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First of all, welcome and good luck with your efforts! I respect your courage and the fact that you’re concerned enough about your children’s education to take things into your own hands – those who actually do something, take action, follow through, the ones who don’t blindly trust that the educational institutions and politicians will do the right thing(s) for they’re children.
In many respects, I am one of you. I decided it was necessary to take things into my own hands to ensure that music education (at least) sees some reform (in my life time) so that “my children” (metaphorically) will be better served. Of all people, I don’t have to tell you that the educational system and bureaucracy is quite content with things the way they are. They are content with their inadequate, uninformed, and impotent teaching methods, and content with their unacceptable results. If I had left it up to “them”, it would have taken another thousand years before someone came up with The Cipher (or whatever they might call it), developed it, and saw it adopted as a default and de-facto teaching method and pedagogical tool. As it is, 20 years elapsed from the time I first created The Cipher until the day I made it publicly available (on this web site, September of 2002). During that 20 years, “they” did absolutely nothing to change or improve anything about music education in any fundamental or significant way. I was actually amazed (although I shouldn’t have been). I was dumbfounded, in disbelief, and incensed, at the stagnation I saw. It was like going back in time — nothing had changed at all. It was still the same old nonsense, the same failed methods and mindset, the same gibberish and gobbledy-gook, the same “everything is fine and dandy” here, the same excuses, defenses, and tired arguments. Save the music indeed!
Of all human technologies, and all subjects of knowledge, learning, and pedagogy, music and music education is (or was) in the sorriest state of all, absolutely the worst on the planet, and the most in need of attention and repair — and I’m not talking about program funding, class size, nor acquisition of musical instruments here, I’m talking about the technology and related nomenclature itself. This is particularly amazing (and angering) to me given the importance of music and our love of it generally. Music is universally revered, it’s the common denominator crossing all of humanity, all cultures, and all flavors of spirituality.
Educators, particularly “higher” educators, the ones who teach the teachers, take it upon themselves to be responsible for the education of the masses. That is their job, their sacred duty, their mandate. Educators are the pillars of society (or they should be). We entrust to them our future — the lives of our children. Anyone or any group who claims to place inclusivety high on their list of requirements and priorities, and any group of “experts” who ponders the educational needs of the broad scope of humanity, the potential audience and pool of intended recipients, their children in particular, who can look at the music teaching “tools” and practices available to us pre-Cipher, and look at the neck of any fretted string instrument, and still come away saying “we have all we need”, “everything is fine and dandy”, “we know what we’re doing here”, “trust us”, are about as far from being competent, and as far from being worthy custodians of music education as you can get. They were content; content with their tools, and content at being capable of reaching and teaching (only) one-half of one percent of humanity! They didn’t even look, didn’t even try. If they had looked, if they had wanted more and better tools, if they had wanted “to teach” (the masses) they would have found The Cipher as surely as I did — and found it 100 years before I did.
We needn’t single out our music educators either. There’s plenty of blame to go around. Incompetence and mediocrity is the rule in education, rather than the exception. Sadly, that probably just describes and reflects society as a whole. So indeed, we’re all to blame, we all share the responsibility, we should all be ashamed of ourselves — deeply and terminally ashamed. We are Guilty as charged.
My passion surrounding education (and music education in particular) is nothing less than “religious”. I am fervent, fanatical, and missionary about it. It makes my blood boil, literally. I believe that all of the public school educational methods and systems need reforming from top to bottom. My focus is on music education simply because I have created and propose part of "the solution" here. I can do (and have done) more than just "complain" in this area. Meaning, it’s the thing that I’m most “in position” to do something about, and therefore it’s my responsibility to do it. My passion and concern with education generally is the reason it was necessary for me to essentially give away for free (what I consider to be) the single greatest academic advance of music education in history, my would-be meal ticket!, my invention, my life’s work, The Cipher. Again, this is something I had to do because if I had left it to them it either never would have gotten done at all, or the person who did would have been a for-profit-only-capitalist first and an educator second – greatly limiting the potential spread and use, the good and benefits for all promised by these new tools. I have put my money where my mouth is, and have taken the food from my own mouth quite literally, to make sure this thing gets done. (As of this writing, 19 years and counting, I haven’t seen a single cent from this work.) I didn’t patent The Cipher (although I could have), and I haven’t trademarked the key terminology either (though most would have). Again, this is because I want you to have and use these tools, they are yours and ours now, they belong to us all, as it should be. So there’s no excuses anymore as far as music education is concerned. WE HAVE THE TOOLS NOW.
