S1Ep1: Supporting Your Child's Music Education At Home - My Top 5 Tips

In this episode of 'Heard It Through The Grooveline', founder of Grooveline Music Education, Will Bennett, explores the importance of parents' role in their children's musical education. He shares his top five tips which are: being their biggest cheerleader; encouraging exploration and discussion about music outside of lessons; fostering effective communication between the learner, parent, and teacher; creating a safe and conducive practice environment; and parents educating themselves on basic music knowledge. He emphasizes that a musical background is not necessary to support your child's music education and involvement is the most significant factor in their musical journey.

00:02 Introduction and Purpose of the Episode

Hello and welcome to another episode of Heard It Through The Grooveline....

00:48 The Importance of Music Education

So I hope you'll find this useful It's always really great when a child wants to learn music or any instrument at all....

01:44 The Role of Parents in Music Education

As a parent, I'm sure you're probably excited as well when your child said, Oh, I want to learn the piano or I want to learn the drums....

02:18 Top Five Tips for Supporting Your Child's Musical Education

So in this particular episode, I'm going to give you my top five tips for supporting your child's musical education....

02:30 Tip 1: Be Their Biggest Cheerleader

So, top tip number one is to be their biggest cheerleader....

05:07 Tip 2: Explore Music with Your Child Outside of Their Lessons

So, this one is kind of related to the first tip as well....

07:37 Tip 3: Communicate with Their Music Teacher

Point number three is all about communication and really communicating with their music teacher....

10:08 Tip 4: Create a Great Practice Environment

Point number four is all about creating a great practice environment, and this is something really important....

12:59 Tip 5: Educate Yourself and Learn Some Basics

So yes, you might not know how to play the guitar, and that's fine....

13:45 Conclusion and Recap of the Episode

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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.  At Grooveline, when the lesson ends the learning doesn't stop and as part of our commitment to a wraparound approach to education this episode I will be giving you my top five tips for supporting your children's practice routines at home 

Hello everyone episode number one  if you're listening to this then presumably you are a parent  And your child is learning music at school or maybe outside of school as well. So I hope you'll find this useful It's always really great when a child wants to learn music or any instrument at all.  The benefits are hard to quantify really, you know, it's affects every aspect of life, education and development. 

Obviously I'm really passionate about music education, but actually not just for the purpose of music. I think it's really important across all education and really filters into every subject and, , across every curriculum. anD as a musician and a music teacher, I'm really excited when children want to learn an instrument because I know the experiences and the opportunities that they're about to have and I know , how fun that can be and how life changing.

To tell you a little quick bit about myself as you heard in the introduction, I'm the CEO and founder of Groovline Music Education. Prior to that, I traveled the world playing as a professional guitarist as well. So music's been a really massive part of my life and that's why I think music education for children is so important. 

As a parent, I'm sure you're probably excited as well when your child said, Oh, I want to learn the piano or I want to learn the drums. But it can also make you think, well, how can I help my child learn the piano if I don't know anything about the piano myself? And that can be something that can be a challenge for parents.

And I speak to hundreds of parents every week, and this is one thing that comes up quite a lot, and it's a big misconception that I would like to bust today and throughout this whole podcast series. Is that to support your child's music education, you do not need to be musical yourself. And that's a, that's a really good thing.

So in this particular episode, I'm going to give you my top five tips for supporting your child's musical education. And hopefully you're going to find them really, really helpful. So let's jump in with number one. So, top tip number one is to be their biggest cheerleader. So, encouragement, patience, and enthusiasm, and really just constantly reminding them how impressed you are that they're learning an instrument.

, it's quite a journey to learn an instrument. It can be difficult, it takes many years. You know, I've been playing maybe 18 years, or just over 18 years on the guitar now.  And you're always still improving, and it's overwhelming for a child to think that it could take that long. If they're 8 years old, to imagine 18 years , feels almost impossible, really.

 You've got a massive part to play in their development.  If you praise their effort, that is really going to be helpful, rather than praising their accomplishment. It's quite an important point and a good distinction to make. If you can praise the core values and the motivations of music education, rather than an end result, That is going to have a better reaction.

So for example you could say you're really impressed with the amount of effort and the discipline they have chosen. They have shown, sorry, and that they have chosen to learn this instrument rather than really praising, Oh, I can't wait for you to be grade one, for example, which is more of an accomplishment based motivation.

