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Train Directly with Sound Formation Founder and CEO Curtis Madigan
Bring the revolutionary Sound Formation Method™ to your school.
Why Take This Training?
•You’re Ready to Teach Life-Changing and Cutting-Edge Information
•You’re Ready for a True System that Delivers the Highest Results in Rhythmic Mastery
•You’re Ready to Level Up Your Music Department and Distinguish Your School with Excellence
•You’re Ready for Transformational Curriculums in Ear Training, Sight-Reading, and Performance Skills
What the Experts in Education are Saying
Curtis Madigan’s innovative theory of rhythm heralds the arrival of an entirely new paradigm for music education. In my twenty years of evaluating arts programs across America, the Sound Formation Method is the most exciting and promising music step-by-step learning system I have seen. It capitalizes on the natural integration of music and mathematics and catapults student learning in both subject areas. Fortunate are the students who have access to this program! This is the future of music education. – Lynn Waldorf, PhD, Arts & Education Consultant
The Sound Formation Method™ Curriculum Introduction
Experience the revolutionary new movement in music education.
Curriculum Workbooks
Experience the revolutionary new method transforming the lives of music students across the globe. Click on a book or video course cover for a full preview of the contents. Discover what it feels like to have a complete mastery of rhythm.
This 3rd Edition workbook is an essential tool for all instrumentalists in understanding and mastering not just rhythm but musical feel and groove. There are detailed explanations of principles of movement, principles of groove, and how to rapidly develop a rhythmic vocabulary that’s transferable across all instruments and voice. This book introduces The Rhythm Compass™, an essential tool for understanding the exact mathematical aspect of rhythm, its cyclical nature, and the ability to visualize rhythms instantly with shapes when hearing them, also known as PERFECT RHYTHM, the rhythmic equivalent to perfect pitch. This book is the first in Madigan’s comprehensive theory of rhythm.
This 2nd edition workbook specifically addresses and disambiguates the traditionally highly confusing term syncopation, which has become a catchall term for a variety of rhythmic information like tonal displacement, accent displacement, backbeat, playing off the pulse, anticipation, hemiolas, and more. In this book the true nature of syncopation is unveiled and many exercises for mastering foundational syncopations which build your rhythmic vocabulary both in performance and in the development of PERFECT RHYTHM are thoroughly covered.
In this book you’ll learn: essential principles of rhythm never-before-discussed, rhythmic perception techniques like how to sight read rhythms by feel alone, the relationships between triplet elisions (new concept) and syncopations (newly defined), ways to practice rhythmic concepts mentally only towards the development of PERFECT RHYTHM — the rhythmic equivalent of perfect pitch, new ways of conceptualizing rhythm, mastering accent displacement including creating shapes within shapes (and tying in syncopated shapes correlated to these), and anatomy of a groove (a new concept which helps with sight reading, ear training, and rhythmic perception across various grooves).
In this 2nd edition book you’ll learn how to hear multiple layers of rhythm simultaneously, techniques that make playing in 5/8, 7/8, 11/8 and 13/8 simple and intuitive, how to rapidly build a vocabulary of sixteenth note triplet syncopations, how to drastically increase your musical feel, and an easy way to simplify and organize a vast amount of rhythmic information.
What Other Teachers are Saying
The Rhythm Compass™ allows students to clearly visualize beat cycles and the various subdivisions, which improves rhythmic accuracy. It is especially helpful with smaller subdivisions like sixteenth notes, triplets, and sixteenth note syncopations because students can visualize exactly how to divide the downbeat, and more easily overcome the tendency to rush. – Meaghan Guterman, Vocalist and Educator, Doctor of Musical Arts, University of Washington
As a music educator who has taught traditional methods, I now think about rhythm in a completely new way after working with Curtis and teaching with Sound Formation. The Rhythm Compass™ is an intuitive approach for understanding rhythm at a fundamental level while scaling to more complex and higher-order music concepts as students grow. I highly recommend his program and see it as a new standard in music education. – Charlie Albers, Professional Guitarist and Educator, Bachelor of Arts in Music, University of Missouri
ABOUT THE RHYTHM COMPASS™
It’s brilliant how simple and elegant The Rhythm compass is. It’s offered me a way to visualize and simplify seemingly highly complex beats. Very intuitive. I’m using it regularly to develop my own polyrhythms.
– Sameer Bhattacharya, Multi-Platinum Guitarist of Flyleaf
The Rhythm Compass is brilliant because it entrains the musician to recognize groove elements VISUALLY as well as aurally and physically.
-Michael Hewett, Guitar World author, Berklee grad, accomplished recording and performing artist
Enhance Your Musical Literacy
•Rapidly improve your reading skills in standard notation
•Develop the ability to see the rhythmic shapes while sight reading
•An absolute game changer for visual-spatial learners that struggle with reading
I’ve always felt my weakest point was sight reading – which means reading rhythms. The Rhythm Compass™ has completely changed the way I read standard notation. I’m able to see the rhythms in a new light and its easier than ever to read through a chart. It’s like going from 2D to 3D. –Steve Cox, Professional Bassist, Musicians Institute Graduate
The rhythmic shapes are extremely straight forward. I studied them to increase my rhythmic vocabulary, the same way I studied licks to increase my melodic vocabulary. Now when I see notes in standard sotation I can visualize the shapes. -Adrian Garay, Professional Guitarist, CU Denver Graduate