Home study, independent study and immersion, is my way of life. It’s the way I’ve always done things, instinctively. I began “teaching myself” when I was in my teens, and never looked back. Because of that, because of my first hand experience with the lifestyle, I know the difference. I know what the joy of learning is, and isn’t! I know what it means, I’ve experienced the fruits and rewards of spending months all day every day studying a single topic. I know what it takes to learn, to follow a thread through to it’s inevitable Eureka!, and I know what can’t work, the “never in a million years” can’t work methods and scenarios still practiced nearly everywhere you look. You can’t try to sell me a bill of goods anymore and get away with it. I’m not having it, and I never will. This is the key difference, the difference between someone who “loves to learn”, has an innate and insatiable curiosity and desire to learn, and then becomes a teacher, and the ones who become teachers via some other all-too-common cookie-cutter formula route. That is, you can’t present ka-ka to someone who knows the difference, and have that person pick it up and pass it on the next person (e.g. his or her students). It just can’t happen, can’t be done!
I for one, understand that there are many people in this world who simply don't have the time nor desire to spend even two years (lets say) first learning to read staff notation, then keyboard basics, and finally music theory (assuming they get through their "Mary had a little lamb" on the staff – a big assumption) just to be able to grasp some simple discussion of music or music theory. There is a place in this world for popularization's of any otherwise technical and seemingly dense body of knowledge. The basic stuff of music theory is so simple really that it shouldn't be (and isn't) necessary to have to spend years to be able to begin getting a handle on it. By using chromatic (semitone or half-step value) numbers in conjunction with standard diatonic numbers you can in fact completely sidestep the need to read staff notation AND letter spellings for that matter (beyond relative and parallel C Major and A minor) AT ALL, and still come away having learned all and more about popular music composition and basic music theory than one ever thought they would or could have. THAT is power of using "good" terminology, nomenclature that has clear meaning -- COUNTING NUMBERS in this case (i.e. half-step value numbers).
Now some people may not think that you’ll have learned enough, or that your grasp of the topic meets their standards of what they think you need to know. But you will (most likely) be happy. You will have learned a great deal, and without the pain usually associated with learning about music. And who knows, having been able to quickly and successfully get once around the track, feeling confident and comfortable in this once alien arena, students might even be inspired (heaven forbid) to do more and to learn more — about anything they choose, music related or not. At any rate, The Cipher is one of the tools that anyone who wants to understand Western music and theory should have in their arsenal. It literally is one full half of our potential tool-set — found and brought to life for the first time in history.
So that’s a little about me — the core and soul of me actually, my “credentials”.
So where do we begin?
We begin at the beginning, with intervals. No matter what instrument you hope to play, or even if you're a singer, or a lay novice wanting to learn more about music in general, you’ll need to be able understand the nomenclature of music and music theory, the names of things – intervals and interval number names in particular. There is little more general and universal in music than intervals, and that specifically is what The Cipher System and it’s numbered semitones is all about (understanding intervals). Intervals are the prerequisite, the springboard, to understanding scales, chords, and progressions. Intervals, their names and distance values, are the key to understanding the vocabulary of "formal music education". Intervals are the vocabulary of music education. They're the common denominator for understanding both music theory and the mechanics of any fretboard or keyboard instrument. They’re the prerequisite "knowledge kernel", no matter what methods, teachers, books, or paths, you ultimately decide to take. So learn about intervals now, and you'll be on your way in no time — with a solid foundation to build upon.
