In today's episode, I talk about something your teachers probably do hundreds of times a week without thinking twice: they stop the music. It looks like good teaching. But after a conversation with Kelly Bennett from Valencia School of Music, I'm starting to wonder if all that stopping and correcting takes away one of the most important skills a young musician can learn, which is how to recover from a mistake and keep going.

Key ideas from this episode:

• In a private lesson, it's start, stop, correct. In a band, time keeps moving, and that changes how kids learn.
• Making a mistake and recovering from one are two very different things, and we underestimate the second one.
• Kids naturally sync up with each other, often without a single word of instruction.
• Repetition through looping can do a lot of the teaching for you.
• Private lessons are valuable, but maybe they shouldn't be the default starting point for every child.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why a kid who gets lost in a band and jumps back in may be learning more than a kid who gets corrected in a lesson
• What happened when I put two beginner drummers in the same band (I expected a nightmare)
• How "the almighty loop" gets kids locked into the groove without the teacher saying anything
• A simple way to gamify repetition so kids beg to play the same four bars 17 times
• Six things your teachers can try before they stop the music
• A quick listening exercise you can do outside your lesson rooms this week that might change how you see your school

davesimonsmusic.com