A Look Back On Season 1!

Highlights, clips and discussions about all that has been spoken about in season 1 of the podcast! 

We will be back in May with season 2! 

This episode is a great chance to catch up on the main themes of the first season and pick which episodes you want to listen to in full! 

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Transcript

 Hello and welcome to another episode of Heard It Through The Grooveline. My name is Will Bennett and I'm the founder of Grooveline Music Education. I'm here to help you know how to best support the musical education of your child, even if you are not musical yourself.    Good morning, everyone. I hope you're all. Well, that sounded like assembly. Good morning. Every one.  It's a. I don't know what the schools make kids do that it's so depressing. Good morning, Mr. Burnett. Good morning, everyone. Anyway, I digress already. Welcome to Quite a unique episode. This episode is going to be  a review of the entire first season. 

So yes, the first season is coming to an end. We've had 20 episodes plus a bonus episode, plus this one. So kind of 22 episodes really. In season one. What I'm going to do in this episode is review what we've learned. And what's been said, I'm going to share some clips from the previous episodes. 

I'm going to add some opinions. Of my own. And we're going to discuss a few things. So this is really worth listening to, if you have listened to every episode and you, and you want to hear some more information. Or if you've only listened to a couple. And do you want to quickly find out just by listening to one episode, which are the ones tickle your fancy. Or if you've never listened to it, it's all, this is the perfect way for you to find out exactly what this  podcast is all about. And then you can choose to listen to certain episodes in full that I may mention today, if you wish.    After this episode, we're probably going to take around a six week break and we'll be back with season two in may. Which is going to be bigger and better new guests, probably going to get some new equipment as well. So it's maybe slightly better quality. And loads more top tips, and we're going to really delve deeper into different themes each week. 

So from the very, very start, there's been so many top tips , actionable steps. Games that we've recommended knowledge that we've shared with you, things you can do at home to help your child. They've been chaired  both by myself and by guests that we've had on as well. So really I've just picked a, some of the highlights, this series. That I want to share with you. 

 So looking back to episode one, which I guess lays the foundations for this entire podcast series. I shared with you my top five tips. For how to support your child with their music education at home. Even if you're not musical yourself, I just want to share one kind of a  

fact if you'd like with you. From that episode, which I think is really, really important. 

So associating struggles as a proportional relationship with effort is a more successful way to achieve self driven Motivation in the long run. So when we're discussing and being the cheerleader for our children We really want to be focusing on the effort that they've put in Because that's something they can manage, they can very easily increase the amount of effort.

Whereas if we're focusing on talent, it can feel difficult to increase talent all of a sudden. 

 Yeah, so reasonably self-explanatory there that clip, but this comes from the very first episode on my very first tip, which was all about being a cheerleader for your child. Been their biggest fan, celebrating how brilliant music is. And obviously encouraging them, but this point in particular makes a distinction between encouraging them based on that effort. Making sure they're working hard and doing really well. Rather than how talented they are, because ultimately that will also put in the, in their mind the idea of how talented they might not be at some point as well. 

And music is something that's difficult. And instruments can take a long time to learn. And sometimes they don't always sound that good when we first learned and that's the truth.  But if we always praise them on how much effort they're putting in. That is ultimately going to lead to great results, but also will help them achieve that kind of, as I said, self-driven motivation. 

 In episode five of this series, we had our first ever guest. , Pete Roth, who is someone I've known for a long time? , he was my lecturer at uni is how I first met him. So when would that have been.  I guess almost 10 years ago now. Yeah. So I've known him. You know, a decent amount of time and he's really great guy, very intelligent. , really, really knows a lot about music and a lot about education and he's very experienced as well. 

It's always so good to talk to him and I never seem to be able to have a conversation with him. That's less than three hours because it's just always a so interesting. So this podcast episode is probably the shortest amount of time I've ever spent with him actually.  But I just want to share this following clip and I'll explain why afterwards.



they're actually learning social skills there. We miss the fact that they're actually doing physically something where they're getting in tune with their body and they're learning about actually making themselves physically strong. They're also learning about being in action with rules.

Yeah, discipline. Yeah, discipline, absolutely. Self control, being there for a team.  Just turning up, you know, never mind if you're the strongest striker, no, but you dare, you know, you're doing this and every week and you might feel a bit rubbish, but you're getting up and you're going to put your boots on and you go out and you support your team.

And and so we sometimes forget there's more to it than the actual skill because we seem to have gotten so  obsessed  with measuring.  Everything needs to be measured.

