This is a common question we get from parents of young children leading into starting lessons. It’s also framed as an objection by parents about why their child isn’t ready or quits lessons. So what’s the deal? Like with all things music, it’s an art, but there is science to it too.
Ultimately this question is about attention. Will my child be able to focus, sit still, engage and benefit from the experience. Here are some considerations for you either if this is something you are wondering about or struggling with, with a child already in lessons.
As with all things here, we believe in individual approaches with lessons tailored to each student. If we have a student struggling with attention we will do what we need to in order to address that with them and keep the music going.
Please reach out to us if you have any questions or thoughts on this.
Choosing your instrument is an important decision and will have far reaching consequences as you progress through your music learning journey so it’s important to get right. Today we’re discussing instrument families which are a way of categorizing similar styles of instruments that are related in the way they produce sound and the way they are played. The great thing to know about instrument families is that it is much easier to learn instruments from the same family as your main instrument than switching to a different family. By selecting within a family you can almost choose a few instruments at once, or use an instrument to pathway to another.
Keyboards: piano, organ, electric piano, synthesizer
Strings: violin, viola, cello, double bass
Fretted strings: guitar (electric, acoustic, classical), bass, ukulele, banjo
Woodwinds: clarinet, saxophone, flute, oboe, bassoon
Brass: trumpet, trombone, french horn, tuba
Percussion: drum kit, conga drums, other hand drums, tambourine, shakers, cowbell
You can see instrument families laid out in different ensembles like orchestras or rock bands and it’s within these different families that we find the essential parts of how we make music.
Good string care and maintenance is an important part of any guitar playing career. Proper string treatment will ensure the highest performance standard and longevity of string life, while misuse will result in poor output and performance, and potential damage to your instrument.
Knowing when to change your strings comes down to a few key factors: how often you play, what style of music you are playing, what type of strings you are using, and how well you treat your instrument.
As a general rule, a standard set of strings will give you about 20-30 hours playing time. After this, you would have given your strings quite a work out and your guitar will most likely need a new set.
This number is of course a general guideline, for example certain heavier styles like blues and metal will have shorter string life than this, while lighter styles like classical or smooth jazz may offer greater string life. Types of strings (nylon or steel etc), brand names and the quality of your strings also comes into play when considering this.
You can extend string life by looking after your instrument. Always washing your hands before playing, being sensible with the use of bending, heavy fretting and strumming, and alternative tunings (all of which wear out your strings at a higher rate), also keeping your guitar in moderate temperatures and safely away in its case when not in use.
You can also keep your strings clean with guitar polish available at your local music shop.
Before changing strings be sure you are aware of every aspect of doing so. Your teacher should be able to show you how, perhaps spend a lesson or two on this important part of a guitarist’s repertoire.
Ask your teacher to show you how to re-string in your next lesson, it’s an important skill to know.
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We had the pleasure to meet one of our all-time favourite singers and songwriters – the one and only – LIOR. We met backstage at the Capitol Theatre in Sydney, and we’re going to talk about his music, his life and his career.
Hope you enjoy!
Lior: I picked up the guitar at age 10 or 11. I actually started a few years with classical guitar, because that was a teacher I knew and then started singing and then just became really interested in songwriting which became my form of expression. Because I’d learnt classical guitar, and I had the grounding for finger-picking, I was getting more out of the guitar and more interesting accompaniments. And then as I was discovering music I found myself really drawn to the late 60s, early 79s era of songwriters. Both the rock bands of Led Zeppelin, and the Doors and The Beatles, but also James Taylor and Joanie Mitchell, and all these people that wrote really interesting songs that had really engaging lyrics. And I think that I just felt that’s what I want to do, I want to make people feel the same thing these people were make me feel.
Lior: I don’t know, I don’t think I realised this at the time, but I think there’s a certain earthiness to the guitar. It’s an imperfect instrument. It’s never perfectly in tune and the sounds of moving your fingers. I don’t know, there’s just something about it that’s very organic and earthy and it just feels very real to me.
Lior: Yeah, I had formal lessons with a teacher and it was really grounded in classical guitar, so it was about learning to read music and learn to use both hands on a guitar. And then I just sort of hit a point where I felt that I’m not going to be a concert artist and I’m more into contemporary music than I am into classical music. But I feel like I’ve had a grounding to make up and explore. And that was around the time I was just getting into singing, and singing was really self-taught. I just sang a lot of Blues, and just found my own voice. And it was only later that I got a few lessons with a teacher to help me with my breath and – because I was losing my voice at gigs and – just to get a of those technique notes so that I could actually have some endurance. But it’s an ongoing learning process. I’m still discovering things about my voice and the guitar that I don’t know.
