My
name is Dan Lefler. My friends call me DANMAN. I am a real person, but while you're visiting this
Library, I'll be the guy to your left. I began playing music as a kid,
but didn't get serious about it till I was an adult. Played the trombone
at BAND CAMP as a JR-higher and also played the drums in 5th grade. Took
a couple of guitar lessons in 7th grade and learned Here Comes The Sun and
Wild World and from there got lost in a sea of sports teams and surfing.
After high school I tried to play the violin, but my hands were too big and I
crushed the darn thing. Next I went to flute (because it was metal) and
something started to happen. I didn't know what I was doing, but I
started to play the thing like I was talking. Baby-like and stuttering
at first, but then over time the music just started to come out of this flute
like I was talking a mile a minute. I immediately started taking lessons
from a real pro (John Barcelona) and starting accumulating and reading just
about every music theory and educational book I could get. Found a copy
of Ruger's Harmony and Piston's Harmony, and I found myself in another world.
Next thing I bought was a piano. I then went through a couple of hard
study years while I went to college and got involved in the fraternity college
life at my Alumni - California State University at Long Beach. (I was a
Sigma Chi)
Took awhile, I wasn't a natural prodigy, but I kept at it and before long I
was able to play and entertain people with my music.
Chapter 2:
In my early days I was fortunate
enough to be able to go to many of the local elementary and middle schools
during the day and give concerts and talks on learning music and performing
music as a vocation, and having fun with music. School districts knew
that Music makes kids smarter and the schools would hire me to come and
inspire the kids to play a musical instrument and give these talks. I
was a hungry young and eager performer, needless to say, I played a lot of
grade schools and Jr. High Schools. I also began teaching music lessons.
I think I gave a couple thousand music lessons during those years. I built up
a book of private lessons-students. My niche was that i would go to them
on their schedule and teach them how to learn their favorite songs. Not
just their favorite song, but HOW TO LEARN ALL their favorite songs.
People loved this and it motivated them to learn. This wasn't some
dreary boring way to learn music, this was fun and inspiring. Once I
knew I had something, I used the power of the pen and got a few
newspapers to write some intriguing articles about the "Juggling Musical
Instrumentalist" (I, unfortunately was also a juggling geek you hired to
juggle and do tricks for the kids at those soccer parties) A few
articles later and I had a full book of business. I loved teaching
but I really wanted to perform more.
Chapter 3:
I liked working the festivals,
street fairs, coffee shops, and street corners for a living. I liked
working close up to the people. I seemed to work lots of gigs where I
was basically a roaming street musician taking requests. I didn't plan
it that way, it just happened. I also went through a period of about 10
years where I worked steady stream of bars and clubs all over Southern
California. Logged in 2,500 gigs at about 250 gigs per year on average.
Played mostly as a single, but had and still do have a band that plays weekly.
I've also played with some really amazing musicians who taught me alot along
the way. Guys like Keary Keefer, Chris Cram, Bob Boulding, Scott Huckaby,
Gerry Manning, Scott Schoeffel, Martin Gerschwitz, Bernie Pershey, Jim Stacey,
Jeff Briney, Craig Colley and many more. Each one has contributed to my
musical education.
Chapter 4:
I discovered along the way that
just about everybody loves music. And just about everybody wants to know
how to play a musical instrument. And if they believed they could learn
it and play their favorite songs, they would do so. But they don't know
where to start, where to begin. See I, like most of you, was not born a
musical genius. I had to work at it. And I started from scratch
and basically learned it from the streets and hundreds if not thousands of
books and songs and pieces of literature and gigs.
Chapter 5:
So I began building this library back
in the 1987. I used it as a resource for teaching music to everyday
people and
myself included. By the early nineties I had amassed over 10,000 record albums
and 5,000 pieces of sheet music. I was using the Library to help me
learn songs and earn a living as a clubin' musician. I also used it to
teach other people how to play and write songs. I've learned hundreds of
songs and taught thousands of people how to play music using this Library.
Chapter 6:
One day while ocean swimming about a mile off Dana Point, California, I got
this idea. What if I could put this entire Library online. The
Library could be accessible over the Internet. People from all over the
world could learn music online, just as they did in the original
Danman's Music Library. I watched hundreds of everyday people come to
Danman's Music Library and go away with the ability
to speak the language of music. What if we could provide a path for
anyone, anywhere, to learn how to play music? To enable anybody to
fulfill their passion and play music themselves?
Chapter 7:
In 1994, I built myself a Intel 486-66
PC from used parts left behind from a departed CD Rom company, had a Sigma
Chi Fraternity brother loan me enough money for 32 megs of ram and a 28.8 modem. Ram
costs $50.00 per meg back then. I convinced my friend Jack to help me build the Library's 1st website using Windows notepad and old fashioned html code.
Then Jack snuck it on tis Real Estate Company's server. Jack taught me all
about FTP'ing and Server Management and DNS routers and also showed me how to
find music learning files on the internet and how to convert my existing
Library to this new digital format.. Along with a free ftp program he
gave me and a borrowed camera from a guy I met in a bar named "Bud" I began to
film music lessons, convert sheet music pieces to digital files and gather and
create everything else I could find on learning music and teaching music using
the internet.
Chapter 8:
In
the late 90's, I got serious about using video over the web and began shooting
and cataloging an online database of hundreds of short video clip music
lessons taught by real people demonstrating and explaining each lesson
topic.
Chapter 9:
It's
now 2001 and there are over 3,000 different video music lessons cataloged in
Danman's Music Library. I've added a lesson plans database where the
video and sheet music files are combined and a sheet music-notation library
too.
1000's
of pieces of musical notation for the piano, violin, flute and more. The
notation and sound file are included together. This has proved an
excellent resource for K thru 12 school music programs.
Chapter 10:
I
experimented with many different ways to deliver this content to people
watching over their computers. I found lots of ways that didn't work,
and some that did work.
I
also found that people learn music in many different ways. Some use
their eyes while others use their ears. Some use motion patterns and muscle
repetition while others used a combination of some or all.
Chapter 11:
Some
people learned music only by reading it using notes printed on a page.
And others couldn't read a note but could play their fannies off. Others
learned music by reading tablature for guitar and listening to the recordings
over and over.
Chapter 12:
What
was very clear, was that there is no right or wrong way to learn how to play
music, as long as the method kept the enthusiasm up. As long as you did
not quit, your method was a winner.
Conclusion:
What
I'm attempting to do here is to provide a primary and supplementary music
learning resource and system so that students, teachers and parents can be
assured of the most maximum progress in all their musical studies.
Thanks
for visiting and remember, music makes you smarter!
