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Sounds silly, right?
Over the course of GCSE Music (and onwards to A level and beyond) you will be listening to lots of different types of music, and many of the questions in the written exam will require you to listen really carefully to an extract. Watch this video to reassess how you (really) listen to music.

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You must be familiar with the four main periods of Western Classical Music from 1750: Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Twentieth Century. Use the following link to help you write a revision resource for yourself, and upload it to your OneNote space by September.
(Note - there are also two earlier periods, Medieval and Renaissance, but you do not need to know about those for GCSE or A level)

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music classical music history origin beginning baroque medieval classical period early late romantic times renaissance era

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Brief History of Classical Music Eras. Musical history during the Medieval Times, Renaissance, Classical Period, Baroque, Early and Romantic Times.

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I read an article the other day on familiarity in music (see link <- to 'Why do we listen to music?'), but here are the Guardian's 100 best albums of the 21st Century. This should pass a few hours for you.

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Seven years after her previous album, Apple's return sidelined her orchestral trademarks for an austere, homespun sound that exposed her insular lyrics even more starkly. Listen to the album.

The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do (2012)

Seven years after her previous album, Apple's return sidelined her orchestral trademarks for an austere, homespun sound that exposed her insular lyrics even more starkly. Listen to the album.

99 Rihanna

The first album album from an artist whose records had previously propped up killer singles with passable fillers turned her disaffection and disappointment into generational anthems. Listen to the album.

98 Rokia Traoré

The Malian guitarist set a new career benchmark with this intimate set, adding classical western harp and African ngoni to her subtle, bluesy electric guitar. Listen to the album.

97 Róisín Murphy

Trip-hop duo Moloko was dead, and Murphy teamed up with Matthew Herbert for this eclectic, saucy - and still underrated - pop record that anticipated the arrival of Lady Gaga by three years. Listen to the album.

96 Missy Elliott

Miss E ... So Addictive (2001)

Drawing from house, psychedelia and even Bollywood soundtracks, Missy's third - the one responsible for Get Ur Freak On - forced pop to catch up with her yet again. Listen to the album.

95 Charli XCX

XCX stopped waiting around for mainstream acceptance and showed the normies what they were missing with this bracingly eclectic, guest-laden mixtape. Listen to the album.

94 Peaches

The Teaches of Peaches (2000)

Merrill Nisker grafted sweaty, human filth on to the clean machine shock of electroclash on her hilarious, titillating debut as Peaches. Listen to the album.

93 Low

Things We Lost in the Fire (2001)

Filled with crushing, funereal dirges and a song about wanting to encase a newborn baby in metal to prevent its growth, the Duluth group's fifth album was nonetheless inexplicably beautiful. Listen to the album.

92 Erykah Badu

New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) (2008)

Part state-of-the-nation opus, part eye-opening trawl through the unexplored depths of Badu's brain. Listen to the album.

91 Ali Farka Touré and Toumani Diabaté

In the Heart of the Moon (2005)

Two Malian greats met for this soothing, spontaneous record of guitar and kora that is as subtly textured as it is generous. Listen to the album.

90 Katy B

On a Mission (2011)

No disposable vocalist or featured artist, the charismatic, club-savvy south Londoner gave dubstep its first real star. Listen to the album.

89 Taylor Swift

1989 (2014)

Swift's first "officially documented pop album" saw her shake off any remaining country trappings to become a gleaming synthpop behemoth. Listen to the album.

88 Fleet Foxes

The Seattle group's debut heralded a generation's post-recession retreat into rural comforts, conjuring a pastoral idyll from the best of west coast folk and British traditionalism. Listen to the album.

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Breakout ... Justin Timberlake. Photograph: Startraks Photo/Rex Features

87 Justin Timberlake

The finest boyband breakout since Robbie Williams's Life Thru a Lens, and that's not damning with faint praise: Timberlake's Neptunes/Timbaland-helmed debut was slick, sexy and most importantly, convincing. Listen to the album.

86 Elliott Smith

Figure 8 (2000)

Smith's final album followed his brief adoption by Hollywood, and added a cinematic grandeur to his work - but, thankfully, it didn't swamp his haunted songwriting. Listen to the album.

85 Chromatics

Kill for Love (2012)

The album that ushered in the moody, neon-lit synthpop that would define the rest of the decade, Ruth Radelet playing Nico to Johnny Jewel's Velvet Underground-worthy cool. Listen to the album.

84 Konono No 1

Twenty-five years after forming, the Congolese group made their name with this rhythmic explosion of likembes (thumb pianos) put through junkyard amplification. Listen to the album.

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Seven years after her previous album, Apple's return sidelined her orchestral trademarks for an austere, homespun sound that exposed her insular lyrics even more starkly. Listen to the album. Seven years after her previous album, Apple's return sidelined her orchestral trademarks for an austere, homespun sound that exposed her insular lyrics even more starkly.