Lior: Well my party trick was “Crying Shame” by Johnny Diesel, which was the first song I kind of learnt and performed. I was really into The Doors and Led Zeppelin. I remember getting the Led Zeppelin songbook and was really inspired by Jimmy Page’s guitar playing. Nick Drake, later on in life. He’s lesser known, but the way he used the alternate tunings for the guitar and particularly embellished them with really lush string arrangements. That really spoke to me as well.
Lior: Through the late teens to early 20s I was still playing in bands and that was great just to learn how to lead a band, to compromise, to communicate, all of that sort of stuff. It was only at the age of 23 where I felt like I was courageous enough to go out on stage on my own and play my own songs, and it was terrifying initially. But also I remember my first gig playing solo and I remember it having this real intimacy and resonance with an audience that was very powerful, and was one I hadn’t experienced before. And that was what gave me the affirmation, like this is your path and that was how I best communicated with people, musically. And I think that’s what takes a while to find out, for everyone, is to explore. What are my strengths? Let’s play to that because when you’re young you think you can do everything and then when you’re old you go, oh actually it’s about doing one or two things really well.
Lior: Well playing in the bands, my biggest part was always that I was writing the songs and bringing them. So just to compromise. And I think when you lack the maturity to listen to other people, and its all about respecting and trusting other people and not thinking that you’re always right. So that was probably putting a test to the friendships. That was probably the biggest challenge.
Lior: I think so. I think I ultimately did want creative control, and being the songwriter, I wanted to drive it. But also the older I got, you know I have a band that have been mostly been with me from the beginning. And I’ve learnt to really just open things up to them and I very much value their input, and they have a lot of creative input that goes into the arrangement and recording of the songs, and the performances of them live, as well.
Lior: Yeah, I’ll generally bring a finished song. So for me, it's very important for the lyrics to be finished. Because I feel like, if the lyrics say what I want to say and the idea is succinctly put in that song, then the music feels to me like trial and error. If something’s not working, we’ll try something else. So we’ll try it that way until it works. But for me the lyric is number one – that has to be right.
Lior: Being an artist is a challenging road and it has to be driven out of passion and curiosity and inspiration. And it's ok if you run out of that and you decide that it's not something you want to do anymore. But if you do want to do it, but you’re feeling stuck that you’re not moving forward, then it's learning and opening the boundaries of what you think your knowledge is, because our knowledge is always confined to the boundaries that we put around it.
So, learning from as many people as you can, and also the creative process I think – I run a lot of songwriting workshops, and one thing I talk about is approaching a song or something a piece of music that you’re writing, like a film, and storyboarding it out and just stepping back and looking at the big picture. As to what you want to express – almost drawing a map of what you want to say and then getting into the detail because I think with a lot of young songwriters, they have an idea and they’ll write a line, then they’ll write another line and its filled piece by piece, but because they’re doing it in such a small step by step way the message kind of gets lost. Then I think that’s when you can lose heart because you can just feel like it's just a random fumbling in the dark kind of process.
Lior: Sure, and I think that’s also the thing of getting a bit older and looking back at what you’ve done and realizing that your career has just gone like that, and any artist’s journey just goes up and down. The luxury of being a bit further down the track is that you can just go, oh I’ve been here before, and it’s come up, and I’ve just got to keep going. In all the time that I’ve been doing it, all the things I’ve been doing. The only mantra I ever come back to is ‘just keep going’. It's just the three words that I keep coming back to.
Lior: You know it sounds really simple, but quite often I’ll just go back and listen to some of the music that inspired me, or search for new music. As soon as I get that feeling I go, ah that’s right. That’s why I started doing it, because it has such a profound impact on me. And then I feel that fire kick in again. It sounds simple, but we just forget and we need reminders.
Lior: There’s a singer songwriter by the name of Fiest – Canadian singer/songwriter that’s just great. A guy called Rufus Wainwright, he’s great. I’m just really into songwriters that write interesting songs both lyrically and structurally as well. There’s a band called The Bahamas I just saw that are really great. Yeah, there’s something about Canadian songwriters that just speaks to me. I don’t know why.
Lior: Without sounding over-pretentious, I think music has probably always been my spirituality and I’ve been interested in certain traditions to do with religion but I’ve never really been drawn to be an observant religious person. And I think that’s because music has always held that place of spirituality for me, that escapism, that feeling that there’s a higher plane in life, there’s something beyond the everyday routine of what we do and what we get caught up in. Something that gives you the feeling that yes, there is something greater.