 So that's just one short clip there from the episode with Pete. And as I said, there's so many, you should listen to the whole episode. That's one of the, probably the hardest of the whole series, the episode with Pete. Really, really loads of information there for everyone. But I like this because what Pete is doing here is comparing sports to music.  And he's kind of urging parents and teachers not to get too obsessed with comparing yourself.  With others. And comparing your progress to other people as well. In sport, you know, using this analogy that Pete's. And we could seem to kind of understand the greater benefits and we realize. That for example, playing football on a Sunday with your friends and exercise and, and getting stronger and all of those kinds of things, it's still worth it. 

Even if you lose the game.  It's still worth it. Even if you don't score. Or even, you know, you get sent off or whatever, you know, And he's saying, you know, it should be the same with music as well. One child may just have natural rhythm and be really good at the drums in their first two lessons.  Whereas another child. Might not have good natural rhythm or good coordination. 

It takes them longer to get to that point. But that doesn't mean that they're any worse off. And actually, I would say who's benefited the most from their drum lessons. It's that second student in that example, So it kind of links in with what I said earlier about, you know, not trying to have how good you are be the measurement, but rather how much effort you're putting in. You know, and trying your best and gaining all of those other benefits that you get from music. Other that are separate from the end result of how well you can play an instrument, which obviously is important as well. But it's just kind of a thought it was a useful, helpful point. 

That's a highlight that the reason we do music, especially at this young age, we're not trying to be the basket's house in the whole world right now. That could happen. It could come later. But right now we're trying to love music, enjoying music. You know, develop our emotional intelligence, develop our discipline and all the other myriad of benefits that music provides, which I've mentioned countless times throughout this series as well. 

 The next guests that we had on after Pete was Tim Bennett heart. And he's the CEO of rock school, the examination board. And I think it was really, really valuable to hear literally from the horse's mouth. About exams. For me, I think that traditional exams and other examples, well, I'll just name them. A B R S M. And some of the ones that some people seem to really worship and I do use the word worship, cause it's just, they seem to think that it's the be all and end all.  And I'm not saying that they're awful, but there are a lot of floors to their exams. And to that examination process.  Literally just yesterday, I was speaking to an adult who still to this day, You know, it gets really, really nervous playing the piano in front of people because she can still picture. Having to go physically to an exam with four people sitting. Like in some kind of panel boardroom. And, you know, being really harsh and, , there's, examples,  of people and parents complaining right now, two examples because the examiners have been so harsh and almost nasty, really. And I personally just don't see the point in that approach.  Grades are reasonably worthless. 

Anyway. Part from maybe grade eight, you know, grade one is grade one. And no matter what example would you do, and it's not about the result. That's not, what's important. What's important is the learning.  And the experience.  And the confidence that you can get from passing a grade. What we don't want is a soul crushing. Traumatic experience. 

That's been so scary. and been marked so harshly and is really kind of ripped the soul out of music for this, this child, and really put them down. Which unfortunately is what happens with, in some cases, And it's sad and it's wrong. But that doesn't happen with rock school. I'm glad to say. And I like rock school because I think they've got a fun approach. They play cool songs that the kids recognize.  And they mark it, you know? Fairly. But not you know, there's no nastiness or being so harsh that you're going to kind of ruin a child's confidence. 

And the, as an example, Rocksville seem to understand that, which is why I'm a big fan of them. And, , here's a little clip of Tim, just kind of hinting towards that as well.

I think great education is about inspiration. So inspiring the students with great material, which I hope we do then motivation. So motivating those students to be able to get towards a point in time to be able to make a bit of progress.

No one is going to be virtuosic overnight. And then thirdly, reward. So if you can, if you can put rewards into a system of learning so that you know that there's that goal that can be achieved, that's amazing. And it's not just about getting a distinction on your, on your grade. It's about anyone that takes a graded exam that's taken that time that, you know, had the motivation to get to that end point and then being able to see them achieve.

That's amazing. And it's a, it's a motivation for what we do every day is to, is to see the thousands and thousands of kids that have come through the system. The best moments of my life are where we were walking down the street and I've got my rock school t shirt on or something like that. And someone comes up to me and says, Oh yeah, I did.

I did grade six about 10 years ago. And you kind of go, that's fantastic. Cause that is a real, real achievement for that person.  



 I guess I went on a little bit of a rant there. But you know, as a parent, my, the reason I've kind of chose to highlight this bit is if anyone listening.  It's just to share my opinion on exams. And maybe you might, you might agree or disagree that's up to you, but I would say. I have seen examples of parents, really pushing kids towards certain examples that they don't want to do. 

And they're having bad traumatic experiences and they ultimately quit the instrument,  As a result. Whereas I can see how positive of an experience they can have with other examples. And it doesn't matter if it's perfect. That's the point teams make, and it's not about being perfect. It's about learning, building skills, building confidence, building repertoire, having a great experience and getting a sense of achievement. 