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You need to be fluent in reading treble and bass clef - and this takes practice. If you aren't already reasonably confident reading notes in both of these clefs you can use this website to learn and practice - ten minutes a day is all it takes. For those of you wanting a challenge, you can also practice alto and tenor clefs.

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Sight-reading practice for music notation. Learn how to read music in treble, bass, alto and tenor clefs.

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You need to have an understanding of the history of music; this Howard Goodall documentary series is a good place to start.

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BBC Howard Goodall's Story of Music 1of6 The Age of Discovery

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The key to success in your compositions at GCSE will be the very first starting block - the main melody. Watch this video, making notes so you can remember the key points, to help you understand what makes a good melody.

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In Year 11 you will need to record two performances - now is the perfect time to start deciding on repertoire (see my post on Performance pieces). Here is some guidance about practice from the lovely Nicola Benedetti.

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Practice and Prepare With Nicky Introduction

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You will all work towards a theory grade across Year 10 Music, with the intention that you will all take Grade 3, Grade 5 or one of the higher grades (6-8) in June 2021.
You can start learning using this really great online resource. If you have never studied theory before, start with Grade 1.

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Watch some opera or musical theatre for free

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Watch some opera or musical theatre for free

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It's a bit more cultured than Netflix.

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Theatres may be closed, but you can always get a stagey fix online. We round-up a series of shows you can watch right now - operas, musicals and more!
If you can - please do try and help out theatres across the UK - we've got some tips here.
HPC Meeeting 10 December 2020

[Not really theatre but utterly gripping]

London International Mime Festival

A variety of stage shows will be streamed on YouTube for free - highlighting the best in physical and contemporary storytelling. Highlights include Gecko's The Wedding.

Rifco Theatre's Leave the Plastic On

The company's comedy series is available to watch now - top notch production values and some whip-sharp dialogue.

A Tale to Tell

Shakespeare's Globe's Romeo and Juliet

Jackson's Lane international short film

Kneehigh's The Neon Shadow

Frozen

The cruise hour-long version can be seen now.

Sadler's Wells

Sadler's Wells will be streaming an archived production each month, featuring Candoco, Kate Prince and more. More details here.

These Folk at The Boulevard Theatre

Good Dog

Based on Arinzé Kene's hit play, the new, shortened, screen version has been put online for all to see.

Edinburgh International Festival

The organisation has created a whole digital platform to replace its events this year. The series includes National Theatre of Scotland's Ghost Light, which is below:

Zoo Venues

The Edinburgh Fringe company is streaming a host of online and recorded productions on its website, with all funds raised going directly to artists unable to perform this year. Watch here.

Tangled

Shakespeare's Globe's Richard II

Manchester International Festival

The festival is putting full shows, musical performances, talks, Q&As and more online for free. Check out the YouTube channel here.

Leonard Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti

Opera North is streaming its production of the hit Bernstein opera for a full month on its YouTube channel.

Alan Seymour's The One Day of the Year

Australian and New Zealand actors including Mark Little, Kerry Fox, Daniel Monks, Paul Haley and Celeste Dodwell bring the hit play to life, all via remote performance. It's available until 31 May.

BBC's Performance Live

Featuring Hofesth Shechter, Tourreshero, Akala, Kate Tempest and more, the BBC is offering a raft of free theatre for UK users.

Royal Opera House

The iconic company is putting archived shows online for free, and you can see more here.

ZARA

Now this is a bit of a biggy - Mind the Gap, Walk the Plank and Emergency Exit Arts' epic 2019 show is heading online from Sunday 19 April at 8pm. Featuring 100 performers and a giant baby bigger than a double-decker bus, the piece is available here.

Only the Brave

Only The Brave - A New Musical from AdVision TV on Vimeo.

Only the Brave, the hit musical starring Caroline Sheen and David Thaxton, is available for free online. The show, filmed by AdVision TV in 2016, tells the story of a group of soldiers in the run-up to the D-Day landings. It had its first run at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2008, before a full production premiered in 2016 at the Millenium Centre in Cardiff.

Cheek By Jowl

The iconic theatre company has brought back the archive recording of its hit version of Shakespeare's problem play, which was captured live at the Barbican in 2017. It's around for a month!

Henry V

The Barn's hit production with Aaron Sidwell and Lauren Samuels went live at 6pm on Friday 27 March, and will be available from the Barn's website after that.

21 Chump Street

Long before Hamilton there was the speedy 21 Chump Street, starring Anthony Ramos and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Ramos himself is about to take on the leading role in the In the Heights movie, scheduled to be released this summer. The BAM performance is available to watch in its entirety above. A small nugget of gold.

Ghost Quartet

Missed the award-winning revival of Ghost Quartet when it ran in London last year? Well Dave Malloy has posted the full musical on YouTube - featuring himself, performed in 2015.