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YAMAHA MUSIC AND STORMER MUSIC ANNOUNCE BRAND PARTNERSHIP FOUNDED ON A PASSION FOR MUSIC EDUCATION
Yamaha Music and Stormer Music are pleased to announce a brand partnership based on a passion for music education done well. The partnership will see aspiring musicians given access to great quality and innovative music teaching and a greater access to the resources and instruments they need to learn properly and well.
As well as being the world's leading musical instrument manufacturer, Yamaha takes music education seriously and has been in the business of developing and delivering music education for over 65 years and currently has 500,000 students globally.
Stormer Music is an Australian based music school with multiple locations across the country that exists to provide incredible music lessons for students of all ages, stages, abilities and walks of life. They offer completely personalised lesson experiences all taught within their students goals, values and capacity.
“We’ve played and taught on Yamaha gear since we started our business and are so excited to be able to partner with them to keep up that tradition and ensure our students are given the highest quality education on the highest quality instruments available.” Said CEO at Stormer Music, Phil Stormer. “Yamaha is an incredible brand with a heart for music done well and we couldn’t be happier to connect.”
Together the brands hope to make our communities more musical places and give more aspiring musicians the chance to play and enjoy music on their own terms.
In music, the voice is considered an instrument like a guitar, piano or otherwise. So in the same way that we care for our precious musical instruments, vocalists need to care for their voices. Here are some tips to avoid injury/damage to your voice.
Need some help with vocal injury or strain? We have some incredible singing/voice teachers available and would love to help.
Taking care of your instrument is an important part of any musicians journey. Here are some quick tips for beginner guitarists to get started in guitar care, and ensuring they have a beautiful instrument ready to play always.
Stage fright is a super common experience for musicians at all stages. From beginners getting up for their first performance through to the most seasoned professionals feeling the pressure of a high stakes performance. Racing heart beats, sick stomachs, sweaty palm and more are just some of the symptoms. If you get stage fright or performance anxiety you are not alone, it is a completely natural experience and is connected to your body's survival mechanisms - in fight, flight or freeze.
Stage fright is about seeking approval from others, feeling threatened, wanting to do a great job and feeling the weight of that deeply inside us. It’s important for every musician to find a way of managing stage fright as it can certainly have a negative impact on a performance if not handled properly. There are many ways to do this and we have collected a few of those below. We hope you find something that works for you!
As we’ve said before, stage fright is entirely natural. Do not judge yourself harshly for feeling it, accept it and work on the management.
Work hard in your lessons and practice. Perform for your teacher, a friend, your family and ideally a group of people to get used to how your body reacts to stage fright. Once you know your symptoms you’ll be better able to treat them.
Consider your audience, your teacher, your family and others who are so excited about hearing you play. Focusing outward can help dull some of the noise going on inside.
Focus on what is going to go well and be prepared for how you will handle inevitable mistakes. Remember you will notice the mistakes much more than others will, so mentally prepare to make them and then simply move on.
Watch what you eat/drink before a performance. A full (or empty) stomach, caffeinated or sugary drinks, high fat foods, dairy and more can really mix up the body's natural balance.
If you notice your breathe starting to quicken or change, take some deep slow breathes. Lack of oxygen will cause your body to panic, which you may mistake for stage fright.
Pick a pump up song and play it to get you ready ahead of your performance. Try and go to the stage warm and ready, not cold and unprepared.
Move your body, stretch, jump, walk, pace, etc. Like music and breathing, moving your body so it is feeling warm and ready will significantly improve your act.
Nerves can tighten you up and make you feel like you need to go the toilet, make sure you get that done well ahead of time so you can focus on your music.
It’s a powerful, beautiful and generous thing to do. Performing for an audience is gift to them, allowing them to share in a moment with you. Be proud of yourself simply for showing up and giving it a go.
We believe music is for everyone, whatever your age, stage, ability or capacity there is a way for you to play with and create music if it is on your heart to do so. It is no doubt a different experience learning as an adult but no less rewarding or important. We have successfully taught students aged 4yrs to 84yrs and here are some thoughts about this:
Let’s start by saying every child is different and develops differently, you will ultimately know best if your child is ready! That being said there are some signs you can look out for and ways you can test the water to see how it goes.
We offer free meet and greets, intro sessions and short bookings to help families take their first step, if you are interested in starting your child well please reach out, we’re here to help.