When you get that certificate.  And that's why I like rock school. There are other great examples as well. But I just would say, as a parent, just kind of be mindful of this.  When it comes to the conversation around grades, 

 I'm kind of sticking. You know, onto that theme slightly. And talking, as I mentioned earlier, there was someone I spoke to as an adult still kind of gets anxious about performing. Episode 13 was a really cool one. This was with a lady called Amanda Bond and she's an expert in helping people overcome. Music, performance, anxiety, and she's done a lot of studying around this topic as well. I would recommend checking out this episode in full, but I'll just put a quick clip below where Amanda kind of explains exactly what music performance anxiety is in comparison to just normal nerves.

what is music performance anxiety?  So, it is  Not just Stage Fright, it is something that's different from Stage Fright, as in it is a longer lasting. I would say that Stage Fright is a phenomenon that's a, an acute version of Music Performance Anxiety that's really situational.

It is just before that big performance, that exam, that gig, where You know, you get the, the tummy feels and the adrenaline, but music performance anxiety is more than that. And I do have for you  a proper definition from  Penny, 2011.  So music performance anxiety, according to her and the official definition is the experience of marked and persistent anxious apprehension related to musical performance that has arisen through underlying biological and or psychological vulnerabilities and or specific anxiety conditioning experiences.  So that's quite a lot. So basically it says that it's not just in the moment. It's marked and persistent. So it's apprehension.

So it's lots of worrying thoughts or things that might affect behavior,  feeling nervous physical symptoms before. for quite a long time before a performance, not just before a performance. And also here that performance is not related to performance on a stage with an audience, performance is just the doing, is the playing.

So this is something that affects,  you know, 80 percent of adults  and studies have shown that children feel it the same as adults do. There isn't like a, you know, like a kid's version of music performance anxiety. They do feel the same. So As adults, when we've had this anxiety feeling and there was also a clip of Pavarotti who said, I wouldn't wish this feeling on my worst enemy. 

And that's what we've got to realize as parents and teachers that  to make music for some children is, is difficult. It's a real stretch for them. They're really challenging just to do the music making. So we need to be aware that for some children, that's, that's a big challenge on its own is to overcome those nerves, to get up just to perform in a lesson. 

in a class situation in front of another student in a group lesson, those things can all affect some children.  

 So as you can see some really meaningful and important conversations have been had. And some, you know, over some quite serious topics as well.  So I would recommend checking that one out if you or your child has, seems to be extra nervous when they're performing, maybe it might be out there having some kind of music, performance related anxiety. And that episode could be really helpful for you to check out and learn some techniques and ways to kind of deal with that.  



 We also had the ever positive and ever lovely Jane James on the podcast. 

You're such an amazing woman. Jane is, I don't know a super well, but I've met.  I don't know, five times maybe. I don't know if I spoke to her on the phone and things like that. And, and unzoom. And she just so nice. She's always so helpful. So bubbly, so happy, so positive. And she runs a really cool company called little voices, which help, , teach performing arts and music. 

And it was really great to hear from her and get some top tips on motivation and inspiration.

 Jane's episode is episode number seven. If that's something that you're interested in, checking out.



 Some of the other things that I've been talking about in the Sodo episodes is we did a little bit about kind of going on a journey and setting goals at the start of the year. This was based around kind of January, Christmas time. You know, when people start to set goals for themselves, And we had a two-part episode there about setting goals. How we can make sure we achieve in those, on our instrument. You know, practice, routines, discipline, all of that sort of thing. 

So they're worth checking out. And I also did a few bits of, you know, if you're, if you're like almost like an FAQ kind of thing, It was a short episode about how exams work.  There's an episode about music theory. Which is kind of explaining to parents how music theory works so that they can at least gain a understanding good enough to support their child. We had a separate episode off the back of that, about reading guitar tablature. 

That's a bit more specific to people who are playing stringed, fretted instruments, such as guitar. Bass, ukulele, mandolin, banjo, that kind of thing. And also one of the ones was about Duolingo and how they have, obviously they're famous for learning languages. But they also have a music theory learning platform as well, which was pretty interesting. 

And since I've did that episode and did the research for the episode have implemented some of their ideas in the classroom and they've been really successful. So I would check that one out there, kind of some short episodes where I was just talking on my own that you might find, find useful. And that's kind of the journey we went on throughout this kind of series as well. You know, another one's a highlight is in episode 10, I talk about micro-actions those small, tiny things that we can do that add up to a bigger picture. 