The Show Must Go Online

This is a cool scheme - live readings of Shakespeare's works provided by top-notch actors who would otherwise be twiddling their thumbs.

Bubble

Rehearsed on Skype and filmed via Facebook, Theatre Uncut's newest show is a perfect fit for the coronavirus outbreak. Kieran Hurley's brand new play will be premiering on 23 March at 8pm and will also be released as a playtext to download, with performing rights free until 23 April. Find out more about it in the trailer above.

Opera Vision

Free opera! Now that's a nice sentiment - the European Commission-supported OperaVision will be supplying free opportunities to watch top-tier performances filmed at the highest quality level, with new shows released weekly on top of a massive back catalogue. Find out more.

First encounter King Lear

Another lovely RSC show geared towards introducing theatre to young'uns, this time taking the tragic story of King Lear and making it more accessible and fleet. The perfect way to kick off a love of theatre.

Gecko Theatre

Physical theatre pros Gecko have put a wad of their shows on YouTube for free, including The Time of Your Life, a collaboration with the BBC.

Tim Crouch is a legend at the best of times, so seeing his solo show hosted by the RSC is a great chance to watch theatre at its best. You can also watch his production of I, Malvolio here.

Girls Like That

Evan Placey's hit 2014 play heads to the virtual world. It follows a group of schoolgirls reacting as one of their peers has naked photos of themselves leaked online - a pertinent issue for the present day, and a good way to get into a knotty play during the quiet hours.

Kanopy

Have you got a library card or a university login? Did you know about this amazing streaming service that can be accessed through your local institution to watch films, TV shows and live theatre performances? Did you know that it's totally free? Well you do now! Open to members participating libraries, colleges and universities, this is a great to way to catch up on some amazing shows from years gone by. Check out Kanopy and discover the participating venues here.

5 Soldiers

The critically acclaimed five-star production is a collaboration between British choreographer Rosie Kay and the British army, and gave an insight into the psychology and welfare of soldiers fighting on the front lines. It's now available to watch online above.

Clown Funeral

Associate artists of the New Diorama and Pegasus Theatre, Clown Funeral has made three shows available online for free (head to YouTube for the others) so that's a whole wad of whimsy while you wait for the virus to subside!

Timpson the Musical

The hit Fringe production has put its best foot forward and released a full recording online! Watch it above.

YesYesNoNo

The theatre company has put one of its earlier works, Five Encounters on a Site Called Craigslist, online for free! The show was one of the smash hits at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2017. And more than that, the company are sending the cast of its latest show The Accident Did Not Take Place to record at the Bunker Theatre. Stream it live online here on 21 March at 7.25pm.

Playwright Emily Jenkins was commissioned to write this show about cyber bullying by the Theatre Royal Haymarket Masterclass charity. It was first performed live in 2017 and then live recorded for Anti-Bullying Week. A great show about the negative experiences young people can face online - and it's available for free!

Daniel Bye

This theatremaker has been creating exciting and thought-provoking work and putting it on his YouTube channel for years. Bye has also launched a Patreon page if anyone wants to contribute.

This apocalyptic comedy came to the Old Vic Tunnels in 2013 and the theatre company has made it available to watch for free on YouTube in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

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Stage shows, musicals and opera you can watch online now for free | WhatsOnStage

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Theatres may be closed, but you can always get a stagey fix online. We round-up a series of shows you can watch right now - operas, musicals and more! If you can - please do try and help out theatres across the UK - we've got some tips here.

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A great article on how our brains work (referenced in my 'Broaden your horizons' post ->)

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Listening to new music is hard. Not hard compared to going to space or war, but hard compared to listening to music we already know. I assume most Americans-especially those who have settled into the groove of life after 30-simply don't listen to new music because it's easy to forgo the act of discovery when work, rent, children, and broadly speaking "life" comes into play. Eventually, we bow our heads and cross a threshold where most music becomes something to remember rather than something to experience. And now, on top of everything else, here we all are, crawling through this tar pit of panic and dread, trying to heft some new music through historic gravity into our lives. It feels like lifting a couch.

Why do we even listen to new music anymore? Most people have all the songs they could ever need by the time they turn 30. Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube can whisk us back to the gates and gables of our youth when life was simpler. Why leap off a cliff hoping you'll be rescued by your new favorite album on the way down when you can lay supine on the terra firma of your "Summer Rewind" playlist? Not just in times of great stress, but for all times, I genuinely ask: Why spend time on something you might not like?

It was a question that Coco Chanel, Marcel Duchamp, and the rest of the Parisian audience might have asked at the 1913 premiere of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, an orchestral ballet inspired by the Russian composer's dream about a young girl dancing herself to death. On a muggy night at the end of May, inside a newly constructed theater along the Seine, those who chose to bear witness to something new experienced a piece of music that would presage a new world of art.

