S1Ep6: Top Tips For Music Education With Tim Bennett-Hart, CEO of RSL Awards.

In this episode, the host, Will Bennett, interviews Tim Bennett-Hart, an experienced music educator, and CEO of RSL Awards. They discuss the importance of music education, the impact of progressive mastery teaching, the role of technology in learning, and insights on supporting children's journey in music. Also covered are the elements of their approach to creating music syllabi and the role of structured learning, such as grades, in motivating and guiding students. Tim offers actionable tips for parents to support their child's music education, including learning alongside their child.

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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 so as part of our wraparound approach to music education, this episode I will be interviewing Tim Bennett Hart, an experienced music educator and CEO of RSL. 

 Good morning, Tim. Thank you very much for joining us on the podcast today.  It's a really exciting episode because for those of you who are listening and you don't know who Tim is, you're about to find out he's an expert in music education and really, really experienced.

So, Tim, could you possibly just tell us a little bit about your own journey through music, maybe yourself learning music, but also up to where you are today and , how you've got so involved in music education?  Yeah, thanks, Bill. Look so music is the, is, has been my life since the age of three. I won't tell you how old I am now, but it's, it's basically ages.

And when I was about three and a half,  I said to my mom, I'd really like to learn to play violin. So we were able to find a violin team.  And I learned something called Suzuki method, which is learning by ear as much as anything else. It's a great way for really young kids to learn. A violin is a really good instrument for really young kids because  instruments can be made very, very small.

The strings are nice and easy to play with. That was, that was my start. , and I showed a bit of natural talent and and I was good, most importantly I was really enthusiastic about it as a, as a child. So I got quite good, which was great and really, really fun. And then I got to the sort of teenage years and realized that I love the violin, but none of my friends knew what I did.

No, no one really understood what that really meant. And, you know, maybe we'll come back to this, but one of the reasons why RSL has got a violin to the bus is to try and help kids that maybe,  maybe would have. love to keep on playing violin like I would have loved to, but really wanted to be able to connect with the music that they, that they heard on a day to day basis as well.

So, but anyway, at the age of about 13, I traded my nice violin for for a really nice electric guitar and started learning electric guitar as well. So that enabled me really to work really hard.  to study a bit more. And eventually I was able to become a professional musician. And I've got to be honest with you, I'm not the world's best guitarist, but I am probably the world's most enthusiastic person about music.

  What I did find I had a talent for was writing music and writing melodies. So I was able to, to write some songs.  Do some stuff for TV as well and and really get a, a really lovely career out of being a musician. I then wanted to challenge myself even more. So I went and became an academic and studied how music is taught a little bit more than it's physically at the university of Sussex, where I started writing courses, then ran some other independent universities and ran the education elements of those as well.

And then found myself In this position at RSL Awards, well, we've got rock school and RSL classical grades. First of all, as the academic director, and now as the CEO. So it's been a really brilliant journey to kind of keep music at the center of everything I do for my entire life. It's been, and it's been brilliant so far.

 That's excellent. What a great journey you've been on there. You mentioned a few really interesting things that I'd love to pick up on. So, one of the things you mentioned is that... By learning music, you said that allowed me to work really hard. And we just did an episode a couple of weeks ago about the kind of benefits of music, which aren't necessarily just limited to the actual instrument, but the wider benefits.

So I'd love to just quickly ask you, what skills do you think you learned as a musician that have helped you in your very successful professional career as well, and maybe even in your wider life?  Yeah, that's a that's a fantastic question. And I'm a huge advocate for the extra cognitive benefits of learning music.

I mean, and there's I mean, absolutely conclusive research. If you learn a musical instrument, you do better in almost every aspect of your life. It's a fantastic Yeah, wonderful thing. I would say, by the way, the same is true for dance and drama and other creative activities that challenge you on a cognitive level.

But particularly music, the links are very, very clear. I also think that there is a work ethic around, around learning, you know, challenging yourself to learn an instrument. And I think it's, I think it's really a great thing  if a child, for example. As an interest in learning an instrument, if the parents can encourage that interest can really allow them to grow into that interest, set them achievable interesting goals and give them great opportunities, then that is going to instill in them a sense of achievement and reward for everything they do.

