You are the music is a collection of information-bearing songs with teach and encourage the future musician not only to learn, but to become the music. The series proposes a synthesis of body-mind-voice-vocabulary experiences through easy, lighthearted tunes in which one sings of the musical information while actually sing/doing/living it. Thus analysis and experience are simultaneous.
Since the nerves governing the vocal apparatus and those involved in pitch perception spring from the same root, hearing prepares singing and singing prepares hearing. They are interactive.
We all possess from birth a complex and prodigious musical instrument - the body! Gesture and movement are equally parts of our human musical instrument, and these songs can be used to incite movement that expresses and incorporates the material being studied, by building it into our muscle-memory.
ln short, the goal is that the body becomes a giant ear, and what the ear perceives is instantly recognizable - is known by its correct name, and can be reproduced at will vocally and eventually, instrumentally. The objective of this collection is for the musician to BE the music. The progressive mastery of technical points, such as recognition of polychords, intervals, harmonies, rhythms, etc., and the acquisition of musical habits, will permit the musician an effortless coordination of auditory perception, recognition, interpretation and eventually, improvisation, composition, direction (conducting) and enhanced expressivity in performance.
Lastly, the author encourages accompanists to follow their inspiration, and take as many liberties with the written piano accompaniments, as he did himself during the recording.
Joy Kane
ln 1981, Joy Kane moved to Paris and rapidly found her niche teaching teachers of Music and Dance in conservatories, centers polyphoniques, centers of National Education and various jazz and/or classical workshops throughout France and Europe.
Trained at the Cleveland Institut of Music in Ohio (U.S.A.) and the Dalcroze School of Music in N.Y., Joy Kane is the recipient of the highly esteemed 'Diplôme' of the Institut Jaques-Dalcroze of Geneva, Switzerland.
Throughout her teaching career her students have enthusiastically seized upon the teaching pieces she offered them. Now, these pieces have been gathered, updated and recorded (in English and in French) in a series of books entitled You are the Music.