It's also much more sustainable because as you get better and better, those big breakthroughs get less and less frequent. If you think about the first. Two months of learning the guitar, for example, you're going to be having a massive breakthrough every lesson as you learn a new core skill or core technique.

But by the time you've been playing for 10 years, perhaps it's going to take you a little bit longer in between those big major breakthroughs. And no one is born with ready made instrumental skills. So anyone who does have them and who is really good at a musical instrument, they only got them one way and that was through practice and dedication over a series of years.

So, actually, researchers found that if a child believes that they're either talented... Or not talented they are likely to associate any future struggles in learning With a lack of talent, which is something that seems very difficult to overcome So what would actually be better is if they would associate that with effort?

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. So remember, you know, learning any new skill takes a long time, and so patience is really, really important.  Okay, let's move on to tip number two. So, this one is kind of related to the first tip as well. It's, it's to talk about, listen to, and explore music with your child outside of their lessons.

Obviously, they're going to be getting, hopefully, a fantastic musical education. If it's with Grooveline, then I'm sure it is fantastic. If it's with someone else, hopefully that's also fantastic. Really what happens outside of the lesson is really important as well. anD I'm thinking about here when I was a child, so I've got two brothers.

So all three of us actually ended up with a music degree and myself and my younger brother. I actually continued into be a professional musicians as well, but my parents never really forced us to do music and they're certainly not professional instrumentalists themselves. So I was thinking about what is it that made us enjoy music so much?

And I really think it's what happened   in the home, , the way music was talked about, the way we were exposed to music. If you've ever watched an interview with a famous musician and someone asks them. So how did your journey with music begin? Quite often the answer is, at home my parents always used to play lots of music around the house, and that seems to be kind of a common theme, so  I'm thinking more, we used to watch School of Rock all the time, so we probably watched School of Rock  at least a hundred times as a family, probably more.

I can probably recite the film word for word as well. And I just wanted to be like Jack Black and Angus Young, who he was imitating. And I wanted to play the guitar, I wanted to have an S. G.  The children in the film, , they're about probably 8 years old, I was 8 years old when it came out, I think.

And , it really made it cool, and I wanted to do music, and I thought music was something really, really cool. And I think that's something important, if we can instill that into the children, that music as a positive, music is fun, that's the most important thing that we need them to be thinking about.

So we really want to be encouraging that, you know, outside of the lessons, listening to loads of music, maybe even taking children to performances or gigs even as they get a little bit older.  So there's a quote that I found on the internet while I was researching about this and it's from someone called Jonas who is the founder of a company called low key.

And the quote goes like this. Motivating your child by reward or punishment will stop working very quickly. Instead, help your child get curious about music and develop an inner desire to engage with music. And I think I completely agree with that as well. So that's why my second point is to talk about, listen to and explore music with your child outside of their lessons. 

 

Point number three is all about communication and really communicating with their music teacher. So that's both encouraging them to communicate with their music teacher, but also you yourself communicating with the music teacher. Having a great teacher pupil relationship is obviously really, really important.

And that child needs to feel comfortable to be able to ask inquisitive questions and  maybe make themselves a little bit vulnerable and discuss something that they're finding difficult. That can be quite scary for a child to admit that they're finding something difficult. So, , encouraging  the pupil to be confident and, have that kind of conversation with the music teacher is going to be really helpful, but also as a parent, you should be  talking with the music teacher quite a lot as well.

So one thing that we do at Groovline to try and help with this is we send lesson notes home every single week after the lesson. If you're a Groovline client, you'll know this and you receive those lesson notes immediately after the lesson has taken place. So, you know, when your child gets home.

What's happened at school and you can talk to them and discuss with them and kind of reinforce that learning That they've had that day at school or during their music lesson after school as well  So it's really good to also to as a parent discuss the bigger picture with the music teacher So what is my child working on and why are they working on that?

What's the actual point of this lesson today? And it's not rude to ask that that's completely fine  every lesson should have a purpose and should be building towards. It's like each lesson is one stitch in a massive tapestry of musical education. And so what we've done at Groovline is we have developed what we call progress pathways.