So I absolutely  couldn't conceive to have had a successful career in the way that I have if it wasn't for that sort of rudimentary basic understanding  of learning music in the first place.  I'm so glad you said that. I agree with every single word you just said and I've been banging on about it for the last few weeks on the podcast as well.

It's so important and I think really the discipline as well, you know, you mentioned it slightly there. I think for a young child to learn hard work equals improvement. It's just so valuable because, , to have that going through the rest of your life and having... evidence to yourself. I, I remember I struggled with this.

I worked hard and I did that. That's like a little, little accolade. You've got a little badge you've earned and you prove that to yourself day in, day out learning whether it be the violin or the guitar. You can take that through, , your entire life. And clearly you have done that and that's really great.

I'm glad you said that. Thank you. So when you are creating a syllabus, and in particular I'm thinking about the instrumental grade exams, what goes into that process, and what are you really thinking about, what things are you considering, and what kind of experience are you trying to create for the pupil who is sitting that exam or learning that syllabus? 

Well, I mean, we have lots and lots of different stakeholders to think about whenever we're making a  musical syllabus.  In particular, we're thinking about how are teachers going to engage with it? How will it make teachers lives easier? How will it really, you know, keep their students motivated? But we're also thinking about things like how a student would view it.

You know, the levels of complexity is quite high, actually, you know, we have to think about the language that we utilize where when we're describing pieces of music. So you have to get into this, this inside the Fletch Kincaid system which allows you to be able to understand whether the language that you've written in is going to be appropriate for the age range of someone that might read it. 

, from my point of view as well, it's also about inspiring learners. So if if the music isn't cool, isn't relevant, isn't interesting, then we're not going to maintain the interest of the student. And then that student's going to get bored, they're not going to want to do it anymore, they're not going to achieve the things that they wanted to achieve in the first place.

The teachers are going to lose those students and they're not going to be able to inspire them anymore. So actually it's really beholden on us to think about things like representation. So, so what pieces have we actually got in the syllabus? Who's written them? If that young person, if we're talking about kids here particularly, I mean, we also have tons and tons of adult learners that want to learn musical instruments as well.

But if that's if that young person, if they can see themselves in the music, , which they're playing, then we know that that's a real motivator. We did we did a classical piano syllabus. For years rock schools only focused on popular music, but in 2020, based on some articles that came out in the Guardian and some feedback that we received from, from teachers we reinvented the idea of classical piano by  Dispelling the myth that classical piano has to be pieces of music that were written by  dead white German men in the 17th century.

 And actually encouraging a sense of, of actually representation within everybody that we've, we've looked at, which was great fun. We were able to go to the British library, find pieces of work by Ignatius  Sancho, this amazing black composer from the 1600s.  And publish that music for the first time in centuries.

 And actually I think we've really been able to help change the conversation about representation within syllabuses as well.  Yeah, for sure. I totally agree with you. I'm, I'm a big fan of RSL. Obviously I have, as a teacher looked at other exam boards throughout my years learning and teaching, but  I have found rock school to be the one which connects the best with the children. 

Because there's, as you say, songs that they recognize and accessible as well. You know, there are some other exam boards that   I find less accessible perhaps a little bit more difficult. Dare I say in the earlier grades, I think what you've done really well, particularly with the premier grades and the debut grades is you've made it so accessible for children to get into the swing of. 

learning songs that they recognize being able to achieve, you know, whether it be a certificate, which, which a lot of the children find really motivating as well. I do think you've done a really great job there. And, , that's why I wanted to particularly speak to you on this podcast,  , to kind of rack your brains about this.

I think it's, it's, it's really fantastic what you've done. . Thanks Will. That's really nice to hear.  , just on your last point, Will there, I mean, there's actually a pedagogy. Behind this you know, musical learning has been happening since, since people started banging drums.

Right. And that idea of mentorship  and one to one tuition is very,   established. But the pedagogy is something called progressive mastery. And the idea behind progressive mastery is that you take a complicated topic, you can do this with anything you take a complicated topic and you break it into smaller chunks.

