Music is for Everyone: An Interview with Bryson Tarbet

On this week’s podcast we’re talking about music practice, motivation and how sometimes practicing music looks like being a kid with Elementary Music Educator Bryson Tarbet. 

Bryson Tarbet is a PreK-6th grade general music teacher just outside of Columbus, Ohio. He received his Bachelor’s of Music in Music Education from Ohio Wesleyan University and is currently in the process of completing Master’s of Music in Music Education with a Kodály emphasis at Capital University.

Bryson spent his first year out of college as part of an elementary school intervention team and he fell in love with working with students with exceptional needs. Due to this experience, Bryson feels very strongly about advocating for sensory and emotionally-inclusive classrooms.

Bryson started That Music Teacher with the goal of sharing different perspectives on issues pertaining to the lives of music educators across the country. He also hosts That Music Podcast, available on all major podcast platforms.​

---

Christine’s Top Takeaways: 

1. Meaningful, focused practice is key (and much more important than any arbitrary times we may be assigned to practice). 
2. Sometimes practice looks more like being a kid than following an exact method, and we have to let go of some of our preconceived notions about it 
3. Look for ways to gamify practice, especially for young students. This builds motivation and works with the way their brains work and learn. 

---

Highlights from Bryson Tarbet Include:

“I kind of realized that with my fifth and sixth grade school, that there were a lot of students that enjoyed music, that loved music, but there were more of a kind of analytical mind and they really weren’t the more performing, the singing (type). And because we couldn’t sing, we did a lot more listening and, you know, analyzing it at a basic level of what the music is. What is the meaning of the music and things like that.And I saw so many of these students flourish, and these are students that I thought, you know, they were just there because they had to be. They, didn’t enjoy music or they were not someone that music was a big part of their lives. It was, they were there because that’s where they had to. And it really was eye opening to me to see that these students really loved music, but they love music in a different way.”

“It doesn’t matter how long you practice if you’re not doing it in a meaningful way.”

“That’s something I truly like at the center of me – I believe that music is for everyone and it is our job as teachers to help everyone figure out in what way they can be musical.”

“I think it can be really easy to, you know, spend hours and hours in the practice room, but get nothing done.”

“My brain goes immediately to motivation and you know, trying to find ways to get that intrinsic motivation because you know, you can give stickers all you want. You can (say) “do your practice and then we can do this” all you want. But yeah until you get that intrinsic motivation,  until you get it to (where) the students want to practice without receiving something.

That’s what it’s going to really hinder you until you get that. And the ways that we can do that is again through gamification through practice that doesn’t necessarily look like practice. I think that that’s something that, especially a lot of us that have taken piano lessons, maybe in a more traditional setting have to kind of unlearn is that we, the way that we learn music, doesn’t have to look the same way as when we learned it. It can look different, it can be more, you know, centered around the child. It can be truly differentiated. And it isn’t really about just, following a book, you know, page to page. Sometimes it looks like just being a kid and I think that’s what you can really do to get them engaged, to get them involved and you get them to really love what they’re doing.”

To listen to the full episode you can find the Time to Practice Podcast on your favorite podcast platform or listen below

---

Find Bryson Tarbet’s Website: http://www.thatmusicteacher.com

Find his Piano Practice Modifier Cards Here 

Find his Elementary Teacher Newbie Guild HERE 

Find Bryson on Instagram www.Instagram.com/thatmusicteacher

Find Bryson on Facebook www.Facebook.com/thatmusicteacher

To Submit a question for an upcoming Pep talk (google form) 

Reach out: TimetoPracticePodcast@gmail.com 

Find Christine on Instagram @SuzukiTriangle 

Sign up for one of the upcoming Time to Practice Pep Talks HERE