Stravinsky, having already thrilled Paris with his ferociously complex Firebird ballet three years earlier, was the bright young thing of symphonic music in Paris, and The Rite was to be something essentially unheard of. Drawing from the Slavic and Lithuanian folk music of his homeland and his viscerally atavistic brain, Stravinsky blackened his score with rhythmic and harmonic tension, stretching phrases to their outer limits and never bothering to resolve them. The harmonies were difficult to name and his rhythms impossible to follow. Leonard Bernstein later described The Rite as "the best dissonances anyone ever thought up, and the best asymmetries and polytonalities and polyrhythms and whatever else you care to name."

After months of grueling rehearsals, the lights finally drew down at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées that evening. The Rite began with a solo bassoon squeezing out a riff so high in its register that it sounded uncannily like a broken English horn. This alien sound was-apparently and unintentionally-so strange that chuckles erupted from the bourgeoisie in the mezzanine boxes and rippled through the crowd below. The dissonant opening gave way to the martial assault of the second movement, "The Augurs of Spring," and the dancers-choreographed by the legendary Vaslav Nijinsky of the Ballets Russes-bounded on stage, moving squeamishly and at jagged angles. As recounted in the daily newspaper Le Figaro and in various books and memoirs since, the chuckles turned into jeers, then shouting, and soon the audience was whipped into such a frenzy that their cries drowned out the orchestra.

Many members of the audience could not fathom this new music; their brains-figuratively, but to a certain extent, literally-broke. A brawl ensued, vegetables were thrown, and 40 people were ejected from the theater. It was a fiasco consonant with Stravinsky's full-bore attack on the received history of classical music, and thus, every delicate sense in the room. "One literally could not, throughout the whole performance, hear the sound of music," Gertrude Stein recalled in her memoir. The famous Italian opera composer Giacamo Puccini described the performance to the press as "sheer cacophony." The critic for the daily newspaper Le Figaro noted that it was a piece of "laborious and puerile barbarity."

Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring is now hailed as the most sweepingly influential piece of music composed in the early 20th century, a tectonic shift in form and aesthetic that was, as the critic Alex Ross wrote in his book The Rest Is Noise, "lowdown yet sophisticated, smartly savage, style and muscle intertwined." Within the brambles of The Rite are the seeds of an entire outgrowth of modernism: jazz, experimental, and electronic music flow back to The Rite. Maybe the Parisian audience wasn't expecting a feat so unfamiliar and new that night, they simply wanted to hear music they recognized that drew upon the modes and rhythms they had come to know. Life was on one track, and suddenly they were thrust off into the unknown. Instead of a reliable Debussy ballet, many left the theater that night miserable, agitated, with few jettisoned cabbage leaves stuck to their dresses, and for what, just to hear some new music?

One of my favorite pieces of arts criticism is a 2016 article from The Onion titled, " Nation Affirms Commitment to Things They Recognize." From music to celebrities to clothing brands to conventional ideas of beauty, the joke is self-explanatory: People love the stuff they already know. It's a dictum too obvious to dissect, a positive-feedback loop as stale as the air in our self-isolation chambers: We love the things we know because we know them and therefore we love them. But there is a physiological explanation for our nostalgia and our desire to seek comfort in the familiar. It can help us understand why listening to new music is so hard, and why it can make us feel uneasy, angry, or even riotous.

It has to do with the plasticity of our brain. Our brains change as they recognize new patterns in the world, which is what makes brains, well, useful. When it comes to hearing music, a network of nerves in the auditory cortex called the corticofugal network helps catalog the different patterns of music. When a specific sound maps onto a pattern, our brain releases a corresponding amount of dopamine, the main chemical source of some of our most intense emotions. This is the essential reason why music triggers such powerful emotional reactions, and why, as an art form, it is so inextricably tied to our emotional responses.

Take the chorus of "Someone Like You" by Adele, a song that has one of the most recognizable chord progressions in popular music: I, V, vi IV. The majority of our brains have memorized this progression and know exactly what to expect when it comes around. When the corticofugal network registers that of "Someone Like You," our brain releases just the right amount of dopamine. Like a needle tracing the grooves of a record, our brains trace these patterns. The more "records" we own, the more patterns we can recall to send out that perfect dopamine hit.

In his book Proust Was a Neuroscientist, the writer and one-time neuroscience lab worker Jonah Lehrer writes about how the essential joy of music comes in how songs subtly toy with patterns in our brains, spiking the dopamine more and more without sending it off the charts. "Someone Like You" is Bruce Springsteen's "I'm Goin' Down" is Cheap Trick's "I Want You to Want Me" is Rachel Platten's "Fight Song" and so on-this is the entire neuroscientific marketing plan behind pop music. But when we hear something that hasn't already been mapped onto the brain, the corticofugal network goes a bit haywire, and our brain releases too much dopamine as a response. When there is no anchor or no pattern on which to map, music registers as unpleasant, or in layman's terms, bad. "If the dopamine neurons can't correlate their firing with outside events," Lehrer writes, "the brain is unable to make cogent associations." We go a bit mad. No wonder the audience at the premiere of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring thought that it sucked: there was almost no precedent for it.

