Principals & Methodology

Close-up of a vintage turntable with a black vinyl record spinning on a wooden surface.

Principals

  • A language is a collection of sounds that, when organized, convey meaning within the context of its environment or community. Music works the same way.

    • Our speech has patterns and rhythms.

    • Our sentences have tone and pitch.

    • Our grammar has structure and theory.

    Just as one learns a language through immersion with more experienced speakers—one word at a time—music is best learned through immersion, imitation, and gradual vocabulary building.

    In your lessons, your main instrument or artistic goal becomes the vehicle for fluency in the language of music. As you develop the technical skills of your instrument, you’ll also grow your musical vocabulary through ear training, improvisation, creativity, and music theory—always applied in ways that are practical and meaningful to you.

Crowd at a concert, with silhouetted hands forming heart shapes against bright stage lights.

  • We use the language of music to foster connections: between tutors, students, and the wider community. Everyone has a unique story, and our role is to guide you in telling yours through music.

    We place particular emphasis on creativity and songwriting. By writing your own music, you see firsthand how the building blocks of music—melody, harmony, rhythm, articulation—come together to form something uniquely yours. Your songs become your story, and stories connect communities.

    Our commitment is not just to help you grow as a musician, but also to help you share your creativity—whether that means finishing your songs, releasing them on streaming services, or performing them for an audience.

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A record store with shelves of vinyl albums and CDs, displays of music collectibles, and framed pictures and decorations on the wall.

Methodology

  • The first step of the Solar Method is Imitation. We encourage you to listen closely to the music you love and capture its essence with your voice and body. By copying the phrase in its entirety on your instrument, you begin to understand how it feels and sounds from the inside out. Once you’ve made that connection, you’ll apply instrument-specific techniques to refine your articulation and phrasing with precision.

A person playing a Yamaha upright piano, with only their hands visible on the keyboard.

  • At this stage, we take time to analyze the passage and ask: how does this music make you feel? How do the building blocks of melody, harmony, rhythm, and articulation come together to create that emotional impact? You’ll then explore the phrase across your instrument in multiple contexts, tempos, and keys until you truly understand it. This deeper familiarity allows you to reuse the phrase in your own music—whether you’re composing or improvising. Above all, we want this process to feel joyful, so having fun with the phrase is just as important as studying it.

Music studio with five electric guitars mounted on the wall, a computer monitor showing a classical painting with a digital audio waveform, a mixing console, studio monitors, audio equipment, and colorful ambient lighting.

  • This is where your creativity takes flight. By combining the phrase with everything else you’ve learned, you start to form your own personal musical vocabulary. From here, you can draw on the best parts of all the music you’ve studied, weaving them into your unique sound. This is the step where you move from being a student of music to being an artist in your own right—making the music you’ve always wanted to hear.

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