And I kind of. You know, spoke is all the way back to episode two, I guess it was about how music is like a great tapestry. And every tiny thing you learn is like one stitch. So taking those micro-actions and making 1% improvements eventually. Leads to the big picture of music. If you try and look at how can I get from being a complete beginner to being an expert, it's such an overwhelming prospect. 

It's such a long journey, but if we can take those small day by day steps, that is how we get there. Kind of like the eating, the elephant analogy, where you can, the only way to do it is a bite at a time. 

 On that point about setting goals, you know, in those episodes, I also said that I would share some goals that I did as well. So one of the ones I really wanted to do is kind of start gigging a bit more this year. Not so much because I love gigging. I kind of have done a lot of gigging in my life and I kind of am a little bit over it. But I know it's good for me. 

Something that is good for me and for my development. And even though when it comes to like, oh, I've got to learn loads of songs for rehearsal tomorrow, that can be a bit stressful. And.  You know, I feel like, oh, why am I doing this? Why I've done this to myself kind of thing. There is that point to it as well. 

But overall. You know, I know that gigging is good for me and just to kind of share my progress with that. I have done some gigs this year. You know, kind of put myself out there on bass guitar, which is not my first instrument. So that's been pretty cool and different and I've had to kind of practice a lot and I've enjoyed that. I think when you played an instrument for a very long time, like I played guitar for. I don't know.  



20 years now. 

Wow. That's a long time.  Yeah. If I could talk for 20 years, so to try and improve. You know, five or 10% of my skills. It takes a long time. Whereas on bass guitar, I'm not as good. So to improve 10% takes a few weeks and you know, I've enjoyed kind of remembering what it was like to be back at the beginning. Obviously guitar and bass are similar. 

So I didn't start from complete scratch. But it was nice to kind of do that. And I just wanted to share that with you guys. There's an update for me and my goal. And I'd love to hear from you guys, how you, how you're getting on with your goals. You know, you can message me on Instagram. At Groveland music education, you can send in an email. 

You can comment on, on this, on. The Spotify, I think. I don't know if that's true, actually.  Maybe just gone Instagram or email. But you know, I'd love to hear from you guys you know, and see how you're getting on as well. Cause I can see people are listening. Which is great. And I've spoke to some people and they've said it's been helpful and stuff, but it's always good to hear more feedback from you guys and kind of find out how you getting on with your journeys through music as well. 

 In episode 11, we were joined by will Savage. Which was really cool and interesting. So I wanted to hear. You know, some top tips about music, education from someone with a quite a different perspective. And will was homeschooled. And he, one of the things he now does is he teaches other children that are homeschooled and he was their music teacher. 

It was really interesting to kind of hear how he works and. And hear his top tips as well. , 

So I'm going to share a clip. Now from the episode, we just described a little bit about music and talks a bit about music theory, which I found really interesting as well. And, you know, again, he, his opinion is that everyone should be able to learn music and. Have the option to read music as well. And, you know, it links back to the other podcast episode. 

I said about music theory, but, and there's also blogs on our website. If you want some helpful guides as well. So let's hear what will has to say about that. 

So I run them every Tuesday that's currently what I do Tuesday afternoon. 

And  I run them as a zoom webinar. 

So I try to split a 45 minute lesson into a number of different.  I think that's, you know, much more digestible for the, for the child. So I do a little bit on music history and appreciation. They get to know, you know, the music of different composers, periods, styles.  We had a great lesson just a few weeks ago about Tchaikovsky  and we found.

One of his letters that he had written to the publisher of a Russian monthly magazine who'd commissioned from him a set of compositions. And it was a really insightful letter. 'cause you could see it was translated from Russian. You could see,  how Tchaikovsky had a lot of doubt about his composition, A lot of insecurities.

And I think it helped the children to see that that's kind of a normal part of the creative process, you know, so we try to. Bring, I know it's a cliche, but bring music history to life a little bit. Think about the composers.  But I think the thing that I'm really, that I feel is, is, is lacking in a lot of online resources is the musicianship side of the thing.

You know, you can learn about music,  but I think it's really important to actually feel that you can converse musically as it were. So things like inner ear skills. And we mentioned about Kodai. So a Kodai based approach, you know, learning about the  rhythms with solfa, rhythm solfa, Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, you know, singing those things as well. 

I've heard so many times that  perhaps adults will say, oh, I can't read music.  And I kind of think that's sad.  You know, it's, it's, thankfully it's a rarity now to hear someone say they, they can't read full stop because they always seem to feel that's quite limiting, isn't it?  And I kind of feel like  Perhaps the same as with music, that everybody should be given the opportunity to learn how to read it.

