talk or say or makeup stories until you can read all of these words perfectly and make them read a book.” But that's what we do with music. We go open up off and go, here is the C, here is the D, now play CDCD, which is boring and also it's bad teaching because it's not the way language is taught. So that my books, even though they have comics, are actually incredibly serious. I have an undergrad in elementary education. I really studied language arts and language art how the brain learn language. So actually, I'm incredibly serious but those patterns and play is important for the formation of an individual and our brain. But learning the patterns, the vocabulary of music is essential to have happening immediately as well as creative exploration.