Like the premise of that Onion article, our auditory cortex is also a positive-feedback loop. The way the corticofugal system learns new patterns limits our experiences by making everything we already know far more pleasurable than everything we don't. It's not just the strange allure of the song your mother played when you were little or wanting to go back to that time in high school driving down country roads with the radio on. It's that our brains actually fight against the unfamiliarity of life. "We are built to abhor the uncertainty of newness," writes Lehrer.

If all the brain science is mostly on the side of listening to popular hits and golden oldies, that might explain why, for the vast majority of American listeners, music is just one small facet of life. Most people experience music as a passive creature comfort, like socks or reality television. In this historic moment of colossal fear and dread, music listeners are in desperate need of comfort. Of the 32 artists we asked, almost all of them were listening to music that is older, soothing, familiar; the same thing happened when we asked ourselves what we were listening to in isolation. (I do realize that old music can be new music if you've never heard it before, but you get it.)

The act of listening to new music in the midst of a global pandemic is hard, but it's necessary. The world will keep spinning and culture must move with it, even if we are staid and static in our homes, even if the economy grinds to a halt, even if there are no shows, no release parties, and even artists sink even further into the precarity that defines a career as a musician. The choice to listen to new music prioritizes, if for one listen only, the artist over you. It is an emotional risk to live for a moment in the abyss of someone else's world, but this invisible exchange powers the vanguard of art, even in times of historic inertia.

It also appears that we are in the most impressionable era in generations as each day brings some new, heretofore unfathomable statistic. In this unfamiliar world, our brains have never been more plastic-a spongy tabula rasa onto which you can imprint a new timestamp. My other argument for constant exploration is that I will assuredly remember these pandemic days, the way I remember my first breakup or my first love and the songs that defined them. Don't let history be recursively defined by a feedback loop. Steer into the skid, pour the fear and dread leaking through your roof into something unfamiliar, because it could be the new artifact that exclusively defines this moment for you-a new friend who totally loves you for what you've become.

To those of you getting back into discovering new music, you're not alone. The incredible $4.3 million Bandcamp paid out to musicians in one single day will hopefully bode well for the health of new music, and like clockwork, every Friday will still come with a big sack of new albums to open. The coda to the famous The Rite of Spring riot at its premiere in Paris is not often told, but it's crucial to the full life of the piece. After the melee of that evening, the ballet continued running at the theater for many months. Alex Ross writes: "Subsequent performances were packed, and at each one the opposition dwindled. At the second, there was noise only during the latter part of the ballet; at the third, 'vigorous applause' and little protest. At a concert performance of Rite one year later, 'unprecedented exaltation' and a 'fever of adoration' swept over the crowd, and admirers mobbed Stravinsky in the street afterward, in a riot of delight." What is unheard of could define history-might as well come for the show.

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Our brains reward us for seeking out what we already know. So why should we reach to listen to something we don't?

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Task 3: Melody composition, deadline 1st June 2020

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Task 3: Melody composition, deadline 1st June 2020

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Download a version of Sibelius, or use MuseScore online, and compose an 8-bar melody. Consider the following as you compose:
1. What key are you in?
2. What is the range of the instrument you are writing for?
3. Is there a clear 4-bar 'question' and 4-bar 'answer'?
4. Could you identify the underlying chord progression?
5. Have you chosen a suitable tempo?
6. Is there a sense of regularity to the metre and rhythm?
Some of these questions might seem a little daunting at first, but feel free to ask me anything, or use the power of google.
Send this to me so I can give you feedback once you are finished.

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I would like each of you to consider the solo and ensemble pieces you will record in Year 11. Please upload your provisional choices to your own space on the GCSE Music OneNote before the start of the Autumn term. Don't worry - you will still be able to change these if you wish at a later date!

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Learn about the musical life of one of the most famous minimalist composers

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The minimalist composer John Adams talks about his career to Charles Hazlewood. (2001)

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On the OneNote you will also see a Glossary list, taken from the Eduqas specification. These are all the words you will need to learn for the exam in Summer 2022. Start creating a revision resource that works for you so you can gradually learn the terms over the coming two years.

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I know you're not ready for revision yet - we haven't even started the course! But the first section on BBC bitesize is really good for getting you up to speed on musical terminology.

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Easy-to-understand homework and revision materials for your GCSE Music Eduqas '9-1' studies and exams.

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Here is the link, have a read through to understand what the course looks like.

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The first set work we will study belongs to the 'Western Classical Tradition' area of study, and is J S Bach's Badinerie from Suite no. 2. Listen to it carefully a few times each week (using the guidance given in the link at the top of the page) so you are really familiar with it before September.

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This absolutely belter is your second set work that you must be familiar with, belonging to the 'Popular Music' area of study. Include this in your weekly focused listening also.

