A faster way to learn music... like 20,2% faster

Being a versatile musician - and one of those rare (strange) ones whose career is equally played on the classical scene as on the pop scene I have always felt that music should be taught to children at a very early age when their ears are like sponges to new sounds and their minds are full blown in understanding and defining these sounds into systems. The age when they learn new languages like little Einsteins in a way they are never able to do again later in life. And more importantly: When their minds have not been poluted with the musical prejudices that we grown-ups tend to load on them as they grow older. Prejudices that box music into classical music, pop music, modern music, dance music, alternative music, modern classic, electro and the rest - rather than music that we love and music that we love less.

I have also felt, as an academically trained musician, that we desperately need to apply new methods when teaching the basics of music and sight-reading. That similarly to the maths (which I also love) we should focus on activating the child's own logical thinking and boost their confidence in seeing through the matrix of the musical notation - trusting that it is something that makes sense and can be figured out.

Thirdly I have for a long time felt that the problem of high number of drop-outs from music studies needed to be taken more seriously by the music academy and that we needed to acknowledge the fact that the problem lies with the institution and not with those students who quit and who may even often even be our most gifted ones. Those who are musically gifted are often able to get quite far in their studies by using their musical ear to learn and memorise the music they're playing rather than reading it from the paper. When that becomes too much of a challenge they are already far behind their peers in sight-reading causing too many of them to give up and end their studies. Please note that this is based on my own theory - but to me it is proven every single time that I am in a company of more than three where there is always at least one person or more who will tell me how they ended their childhood music studies for those reasons.

And more importantly how much they regret that.

In 2015 I founded Rosamosi game studio with computer engineer Hilmar Thor Birgisson. Our aim was to develop a series of music apps for children and try to do it in a way that would tackle these problems. In 2016, with our team of five, we launched our first Mussila app; Mussila Musical Monster Adventure, an educational game where the player progresses through skill building challenges of notation, rhythm, melody and creative play. Mussila is an adventurous island, inhabited by a tribe of musical monsters that make this place really a magical one. That game - the flagship of the series - was highly acclaimed by critics and nominated to the Nordic Game Awards. A research conducted in Estonia showed that students who played Mussila Musical Monster Adventure progressed very fast in music theory or 20,2% when given the Mussila apps to play with in their music classes for three weeks (with music classes twice a week and tested in music theory before and after) compared to no progress with a comparison group.

However, we were not yet content. We wanted to see the players themselves even more enthusiastic and more engaged.

Making an educational game that is also fun and exciting is a challenge like no other but we felt we were on to something. So we decided to go for it again. We went through the whole game-play of the game, we restructured the challenges, made new characters and refurbished the look to make it more fitting to the age group that we are targeting. So with quite a few fundamental improvements we have now launched the remake of our flagship game and named it by the series itself or simply Mussila.

This time we are seeing a very different engagement and the feedback is quite different too. Yesterday the first official review came in, from TeachersWithApps:

"By combining gaming with education to achieve fast learning Mussila delivers a musical adventure like no other. Magically kids intuitively pick up on the basic principles associated with music and have a blast doing so! Remember parents play the most important role in musical education when it comes to expanding a child’s musical horizon. So hurry out now parents and get this app, don't forget to share how awesome it is to your children's teachers!"

I congratulate my team with our new Mussila, they are such an amazing bunch of talents and I also encourage all parents of 5-10 year olds to check it out on Google Play and App Store. No previous music education is needed.

Mussila is available in both Google Play and App Store.