So if your child is learning with Groovline, they're on a progress pathway whereby if you imagine like a family tree that has stems off in all different directions, we've kind of got this image in our head of when a child. Wants to learn, for example, the guitar. They're at the top of that family tree and it can stem off in so many different ways and all those different branches, we've got lesson plans, we've got resources and the teachers have got expertise and technical exercises and everything about that part of music and they can take your child through that journey.

So, as a parent, it's great for you to know that as well. So, if a child is struggling with something, you can kind of remind them the bigger picture and why we're working on this. Yes, maybe we're learning a particular song that they may love, or they may not really love, or they may not have heard it before.

It's not really about that one particular song, it's about the reason that we're learning that song is for a greater cause.  Point number four is all about creating a great practice environment, and this is something really important. If I think back to the various places I've lived when I was at uni, or when I used to live at home as a child, and where I live now, at various points I've had probably better, or... 

Worse experiences of a kind of a safe practice environment if you like and what I mean by safe I don't mean physically safe, of course I mean a place where like a safe space where you feel confident to play your instrument You don't feel like you're annoying the neighbors or keeping anyone awake And if you make a mistake, you don't feel like everyone's listening and judging you That's really important actually because I've been in those situations like in house shares at uni before for example or just after uni and it's like I don't really want to play my guitar because I don't want to make a mistake and everyone can hear it and it's embarrassing and they're all normal feelings for people to have.

So what we want really for your child to be able to have a nice safe  environment where they don't feel intrusive and they can explore and play music. And they have obviously the instruments and the equipment that they require as well.  Another way to kind of encourage this practice is to kind of set up little performances.

So maybe something as simple as a family member is coming around next week or you've got a friend coming around. Why don't you show them what you've learned? And,  for example, I used to play guitar for,  my mom and dad at the end of every lesson. The teacher would say, go and get your mom and dad and we'll show them what we've learned.

And, , it was quite a cool little experience because you would practice knowing that you're going to have to show them. It's a good little bit of motivation,  and at groovline we have things like that as well. So for example, we do Summer band camps, which are really cool. So your child could come full time.

So Monday to Friday 9 till 3. So it's 30 hours of music each week, . So it's really good fun.  And that's a reason to practice. And at the end of the week, we have a performance whereby we invite the parents and guardians to come and, to come and see exactly what we've learned that week.

That's a great motivation. Last year, we had children who As well as spending 30 hours a week in school during the holidays, cause they love music that much. They then went home in between the days and practice for sometimes two hours a day. So someone's, I remember last year, there was one child who was playing the bass and she probably practiced for about 40 hours that week. 

And now for a lot of children, if they're practicing an hour a week or less, it might take them a whole year to do 40 hours practice. And she did that in one week. And she, her progress really, really went through the roof and continues to do so. So things like that can really work.  I will do a separate episode just about practicing and motivation and kind of setting up practice routines and things like that.

The final point, point number five, is to educate yourself and learn some basics. So yes, you might not know how to play the guitar, and that's fine. You might not know how to play the piano or the drums. What you can do is educate yourself and listening to this podcast is a great first step towards that.

We've also on our social medias got some  quick videos, top tips, some explainers, some blogs, but , you could go on YouTube or Google and find things out as well. Having a basic understanding about rhythm, time values, maybe a little bit about reading music, or just about the anatomy of an instrument and basic techniques.

Can be really helpful because although it's not going to mean, yes, you can play exactly what your child's trying to play, but it means you can understand what it is they're trying to achieve. And they are able to discuss with you and communicate using kind of some musical jargon, if you like, and you're going to understand what that means. 

So there's my, my top five tips, just to recap, top tip was to be their biggest cheerleader.  Tip number two was to talk about, listen to and explore music outside of the music lessons. Tip number three was all about communicating with music teachers, both yourself and the pupil, your child. Number four was about creating a great practice environment.

And number five was about educating yourself as well, in order to, to be able to support your child.  I just want to say thank you again for listening to this.  The fact you've listened to this shows a certain commitment that you've got your child's musical education. And so I really mean it when I say thank you for that.

Because your involvement is probably the single biggest factor that will determine how successful your child's musical education will be. So that's been my five top tips, and I hope to see you again in the next episode.  Thank you for listening to another episode of Heard It Through The Groovline, 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.