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It's time for you to find a way of being able to compose at home, as well as in school. We strongly suggest you download Sibelius First (it's free) from the Avid website. Alternatively, you could use MuseScore as well - but it's not as good. If you are able, Sibelius Ultimate is a great investment, but it is a financial commitment and we don't need you to do this.
We discourage you from using GarageBand unless we have discussed it together for a specific purpose, primarily because we cannot assist you in the same way in school as we run only on PCs not Macs.

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For your performance, you will need to choose one solo piece (can include an accompaniment, like a graded piece) and one ensemble - this is the tricky one, as you must be playing an accompanying role - i.e. not playing the tune - for at least one minute.
The total combined time of both pieces must be longer than four minutes.

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Proof that studying music is good for you

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Proof that studying music is good for you

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Maybe I’m biased, but here is a study which has proved music students are the best.

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High school students who take music courses score significantly better on math, science and English exams than their non-musical peers, according to a new study published in the Journal of Educational Psychology.

School administrators needing to trim budgets often look first to music courses, because the general belief is that students who devote time to music rather than math, science and English, will underperform in those disciplines.

"Our research proved this belief wrong and found the more the students engage with music, the better they do in those subjects," said UBC education professor and the study's principal investigator, Peter Gouzouasis. "The students who learned to play a musical instrument in elementary and continued playing in high school not only score significantly higher, but were about one academic year ahead of their non-music peers with regard to their English, mathematics and science skills, as measured by their exam grades, regardless of their socioeconomic background, ethnicity, prior learning in mathematics and English, and gender."

Gouzouasis and his team examined data from all students in public schools in British Columbia who finished Grade 12 between 2012¬ and 2015. The data sample, made up of more than 112,000 students, included those who completed at least one standardized exam for math, science and English, and for whom the researchers had appropriate demographic information -- including gender, ethnicity, neighbourhood socioeconomic status, and prior learning in numeracy and literacy skills. Students who studied at least one instrumental music course in the regular curriculum counted as students taking music. Qualifying music courses are courses that require previous instrumental music experience and include concert band, conservatory piano, orchestra, jazz band, concert choir and vocal jazz.

The researchers found the predictive relationships between music education and academic achievement were more pronounced for those who took instrumental music rather than vocal music. The findings suggest skills learned in instrumental music transfer very broadly to the students' learning in school.

"Learning to play a musical instrument and playing in an ensemble is very demanding," said the study's co-investigator Martin Guhn, an assistant professor in UBC's school of population and public health. "A student has to learn to read music notation, develop eye-hand-mind coordination, develop keen listening skills, develop team skills for playing in an ensemble and develop discipline to practice. All those learning experiences, and more, play a role in enhancing the learner's cognitive capacities, executive functions, motivation to learn in school, and self-efficacy."

The researchers hope that their findings are brought to the attention of students, parents, teachers and administrative decision-makers in education, as many school districts over the years have emphasized numeracy and literacy at the cost of other areas of learning, particularly music.

"Often, resources for music education -- including the hiring of trained, specialized music educators, and band and stringed instruments -- are cut or not available in elementary and secondary schools so that they could focus on math, science and English," said Gouzouasis. "The irony is that music education -- multiple years of high-quality instrumental learning and playing in a band or orchestra or singing in a choir at an advanced level -- can be the very thing that improves all-around academic achievement and an ideal way to have students learn more holistically in schools."

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k-12 education; music; educational psychology; numeracy; literacy; learning disorders; infant and preschool learning; creativity

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Music students do better in school than non-musical peers

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High school students who take music courses score significantly better on math, science and English exams than their non-musical peers, according to a new study published in the Journal of Educational Psychology. School administrators needing to trim budgets often look first to music courses, because the general belief is that students who devote time to music rather than math, science and English, will underperform in those disciplines.

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The reality of working in the music industry

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The reality of working in the music industry

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Some of you might have high aspirations of making it in the music business - good for you! This article might show you the hard work that is required to get you there.

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[ This article was written by composer and producer Nick Gunn. It originally appeared on TakeLessons.com.]

I'm not particularly famous (in most people's eyes) and I'm certainly not financially wealthy (in Wall Street's eyes); I'm just a guy who has pretty much done it all in the music business with some major successes, and some even larger major flops!

Just so we are all on the same page: I am a part of the approximate 98% of all music artists, music producers, and other music professionals who didn't wake up one morning and put on their famous pants.

Yes, we exist! In fact, we are the majority. Sure, I can boast about my great track record in sales and the awesome albums I've produced, but the truth is I struggle like most music artists.

I've sold close to two million records but no one would recognize me, and the bulk of those royalties are all gone now. I also owned and ran a 75-artist roster label that died in the 2008 recession with the closing down of record retail.

Basically... I'm the perfect guy to write this article. I'm a music industry survivor and I'm still doing it!