And by breaking it into that smaller chunks and putting points of achievement within those smaller chunks, you encourage people to take a longer journey

You know, 88 keys. If you've never played a piano before, that's a complicated system that you've got to learn. You know, that's like learning computer coding, right? It's really, really off putting, difficult. Whereas actually if you break it into much, much smaller chunks, you break it down into notes and octaves and , achievable tasks and actually anybody can make progress within a musical instrument.

Just like anybody can, you know, can make progress with computer coding if they, if they had the motivation to. Yes, absolutely. I agree with you a hundred percent. And, you know, before we started recording, I was telling you about our Grooveline books, which is a. I didn't realize it was called progressive mastery but that is the same similar kind of thing where  I remember when I was at school they said A levels are like eating an elephant and if you if you try and eat it all in one go you'll never finish but if you just take one bite each day by the end of these next two years you will have eaten the elephant and I think it's that kind of thing isn't it you just have to just take it step by step each day try and be one percent better than you were yesterday and again going back to what we said earlier it's that what a great lesson that is for kids to learn and Actually, not just be told that, but actually experience that for themselves and learn it first hand 

yeah, it's quite a modern, it's actually, it's a very old pedagogy, but it relates well to the modern world.  Yes, for sure, , that it's quite quickly rewarding, I would say, that's one thing I do. Sometimes when parents ask me which instrument should my child learn? I do say take into consideration.

One thing is, you know, your child, how patient are they? How quickly do they need to feel a reward? I find that certain instruments are quite quick to reward you and you can very quickly place when that sounds really quite good. 

Yeah, ukulele is a, is a great example of that actually, where you've got a quite rewarding instrument quite quickly. You know, it's very accessible for lots of young people, very popular in primary schools, as I'm sure you know. Piano as well, I find, can be quite rewarding quite quickly.  , yeah, exactly.

So, what about, because I, my own personal views on grades are not necessarily that the certificate is extremely valuable. Maybe when you get to grade eight, if you want to go down certain routes, yes, you do, you might require that certificate for certain you know, professional routes. But I personally think the most important thing is, is the actual experience and the journey and what the child gets from that. 

So what, what are your kind of views? You're, you're the expert. How would, how would you answer the question if someone says, are grades important?  Yeah. And I, I would, I would always kind of falter at that question a little bit because I think. Learning is important and actually grades are just a system, , they're just one system of learning and there are tons of great systems.

I really believe that  grades are about the process of breaking things down, into smaller chunks.  I'm really, I'm really lucky. I mean, we work over in, in 60 different countries so I get to travel a lot and see different musical approaches in different countries.  And one thing I've noticed is that actually where grades are established, where that system is established, people make progress quicker, which I think is fantastic.

But I would, you know, that actually this is a, it's a system. Some of learning, and it's one that supports both teachers and students. So,  you're absolutely right, though, the, the kind of formative assessment that happens throughout class is really, really important.  But this summative element of assessment, you know, that graded exam, well, that's where you get the kind of the payback.

That's the goal and the target. And then to be able to achieve that goal or target is then the reward. So, you know, 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 um, 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.    For sure. I think that's really important. I can remember studying grades myself, and I remember I was really motivated by that.

And actually it was the reward of earning that certificate, which at the time I did  probably overvalue,  but I guess that's a good thing for a child to do that.  Almost without realizing I was doing. You know, a little bit of head fake learning, whereby I was not realizing all the other skills and the patterns that I was creating in my own brain, as we discussed about hard work, equaling reward and, , consistency, equaling results and all of those kinds of things.

So, yeah, that system of learning, as you said, I think is super important to underpin the entire. Music education. I sometimes think of  a pathway. So we call it a progress pathway, a groove line, which is the journey in which a person will go down when they're learning an instrument. And I kind of picture it as a, almost like a skeleton.

So if you imagine the bones and the spine. That's the core, you know, perhaps the grade system kind of underpins that. And then we flesh it out with  each teacher's specialty, so the muscles and the fat and all the rest of it are kind of like the, maybe the specialism in particular type of rock guitar or classical piano, whatever it may be.

But I think that the grade system, going through that as the core skeleton is really important to underpin. the journey that someone needs to go on. Otherwise, it's a vast ocean of,  I've got so much that I could learn. I don't know where to begin. 