And I don't think it's that hard. I don't think it has to be hard. 



  Recently have started saying to people, which is perhaps something that you don't necessarily think of at first, is that written music is just a visual representation of what you're hearing. 

It's not some weird code that only makes sense if you know the secret language. It literally, as the note moves up on the page, it moves up in pitch. And as the notes are closer together on the page and more frequent, they, you hear them. more frequently and faster. Like it, it does make sense. It's not a completely foreign language that you, that you have no basis from which to kind of relate to it.

It, it does actually have logical sense. And I think, I think that's something that some people don't realize, 

 So a little clip of our discussion there about how his lessons work and our views on music theory and reading music and its importance as well. And one of the solo episodes that came as well, this series. . I gave five different rhythm games that can be played at home to help develop an understanding. And ability when it comes to rhythm.   So, this is great for both parents and kids and it's things that you can kind of play together as well.  Check out the episode in full. But I'm just going to share one clip where I demonstrated a rhythm pyramid using my guitar. 

this is quite a good one for anyone who's planning an instrument, and we want to think about a rhythm pyramid. So if you mentioned like the food permits, they used to teach us, but before anyone knew anything about nutrients  I'm showing. 

I feel old saying that anyway. If you think of a pyramid. So at the bottom.  You have the smallest rhythm. So let's go for example. Semiquavers so that is four notes per beat.  Above that you could have. Quavers that's two notes per beat. And above that you could have crutches, which is one note per beat. 

Obviously you can change that, make it more complicated. If you want to add triplets or some mixture between semiquavers and quavers to kind of create some more complex rhythms, that's up to you.  The idea is though you put in. Put a metronome on. And then with your instrument, you play those rhythms. 

So whilst it's click in at first, you're playing, you could just play one note or you could play a scale. And you go in 1, 2, 3, 4 1, 2, 3, 4 1. It did.   this is semiquavers so you could be thinking Coca Cola, Coca Cola, caterpillar, caterpillar, or one egg and a two week. Gender.  You do that for a bar? And then without stopping and you transition into quavers and they go in one and two and drag and drag. Rabbit, rabbit, whatever word you choose, then you go into quavers cow. Cows is just one. Two. Three. For, and the idea is you go through that pyramid. All the way up to the top. All the way back down again without stopping. I'm going to quickly grab my guitar, actually. 

And I'll just quickly show you this. 



 Right. We're back. So I've got my guitar with me. I'm just going to show you that rhythm pyramid. So I'm going to put a metronome on which you should be able to hear. I'm going to put it on at, let's say 90 beats per minute.  So this is clicking. 90 times every minute. And this has given me my tempo. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to play just one note, just for example.  Okay.  And what I'm going to do is at first play with semiquavers then quavers then crunch it back to quavers back to semiquavers 34.  

Quavers.  

Crotch it  

quavers.  

Semiquavers.  

Okay. And you can do it rather than just one note. You could try and do part of a scale.  



That was just one explanation of one of the games I shared in that episode. And if you wanna listen to that and get all of the rhythm games that you can play at home. Some of them are a lot more, you know, more accessible and don't require an instrument than that one. That one was kind of the hardest, one of the five. That is episode 12. 

If you'd like to check that one out.

And we finished this series with four guest episodes back to back. Where we talked about music therapy and how that can be used to help children. We talked about sound painting, which was something I wasn't really familiar with before that conversation, but actually. It's something that sounds really interesting and I've since kind of explored a bit more about it as well. 

And it's something that can be used at home as well, which is pretty interesting and could be worth listening to that episode in full. We also spoke to Lucy who told us about her, her children who are really high achieving in music. And she gave some kind of tips about how she achieved that with her children. 

And also she explained her role. Now she works with a charity that does music for deaf people, which is something that. At first, you might not think it goes together. You know, naturally. But she, I, she explained it works really well and they still get a lot of benefits from those classes as well, which is awesome. 

And also we spoke to Katie who told us all about how she runs music classes. For children from babies all the way up to age four as well, which was really great to hear. And she provided some top tips for parents, if you, so if you have kids who are within the age bracket as well, Then it would be worthless. Into that episode.  As I said, we're going to come back in about six weeks time with series two. 

So thank you all for listening. And the point of this episode is really to give you a run through of some various highlights of the first series. And of course, check out some of the episodes in full. If you liked the sound of anything that we said today, Okay. Thank you guys. See you in a few weeks time.   Thank you for listening to another episode of Heard It Through The Groove Line, the podcast that helps parents like you best support your children's musical education, even if you are not musical yourself.  To find out more, you can follow us on social media, and don't forget to hit like and subscribe.