Not only am I still doing it, but, shockingly, I'm still extremely optimistic and still finding new successes from what I have learned. So with pessimism aside, here are my top 15 tips on making it in today's music business.

LET'S GET OUR HEADS ON STRAIGHT FIRST!

In this section, we'll cover tips to help you get your head in the music game.

1. Be Optimistic at Every Turn

It's the only true survival tool you have that you can control. If you start with undying optimism you will be more resistant against the neglect you may feel when first starting out.

Trust me, this will be tested!

Try not to take things personally, as the barrier to entry in the music business is set incredibly high.

There are approximately 80,000 albums released every year, of which Billboard and other associated charts report on a revolving Top 200. That's 0.25% of the total releases each year that are moving and shaking enough to get on the radar.

Still feeling optimistic? Keep reading....

2. Observe Excellence and Be Excellent at Your Craft

This applies to everything you do!

It all starts with the music you listen to. Sometimes, society can train us to lower our expectations by convincing us mediocrity is acceptable. It is not. Excellence is at your fingertips, it simply needs to be understood and observed.

Study carefully from music teachers who are well versed in music theory and music appreciation. Study those who are successful in music and what they have done.

Listen to everything, no matter what the genre, and try to see the beauty in everything that is music, despite your personal preferences.

The foundation you lay now with your acceptance and understanding of these basic essentials will define who you will be in your own music career.

3. Be Careful Who You Take Advice From

People often tend to seek advice from those who have been unusually successful. It's a natural human tendency to do so.

But remember, the best advice always comes from those who have failed and are painfully aware of their mistakes.

4. Form a Strong Professional Peer Group as Your Sounding Board

Family and friends are great but they are often too biased to give proper guidance and advice when it comes to your music.

Music professionals tend to give more constructive guidance and can set more realistic goals and expectations.

Remember: Grandma will most likely love everything you do, no matter what, so don't take her advice too seriously!

5. Know That No One Simply Gets Up and Puts on Their Famous Pants

The road to success in the music business is never a straight one. By the time an artist breaks into mainstream consciousness there is always a story to tell about how and when it all happened.

Unfortunately, the bulk of your new fans will never experience this part of your journey. The illusion is, to the general public, that one day you woke up, wrote a song, and put on your famous pants.

Don't let the long and winding path to your success get you down, it's totally normal!

SETTING UP YOUR MUSIC BUSINESS PROPERLY

This section is all about the business of making music, and making sure you get paid.

6. Understand What the Top Revenue Streams are in the Music Business

Touring, Publishing, and Branding.

These top three revenue makers in the music industry encompass a wide range of sub-topics, but it's important you understand how you can make money from these three main sources.

Touring: Touring and playing live is self explanatory. Festivals in particular are currently at an all time attendance high. It's about getting the fans to your shows and having the promoters wanting you on stage.

Publishing: Writing and recording original music can ensure you own both your master rights and your performance/mechanical rights, giving you the ability to publish and control your own works.

[ Check out CD Baby Pro to make sure you're collecting all the publishing royalties you're owed worldwide.]

Branding: Branding requires that your image and likeness - your logos, who you are and what you represent - are clear and aligned with similar products that aggrandize your musical mission.

I highly recommend reading This Business of Music, which is currently in it's tenth edition, as a reference guide to your business future.

7. Incorporate Your Brand

At first you most likely will be pinching pennies at every turn, so be smart about your cash flow and your spending!

One way to do this is by incorporating so you can receive tax breaks and manage your cash flow and expenses properly. It can also protect you as an individual and be more effective in financial growth.

Honestly, it's not that hard. Just go to LegalZoom.com and spend the $500 to start your own LLC, or whatever structure company you want.

8. Learn How to Produce Your Own Music

Let's face it, the days of needing big recording studios is long gone.

I have constantly given this advice from the beginning and the result is always the same. Those who learn how to produce their own music have a much higher chance at success.

Not only does it make you well versed at your craft but it makes you highly authentic with your sound.

Yes, there is a learning curve. Sure, it's gonna take some time and money.

But if you are serious and passionate about your music, this will be an amazing experience for you. Gear today is accessible and affordable and you can set up shop in your parents' closet, if need be.

Make it work for you! Your recorded music is your calling card to your artistry, so start producing now.

9. Register Your Works

If you are writing and recording your own music then you need to have a clear understanding of what Performing Rights Societies are and how they collect money for you!

In the United States you primarily have ASCAP and BMI (which collect on the same thing, so only register for one) and also SoundExchange.

These societies monitor performances of your works (ie. when your song is played on the radio, TV, a film, etc) and pay you - the writer/composer and/or publisher/administrator - according to how you have these works registered with the society.

[ Note: SoundExchange does not collect publishing royalties. They collect performance royalties that are based on the master recording, not the underlying composition, and they pay those royalties to artists, session players, and labels.]