Yeah, I agree with you on that.  The structure that we put in place as part of a graded exam board is, is great, but it's nothing without a brilliant teacher to help bring it to life, to add the kind of the, the meat to the bone, as your analogy goes. And that's about also being responsive to that learner to be able to understand what they really love and what inspires them as well.

That's why we put lots of lots of repertoire into books is so that you know it's because not everyone is going to be inspired by the same pieces of music.  So you, you know, we also encourage people to use free choice pieces within this so you know we can help teachers understand how to do the same type of benchmarking that we've done in.

Creating some of the pieces in the first place, and in fact, actually, we are delighted when people come with their own compositions for graded exams as well. I think that's absolutely brilliant. We never mark technique when we're grading, we mark outcomes.  What we're after is hearing fantastic music.

We couldn't care less if we want to play the guitar behind your head or the or the snare drum with your eyelid. It just doesn't matter.  Yeah, I think that might be our next class actually, a groove line of overhead guitar.   So when I met some of your colleagues last year, they were showcasing this really cool online platform that you have developed at rock school. Could you possibly just tell us a little bit about that  and then also I'd love to hear your thoughts about technology in general as a tool for learning. 

Yeah, thanks Will.  I I'm a huge passionate technologist , and that's because I've used technology and everything that I've done. Musically, and  we often talk about steam and stem and you know, the arts and technology are inextricably linked. So it's really, it's a really great thing to be able to do.

We developed something called the learning platform and eBooks that support the same technology. And what this does is allow. Any student that's that purchases one of the books to be able not just to be able to kind of see it as static music, but as interactive music so you can play along with the backing tracks and follow the music along, which is great, really, really useful.

But in addition you can record yourself playing and there's an algorithm.  Called match my sound, which allows you to be able to analyze whether your performance matches up with the performance that was intended.  And what's great about that is there's machine learning in there as well. So that will actually tell you visibly. 

The section will get marked red, you'll be able to hover over that with your finger or your mouse, and it'll actually tell you what's wrong. It's like, oh, you missed a D in that chord or you played an F rather than an F sharp. So eventually you can look back on that performance and then understand that.

Where it works really well is about thinking about how technology is used in teaching. So there is, we, we can provide links between students and teachers so that when a student is practicing at home and they're recording themselves and understanding where they've done well and where they haven't the teacher can also review that as well.

It's actually linked live, so a teacher can, can see when a student is practicing as well, which is really great. And can also review that. And that's, this is about flipping the, the lesson. I mean, for centuries, the idea of musical learning one to one has been about, the teacher is the master and then the student is the apprentice.

And the teacher demonstrates and the student copies. Actually, I think you can flip that relationship around a little bit, flip the classroom, and actually sit. Set tasks in lessons for students to undertake and then review them. And if you've got technology where you can actually look at how they've progressed through the week, you know, we've, we've inputted things into the, into the system.

So you can kind of set students goals. For example, you can say, practice this piece five times, try and get a score of 90.  Or you can break it down and say actually just practice these four bars, try and get a score of 100. You can actually set those goals and then review them  within lessons.

And I'd encourage all teachers to have a think about how they can really engage with technology, because young people particularly have got so many other distractions in their lives now. You know, there's social media, there's lots and lots of computer games. These things are designed effectively by psychologists to keep you interested.

So music learning has got to compete with all of those other inputs into, into young people's minds as well. So I think actually by using technology in a really sensible way, we can get those,  results that we've talked about, the benefits of music teaching, but in a gamified way, that's really engaging and interesting for young people. 

Yeah, that's brilliant. And it's great to hear that you talk about a lot of the certain topics there that I have heard other people talk about as well. And it's, you know, kind of for the listener who  hopefully  has listened to multiple episodes, there's going to be a few themes that have kept  popping up, such as flip learning, gamification, all of these things.

And I do think that that constant almost measurement really of how well we did. Can be, if it's used in the right way, can be quite helpful to keep a child motivated. I think it's really good. I'm actually going to have a, another chat with someone on this podcast from a company called Ambitious Rewards, which is a similar kind of idea whereby you're creating points along the journey that you can reward children for achieving.