At root, The Cipher is remarkably easy to understand, it's just counting numbers on a grid. Child’s play, literally. Like anything else though, you'll have to devote some initial time learning the basics of the tools. But we're talking about a couple of hours time verses a couple of years (orders of magnitude at any rate). The complicated part is explaining music's standard nomenclature, letters and numbers, etc. – but that's always been the case. But using chromatic numbers (semitone distance values) as The Cipher System does, greatly reduces the time and effort needed to unravel all of that preexisting complication, plus communicate the basics of music theory and illuminate the playing field, the fretboard of your choice.
The Cipher does two things at once (at least):
1. It provides chromatic number translations of
musical formula (true intervallic distance numbers — real intervals).
2. It unlocks the fretboard by showing how the fretboard itself actually works (in and of itself) and reveals how and why all intervals fall on the fretboard exactly where they do. This is accomplished using the device I call The Five Degree Calculation Line for Guitar, Bass, and Ukulele, or The Seven Degree Calculation Line for 5ths tuned string instruments like Mandolin, Tenor Banjo, and the Violin family.
The Cipher achieves these things by using (again) chromatic numbers — the guitar's (or mandolin’s) built-in and most natural numbers (but entirely neglected until now). This single set of chromatic numbers then is serving double duty – two birds with one stone, so to speak. Understand, there's a distinction between "learning the fretboard" when it means "learning the Major scale on the fretboard" and when it means "learning how the fretboard itself works". By this I mean, it's clear that the keyboard and fretboard, for example, are different beings, they work entirely differently from each other. It's this kind of innate mechanical workings that I'm talking about. Once you understand how the instrument itself works, innately (which chromatic numbers alone reveal best), you can then (with absolute confidence) learn, understand, and apply any other subsequent musical patterns and materials you choose — e.g. the Major scale. So rather than rote learning a given pattern in one or two location instances, you'll have the knowledge to "build you're own" (any scale, any chord voicing) on any string-set, at will and from scratch. It's literally like giving a man a few (rote) fish or teaching him how to fish. So this "two birds with one stone" feature of The Cipher System, interval cognition via semitone value numbers and fretboard mechanics, is important to understand.
The material on this web site is elementary in nature and just the basics — not the whole enchilada. But it’s more than enough to get anyone’s foot firmly in the door and have you well on the road to wherever you’re going in no time at all.
While you’re gathering your first impressions of the Cipher System I want to make a few things absolutely clear:
The Cipher System is not a new music theory. It’s a way of learning and teaching the elements of Classical and popular Western tonal music and harmony, i.e. standard Western music theory.
Also understand that I’m not suggesting that any student should use chromatic numbers instead of diatonic numbers. This is not an either/or thing, it’s both/and. The point is to use both sets of numbers, to integrate them, as needed and for as long as they’re needed, to help you understand the elements of Classical Western music theory and the necks of string instruments (from guitar to violin). So we’ll be using both diatonic and chromatic numbers here. With the chromatic numbers though, you’ll have that additional set of "real" numbers to help you retain your sanity as you absorb all of the elemental information that typically requires so much continual mental cross-calculation (all of that "music speak") to make sense of.
There’s more introductory information here.
Someday, the book version will be available. Until then, I hope the material on this web site will be enough to carry you swiftly and comfortably towards your goal.
Have fun, good luck, and many Eureka's to you all.
Roger E. Blumberg
8-6-2003
Merriam-Webster’s
Technology. Etymology: Greek, technologia,
the systematic treatment of an art.
1 A : the practical application of knowledge
B: a capability given by the practical application of knowledge
2 : a manner of accomplishing a task especially using technical processes, methods, or knowledge
3 : the specialized aspects of a particular field of endeavor <educational technology>
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