If you are the sole writer then you will receive the entire share of the writer's revenue stream. If you are also the Administrator/Publisher (which you are if your works are original and you're putting them out yourself) you'll collect the entire share of publishing revenue stream, as well. So make sure you register as both a writer and a publisher!

[ Or let CD Baby handle all of this for you when you register for CD Baby Pro.]

Yes, this requires some investigation but it's important you do the work - this is money while you sleep, people!

So, if you haven't already, you should look up ASCAP, BMI, and SoundExchange. Registering is easy; it will seriously take you less then ten minutes.

10. Understand What a Copyright Is

Copyrighting is a process used to protect your works from theft. The United States Copyright Office offers a verified method that is used universally to acknowledge protected works.

However, in today's age, time stamps on computers (that created the work) or using your originating publisher information, as well as sending self addressed, date stamped copies through the mail to yourself, can all suffice as proof of ownership.

Contrary to popular belief, deliberate music copyright infringement is quite rare. It often mistakenly occurs as we all emulate what we have heard over our lifetimes.

Also, choosing to flagrantly rip off music does nothing to benefit your career in the face of your peers.

11. Distribute Your Music Effectively

It used to be that having your music distributed was reserved for signed artists to large record labels. That is no longer the case!

There are many distributors, large and small, now operating in the music and media business.

Some are harder to establish relationships with. However companies such as CD Baby are now at your fingertips and offer emerging artists a way to get their music in stores such as iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, and many others.

Music streaming platforms are now an integral part of how people listen to your music, so be sure you are well represented at sites such as Apple Music, Spotify, and Pandora for streaming services.

Also, make sure you are visible on apps such as Shazam, as it's an extremely effective way for fans to locate your music without knowing your name or the song.

[ Note: music distributed by CD Baby will be recognizable by Shazam.]

12. Have a Clear Focus on Social Media Platforms

This is a topic that rarely needs significant discussion, as everyone today is a social media pro. However, it's important you separate personal social from business social, even though they may appear to be the same.

Make sure your social media platforms are engaging fans and representing your overall brand.

You don't always have to post about your music. Make sure you are talking about related topics to the music industry, your favorite artists and things you love as an artist too!

Social media is a lot of work and can consume hours per day for most professional musicians. Try using tools that blast all social platforms at the same time or buffer posts throughout the day.

Having a great team player for your social media will soon become a top priority for you.

13. Create an Amazing Team

This takes time and can be in constant flux. However, you can't do this all by yourself.

If you look carefully at the most successful music careers you will see that it's the team that creates the success, not the individual or band alone. Labels, managers, booking agents, publicists and social media all go into making a well oiled team.

Recognize talent in others and hold them close to your chest. It's about surrounding yourself with talented and highly motivated people that believe in you and bring resources to the table.

Granted, getting the attention of the right team players is a difficult task. However, Rome was not built in one day and staying the course is part of what makes you attractive to influential team players.

MAINTENANCE OF A GREAT MUSIC CAREER

Now that you're a success, keep on going! Use these tips to continue developing your career in music.

14. Stay The Course

There's a saying I often use that relates to success in the music business: "If you play golf long enough in a lightning storm you will eventually get struck by lightning."

This basically means that you must stay the course, not deviate, and have faith that eventually your hard work will pay off. This is the same for artists that have already received success.

Sooner or later, every artist must redefine their path moving forward. As in most business, every five years you should take inventory of where you are in your career and map out the next five years with your team.

15. Don't Bite the Hand That Feeds You

I am actually a perpetrator of this one.

Music artists, including myself when I was younger, can have a slightly egotistical view of their music and persona after they receive some success.

We often think that the success we are receiving is the result of "my music," "my hard work," "my talent," etc., and make unusual requests of labels and team players.

There is no positive outcome here. Being a diva never results in long term success, it simply results in having a bad reputation.

BONUS: Give Back and Mentor

The generation behind you needs your support and wisdom. Reach out, donate money to arts and education, teach, mentor!

There is nothing more gratifying to the soul than watching a young person flourish from what you have shown them.

If you are experiencing success, donate to a cause that provides opportunity to underprivileged kids so they can experience something larger than themselves - the gift of music!

Well, there you have it. I hope you soaked some of this in and can use it on your musical journey. Good luck and keep on rocking!
Do you have any more music industry tips, or questions about how to make it in the music industry? Let us know in the comments below!
Post Author: Nick Gunn teaches audio engineering, songwriting, and music composition in Chicago, IL. Nick is a multi-platinum selling composer and producer. Learn more about Nick here!
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15 things you MUST do to make it in the music industry | DIY Musician Blog

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This article was written by composer and producer Nick Gunn. It originally appeared on TakeLessons.com. I'm not particularly famous (in most people's eyes) and I'm certainly not financially wealthy (in Wall Street's eyes); I'm just a guy who has pretty much done it all in the music business with some major successes, and some even ...