If Abby Whiteside's approach is so simple and effective in learning to play piano we might wonder if her ideas have any use outside the realm of piano playing. Can Abby Whiteside's principle of learning with a rhythm be applied to other musical instruments, or perhaps to virtuosity in sports, or even academic learning? Indeed, Abby Whiteside herself felt that rhythm is the governing force behind any beautiful performance be it on a musical instrument or on an ice rink. Wherever learning or performing involves coping with a mass of detail (individual notes in the case of music, minute individual movements in the case of dance, or individual concepts in the case of academic learning), we might consider that it is rhythm that allows us to digest, deliver, and gracefully manage these details in more fluently handled packets, or phrases. By handling details in a phrasewise manner we naturally enlist the efficiency of the whole body, or mind, and this involvement of a greater portion of our being actually turns out to be pleasurable, just as the swaying and balancing of skating is pleasurable.

Imagine watching someone who has the task of moving a huge collection of baseballs from one side of a field to another and they are picking up and carrying one baseball at a time, coming back and doing it again. It would be frustrating just to watch them do it. Now imagine if that same person were given a large, flat paddle which they could use to whack the balls, several at a time, across the field. The process would become both fun and efficient. And each individual ball, though still making its own separate journey across the field, would travel in a group driven by a singular momentum, a momentum initiated by a more wholly engaged body. That paddle, or rather our capacity to use it, is part of the magical trick behind fluent learning that Abby Whiteside had dedicated her life to uncovering. Abby Whiteside put rhythm first!