When Hellene Hiner was growing up in the Ukraine, a bad experience in music school inspired her to find a new way to teach music. Hiner said because she had difficulty understanding the music lessons, her teacher would scream at her, call her names and throw music sheets on the floor. So when she was 11, her parents took her out of music school.

"Out of nowhere, something special happened to me," Hiner said. "I started to hear the perfect pitch of every song. I don't know what happened, but it was like a blind person suddenly seeing."

She returned to music school at age 12 and graduated with honors at age 15. "When I graduated, I cried tears of happiness and bitterness," Hiner said. "Worldwide, music is taught like it was in the Middle Ages. It's hard to change the way people teach music because they are used to it. When I went to music college, I wanted to learn a new way to teach music."

So she created an extraordinary new method of music instruction called Soft Mozart, utilizing a software program with the same name.

"I compare my method of teaching music like the way children are taught to read," said Hiner, who lives in northwest Houston. "Children are assisted with pictures, colors, and sounds- not just black and white print. I apply all of their senses to music study."

"Music teachers today are teaching music utilizing the students' logical side of the brain," she said. "They begin by explaining the music, like defining the treble and bass clefs," she said.

Hiner's students start right off by playing the musical instrument and learn by playing music, she said. A keyboard is hooked up to a personal computer. Hiner, who said she gives private lessons to about 50 students, color codes the keys on the keyboard to correspond with the lines of music displayed on the computer monitor. The interactive software displays pictures and other graphics, all related to the music that helps the student along.

"I have students as young as 2-years-old," she said. "Children this young are capable of playing the keyboard with both hands - and they love it." She said playing the keyboard helps young children to develop their fine motor skills.

"People today don't use their hands as much as they did in the 18th and 19th centuries," Hiner said. "I relate the amount of hand use with intelligence." She said as people continue to use their hands less, the less intelligent they become.

Hiner said she thinks kids today have the same music literacy as people in the Middle Ages had reading literacy. "I think we need to teach children music, so they can express themselves musically and learn music as a language," she said.

Hiner was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and moved to Ukraine about 4 years later. She had 16 years of music education in the Ukraine - seven years of music school, four years of music college and 5 years at a conservatory - and became a music scientist, music critic and pianist. During her early days in music school, Hiner had to engage in six to seven hours per week of rigorous training, attending a music school after regular school hours. "Children wanting to learn music had a long day," she said. "It was hard work. You couldn't go out and play with the other kids."

She moved to the Unites States in November 1993 to find more freedom in her pursuit of music. In the old Soviet Union, there was too much structure in music education and breaking rules was not encouraged, she said.

Her music technique was born 15 years ago, she said. When she began teaching 2-year-olds to play the keyboard, she thought she would get calls from educators as well as the government. But she received no calls.

"My goal is to bring my program to all of the public schools," she said. "Some of the children will be able to play 'Mary Had A Little Lamb' with both hands at the end of the first class, and some of them will play something more advanced." They will also be able to read treble and bass clefs, she said.

"Piano is easier to learn than any other instrument, and is even easier to learn than singing," Hiner said. "Some people can't sing. Everyone can play piano."