Music and the Brain Basics Training

Let’s get oriented to the work we are about to get into.

The experiences that you have had over your musical lifetime effect how you teach today. In this lesson, we will begin the process of mapping these experiences.

Now that we’ve mapped your musical life, let’s take some time and do a brief analysis. What worked well for you? What didn’t work? What caused you harm, and what built you up?

Now that we’ve mapped your musical life, let’s take some time and do a brief analysis. What worked well for you? What didn’t work? What caused you harm, and what built you up?

Introduce your lesson with an optional, short summary. You can edit this excerpt in lesson settings.

If music really is the foundation of the human experience, then it’s worth looking at how that works and what the implications are.

A deep dive into the first four of the foundational traits of a musician.

A deep dive into the next three foundational traits of a musician.

Getting into the culminating virtue of a music maker.

Time to reflect. How has this effected you? What traits do you think are most important?

Take the time to deepen your understanding by wrestling with the concepts you’ve just learned.

Setting a foundation for a basic and usable knowledge of the brain.

Getting the basic structures of brain knowledge built.

Let’s exercise your brain a little.

Before we dive deep into each section of the brain, take some time and consider what implications of this information struck YOU.

Remember - you will get out of this work what you put into it! Take your time and let yourself get deep with your thoughts.

In this lesson, let’s get our heads wrapped around the importance of the midbrain - the seat of music, and our emotions.

Let’s review the functions of the midbrain, and see what implications we can deduce from those functions.

How do the thinking brain and the feeling brain interact? Does it have any implications for my music teaching? If so, what are they?

Let’s think about thinking!

Doing this work will help you optimize your work with your students’ midbrains.

In this lesson, let’s get our heads on straight about the functions of the forebrain before we dive in to how to use it well.

When Rene Descartes said, “Cogito, ergo sum,” he unintentionally created a cultural prejudice for thinking - in other words, forebrain processes. But how powerful is our thinking brain compared to other parts of the brain?

How can we connect forebrain functions (language creation) to our powerful midbrain?

Helping our students really understand what we are teaching is so key to our teaching - helping them enjoy that learning is a cut above! Here are some basic ways that you can optimize your teaching for the thinking forebrain.

Let’s think about thinking!

Doing this work will help you optimize your work with your students’ midbrains.

Creating habits of automatic movement is a key skill for musicians. Let’s learn about how to use this brain area in an efficient way!

How does the hindbrain create automatic movement best? Learning the basic functions of the hindbrain helps you know how to optimize your teaching.

Hindbrains don’t think. Hindbrains don’t feel. Hindbrains move.

What kind of brain-smart practices can we use to help our students learn to make movement easy?

Gamification is the key to excellent hindbrain teaching. Are you playing enough games with your students? And how can you create better, more efficient, and more brain-smart games for your classroom?

Let’s get a move on!

Take your time getting your teaching optimized for your students’ hindbrains.

Building the skill of emotionally intelligent music instruction starts with understanding how emotions work. Let’s build a foundation by asking ourselves some deep questions.

What is the first step to understanding emotions? Let’s get to know how to read someone’s State.

What does it look like to misread your students’ emotions? Let’s review a lesson and walk through how to appropriately handle big emotions.

Let’s review the first two of the five steps in the Proactive Cycle.

Let’s consider the last three of the five steps in the Proactive Cycle.

This chapter has gone over one of the most important skills you can acquire as a teacher. As you do this chapter’s homework, really take your time and put good effort in.