Unfortunately, only in the area of singing do students make the request to take lessons, "without having to learn how to read." Of course it is "possible" to sing without learning how to read music, just as it is possible to recite Shakespeare without learning how to read English. The only thing is somehow has to do the reading for you (mostly into a tape), and you have to memorize everything by rote - word-by-word and line-by-line.

No director would hire an actor incapable of being able to read and learn her/his lines!

Similarly, any American enrolling in a class to learn how to speak Russian without having to learn how to read or write Russian would be laughed out of the class! (Find an imigrant to teach you and learn quickly whether such a person has the patience to spoon feed you all the words and grammar by rote!)

How then is it that students ask music teachers to teach them how to sing without learning how to read music? The answer is simply misconceptation based on observing unusual talents. Those musical talents are just as rare as the people who have "total recall", or the "savant" abilities of an autistic (e.g. In the movie "Rainman", the autistic character is able to look at a pile of fallen tooth picks and state that there are exactly 317 toothpicks total in the pile). To request a music teacher to teach such a skill is simply unfair and just as absurd as requesting a math teacher to teach you how to count like Rainman can!

The reality is that all musicians must learn how to read music and must learn the parallel music theory because only through understanding important musical theoretical concepts can the student understand the finer details required for performing music, and to be able solve the problems of practicing when the music is challenging. Only by using the shared vobaluary learned through music theory can a teacher be able to instruct a student meaningfully.

When a student imitates a CD well, all is fine (again no teacher needed here!) Such a student clearly has a great musical ear. However, when a student fails to imitate the CD correctly (whether flat notes, rhythm, timbre or other problems), and the student has no ability to read music or understand music theory, the teacher is at a total loss how to explain "what is wrong" and "how to fix it". Keep in mind, the student already "believes" she or he is imitating perfectly! No matter how gifted a student may be, at some point the student will try to imitate a CD and "not get it right" and the refusal to learn how to read music simply handicaps the teachers ability to explain what's wrong!

KMI Director, Mr. Lee Kikuchi, has developed a wonder vocal method system that teaches the student how to read music while also teaching the fundamentals of how to sing correctly.

(Samples of these books can be downloaded from this web site: Kikuchi Vocal Method.)