He, he actually runs a gymnastics company. So each time they learn a certain.  I mean, I'm not a gymnast, a certain pose or a certain posture or a certain move. Sorry if I'm getting that wrong you know, then they can actually be rewarded on an online system. And it's very similar to the thing that you're describing there.

And I think it's definitely the way forward and something that I also want to implement into Groovline as well.  No, that's a, that's a really good idea. You know, gymnastics martial arts and indeed even sports generally have so many similarities with learning styles to music.

It's, you know, there are a lot of shared pedagogies between all of those elements.  Yes, for sure, . I've noticed that recently, because I don't know anything, to be honest, about martial arts. But it's kind of become a lot more popular in recent years, and it's all over social media and stuff. And I've started to realize, I've got a lot more respect for it now than I ever did before, because I've realized the discipline.

And I can realize the similarities between that and learning an instrument as well.  I did an episode right at the start of this podcast series, which was, I gave five top tips to parents as to how they could help their child's music education, even if they themselves are not musicians. One of the things that I said was to educate themselves and just try and understand a bit about music education.

And obviously  listening today to you talk, they're going to have really learned so much as have I about the kind of processes behind,  music education in general, but obviously in particular, graded exams. Do you have any actionable top tips that you would give to parents as to how they could.

support their child's music education?  Yeah I do. So but of course, these are just my reflections and, you know  Although I spent my life in music education, every, every child is different. Every parent is different, but I would say a couple of things to think about.  I think all learning can and probably should be fun.

So fun and rewarding. So I think if you could discuss the goals with your, with your child, I think that's a really important thing to do that, you know, that you're not dictating what a child should do, but actually that there is a child centered approach really important.  I would also suggest that not to be too proud of every achievement, but supportive of every achievement.

It doesn't actually, you know, it doesn't matter if a child doesn't achieve 100 percent in a graded exam. Actually, the process is about, you know, supporting the system, isn't it? Supporting the learning and encouraging them to learn. So I think,  you can, you can get too obsessed very quickly with scores and I would say actually.

think about the processes rather than the rather than the schools.   And I would think a little bit about,  encouraging musical learning a bit longer because actually as, as kids become teenagers actually, you know, we've talked  today about how cognition is improved. And  there's, there's a great study that showed kids that study musical instruments get better GCSE results.

It's  incredible. So I would say, you know, keep. Keep going, so how do you do that? Well, I mean, my last tip would be about, about getting really actively involved. I think your tip about learning a little bit about music education is perfect, but why not go that one step further?

Why not actually learn with your students? I, I started off as a violin player, then a guitar player. I can play some piano as well, but I've never been able to play drums.  And coincidentally, that's the instrument my son decided that he's desperate to learn. So we're learning together. And I'm struggling my way through thankfully I've access to a few people that can help us along the way.

And that's that's a great privilege. But it's a, but you know, the journey is amazing and it's really, really great fun and it's keeping us both motivated along the way. So I would highly recommend having a go at the same time, whether it's the same instrument or a different instrument. There's a, there is a fantastic benefit to be made from, from learning with your child as well.

There you go. Some tips. That, that was a really good tips. Thank you for that. That last one in particular, I know one listener who's going to love that and that is my mom because she, she recently started learning the piano. My brother's teaching her and she's on to grade two now with rock school. And she didn't start until she was let's say already retired at a certain age.

So it's never, never too late to kind of start. And she actually said to me, I love your podcast, but you're always talking about children's education. Why don't you ever mention the adults? So she's gonna be very happy that you just gave that top tip there, . Well, I would say that I would encourage the cognitive advantage of through musical learning is not just for young people.

Actually, there's a growing body of evidence that suggests that particularly retired people really benefit from, from musical learning. So so keep going. There we go. Brilliant. Thank you. I'm glad to hear that. And I know my mom will be listening as well.

So,  Tim, it's been so good to speak to you today. I really do appreciate your time. I know how busy you are. You have given us so many golden nuggets, top tips, brilliant advice. You've really, , taught me about music education as well as I'm sure the listeners. So I just want to say a big thank you for that.

  Yeah, thanks very much. And thanks to everyone who's listened as well. You know, honestly, it is our great privilege to do what we do and we just hope it makes a bit of a difference to the people that use the stuff.  Brilliant. Thank you so much, Tim.

 

  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.