Practice, Performance, & The Creative Process: An Interview with Courtney Woodward

Courtney Vowell Woodward is a wife, mom, former music educator, business owner, and author. After teaching music education in the classroom for 15 years, Courtney now hopes to share her passion for music through early children’s literature. Wanting to introduce a love of music in every family’s home, Courtney incorporates basic musical knowledge inside heartfelt stories — stories that include long-lasting life lessons.

Her classroom not only focused on upper-level musical skills, but on family, fun, and inclusion — themes that you will also see reflected in her writing. Courtney hopes that music education will become an easily accessible, essential subject for students of all ages! 

In this episode, we talk about what Courtney shared with her students in the classroom about practice, how the process of writing and publishing a book is so related to music, and all about her new children’s book out today!

To Listen to the full episode you can find the Time to Practice Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Audible , Google Podcasts, or your favorite podcast platform. You can also listen directly from the link below:

Highlights Include:

On practice advice to her students in the classroom: “You have to keep it short and then end

with a positive note, play the stuff that you love, play the stuff that you know, keep that for the end. So you end on this happy note and you’re not so frustrated with whether you successfully fix that problem or whether you’re still in the trenches with that problem. . . So it was important to end on a high note to keep practicing. And I had practice logs and all that kind of stuff. And it was begrudgingly something that the kids did, it’s important to practice, but at the same token, they had to note the structure of a practice session, keep it short and focus on a main problem, and end with a high note.”

On becoming a children’s book author for the first time: “And as teachers and musicians were just kind of life learners, so it was like, “okay, I’m ready to soak up as much information as I can.” And the process has been so fun. It’s been about a six-month process. And from start to finish, from having the idea from going with an editor and editing down the developmental ideas to then making sure your grammar, you do, you know, dotted all your eyes and crossed all your Ts and all that kind of stuff. And then making sure the illustrations are detailed. It was so important to me to have the instruments look real, not kind of in a silly format, but a five-year-old can read this book and go in real life and say, “oh, that’s an oboe. Oh, that’s a bassoon. I’ve seen that before. That’s part of the symphony orchestra.”

About her new book Family Dynamics: Embrace Your Sound : “It’s all about violin. She goes around the music store, she kind of gets misplaced by a young student. Here’s this music throughout the music store. She’s always with her family at the front of the store with the string family, she gets misplaced and she goes, “oh, I can finally go find where these sounds are coming from.” She’s worried because she can’t make those same sounds. And so she meets all the instrument families along the way. Kids will learn a little bit about each instrument family and how they make a sound and what they look like. And then she learns about herself too. You know, within my music class, it was always important to incorporate life lessons. And that’s what music does. Life lessons are everywhere. And so the life lesson in this one is just making sure that you embrace yourself, you embrace your sound, you realize that your sound and your voice can come together with others and really create that beautiful music.

On how publishing a book is related to music: “Oh, I mean, it’s exactly related to music . . . I think about as a music educator and was getting ready for a concert. It’s the same emotional rollercoaster. It’s only with an ensemble. You’re also going along that emotional rollercoaster with your students and they’re having their own emotions. And so you’re trying to compile yours and theirs and keep it all balanced, which can be tough, especially with middle schoolers, it’s all the same thing. And it’s…You’re trying to find that end result. And you’re trying to create art that people can relate to and people can connect with. Everything relates to music. I mean, you can’t deny it [whether it] be sports, writing a book, anything with life that you’re doing, it relates because you’re going through that same process of the emotions of saying, “I have these big feelings and I want to share it with the world. And I want to share this art that I’ve put so much of my heart and soul in. And then to be judged at the end.” These kids in the ensemble, they’re going to be judged if it’s at a concert by their parents, by their family, by their peers.

If it’s at a festival by the judges, it’s a thing, but at the same token, you have to realize that if you have it in you and you have this want, you have to go for it. And it’s the same thing with practicing. And the same thing with music is what do you want the end result to be? And if that’s what you want, then you have to put the work in behind it and before it, and you also have to be okay with putting yourself out there. And that’s what we do every time as teachers get on stage and we put ourselves out there every time you get in a classroom or private lesson, you’re putting yourself out there and you’re putting your knowledge out there and you have to be okay with that at some point. And just go for it.”

Links in this episode:

Find Courtney Woodward on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/courtneywoodwardauthor/
Find Courtney Woodward on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/courtneywoodwardauthor
Courtney Woodward’s Website – https://www.courtneywoodward.com/
Courtney’s New Book Family Dynamics – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09PGRVHLG

on Barnes & Noble Click here to purchase

Find Christine Goodner on Instagram: https://Instagram.com/SuzukiTriangle/

Transcript