About AheadWithMusic.com
This site is the Internet home of self-help music software created by author, software developer and erstwhile piano teacher, Nick Sullivan. Rote learning and study drills are not the most glamorous part of a musical education, but they are indispensable for developing a framework of technical skills strong enough to further a musician’s artistic goals. These skills are elementary but they are vital.
Fluency in rote skills like note-reading frees the mind for the development of musicality.
At the same time, of course, nobody wants to spend more time on drills than necessary. The mission of Ahead With Music is to apply the unique strengths of computer software towards aiding the development of rote skills like note reading, which is the focus of our NoteCard software. Neither teacher nor student should have to devote valuable lesson time to fostering a skill that can actually be acquired far more efficiently at the home computer. Just as a fluent knowledge of the alphabet allows young readers to focus on the higher goal of literacy, not the lower one of recognizing the letters, so fluency in reading the notes frees the mind for the development of musicality.
About NoteCard
NoteCard 3.1 is the current release of a Windows software program with a long history. The original NoteCard was implemented not in bits and bytes but on cardboard sheets, with the notes printed on one side and their names on the other. These could be cut up to create decks of musical flash cards.
While working as a piano teacher in the early 1980s, Nick tried out the cards on his beginning students, and saw immediate benefits. The best effect was seen in students who used the cards in short sessions not less than several times a week. They progressed smoothly and rapidly past the hurdle of note-reading, and met less frustration in other musical tasks once that issue had been removed.
Thousands of beginning musicians have used NoteCard to learn their notes efficiently and without fuss.
The first computer-based version of NoteCard was written soon afterwards, for the Commodore 64. Later versions appeared for the Amiga and Microsoft Windows. In recent years, NoteCard 2.0 has been available as a freeware download on the FamilyGames.com website. Thousands of beginning musicians have used it to learn their notes efficiently and without fuss. But now it is 2009, the long-awaited Version 3 is here at last, and NoteCard has moved up to a whole new level in terms of interface, features, documentation and support. And, as part of the process, the program has acquired a new home here at AheadWithMusic.com.
About the developers
The author of NoteCard, and this website, is Nick Sullivan, ARCT, a Canadian software developer and a fourth-generation descendant of notorious Australian ink-slinger Bart ‘the Ballarat banker’ Sullivan. During a youth misspent as a typesetter, newspaper editor and worse, Nick devoted his waking hours to studying the piano, eventually taking enough lessons to earn his Associateship diploma from the Royal Conservatory of Toronto. 
Not long afterwards Nick had piano students of his own, and soon after that a computer, which eventually won. However, during Nick’s few years of teaching piano a seed was planted that has ripened in fits and starts over a quarter of a century, but [fanfare begins here] is just now, we hope, with this site and its software, preparing to flourish.
The other participant in AHA! Software and its modest archipelago of software and websites is Nick’s wife Susan Scott, who not only fills many roles in the areas of design, testing and adminstration, but has an entire department almost to herself as the company’s Sanity Officer.
