On this episode of Rock School Proprietor Podcast, John Kozicki (Michigan Rock School and RockSchoolProprietor.com) is joined by Tim Topham, a pioneer in music education and the founder of Top Music. Tim shares his insights on a student-focused approach to teaching music, emphasizing the importance of playing music first and reading second.
In this episode:
- The evolution of music education from more traditional to modern strategies.
- Highlighting the value of community and collaboration in taking a more holistic approach to music lessons.
- Moving beyond traditional method to focus on creativity and intuition.
- Marketing strategies that focus on social aspects for students.
- Tim’s No Book Beginners approach to piano.
Tim Topham’s Podcast: The TopCast with Tim Topham
For all of Tim’s resources for music teachers visit TopMusic.co
Join our private Facebook group, “Performance-Based Music Programs and Rock Schools,” a community for like-minded professionals to connect and share insights.
Episode Transcript:
John Kozicki (00:01.892)
Welcome to Rock School Proprietor Podcast. My name is John Kozicki. My co-host Mandy York can’t be with us tonight. However, my guest is Tim Topham. Tim, how are you today? All right. And for any listeners who aren’t familiar with you, Tim, you’re the founder of Top Music, which is an online community of music teachers. You host your own podcast, Topcast, correct? Which I understand
Tim – TopMusicCo (00:14.038)
I’m great, thanks for having me John.
Tim – TopMusicCo (00:29.038)
correct.
John Kozicki (00:30.18)
10 years at this point.
Tim – TopMusicCo (00:31.854)
10 years of episodes. Yeah, we just passed the milestone. 400 episodes, 10 years, started 2015.
John Kozicki (00:37.076)
Incredible. So I suppose I owe you a thank you for being kind of first, And you’re a music educator and a piano instructor, correct? All right. As you know, Mandy and I, we try and bridge that gap between what we’ve talked about as
Tim – TopMusicCo (00:41.87)
I’m one of the OGs.
John Kozicki (01:04.439)
the rock school approach or the non-traditional approach to teaching music lessons, which is my niche, right? I run a rock school and that more traditional, what I think of when I think of piano lessons because it’s kind of piano lessons I had as a kid, the very, by the book method book style of piano lessons. And your approach is not that. Your approach is,
Tim – TopMusicCo (01:19.554)
Yep, we all had those.
John Kozicki (01:33.005)
It seems very intuitive to me as a guitar player and a guitar instructor. And I wondered if you have always had, if you’ve always taken that approach to teaching where you’re not afraid of leaning into improvising or working on a four chord pop song and kind of veering away from the method books. Have you always been that way or was there a moment where it just kind of
kind of clicked.
Tim – TopMusicCo (02:04.246)
That is a good question. I, when I first started teaching, I did teach like my teacher taught. And so many of us do do that because we don’t necessarily have formal pedagogy training on our instrument. so I did take a fairly traditional start to lessons with regard to teaching of reading, starting that very early on, et cetera. But I always had elements of, you want to play that?
song, sure, let’s help, let’s, let’s, I can do that. We can, we can work on that pop song or, you like that on YouTube? All right, I’ll do my best to make that even better than what you find on YouTube. and adding elements of, guys, you should probably know about chords and all of that came about because I spent a lot of my, teenage years, university years, et cetera, accompanying other singers and other instruments playing for musical theater. And so I had to be a really good sight reader.
John Kozicki (02:56.612)
Mm-hmm.
Tim – TopMusicCo (03:00.544)
And good sight readers are great at understanding chords and harmony intuitively, knowing what key they’re in and being able to kind of make stuff up as they go along because that audition ain’t stopping for anybody. I’ve been in some very awkward moments trying to play for someone auditioning for a show and not knowing the song they’re playing and it being written terribly in, you know, five sharps and all this kind of stuff. And just having to rely as much as I can on my chords.
John Kozicki (03:08.92)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (03:12.867)
Right.
Tim – TopMusicCo (03:28.31)
and my understanding of harmony and chord progressions. And so I guess the intuitive part of what I was doing, even in those early lessons, which were fairly traditional, is I was bringing in as much as I could for students about that sort of chordal background, because I just know how valuable it is. And it’s just not taught if you’re gonna go traditional classical path. You go straight to reading, reading single notes, chords, you know,
John Kozicki (03:31.416)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (03:53.237)
Mm-hmm.
Tim – TopMusicCo (03:57.234)
If they’re even in a method book, it’s like level five or something, a few years in, and I just so strongly disagree. Students can be taught about basic tonic and dominant harmonies and basic chords, or even chord shells, just a fifth, right from the first few lessons, or at least after the first month of lessons.
John Kozicki (04:14.52)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (04:20.704)
Yeah, you know, that’s again, that’s how guitar is taught most of the time. We say, here’s, yeah, here’s, here’s, here’s how to play a chord. And that’s going to, that’s going to lead you from playing one chord to putting two chords together, three chords together. Here’s a song that you can play. And there you are in the first, I mean, depending on the student, first few months, students playing a song. I want to share with you a story. So,
Tim – TopMusicCo (04:26.252)
Yeah, yeah, you start with chords, right?
John Kozicki (04:50.676)
years ago, well, because first off, I’ve always had a hard time hiring piano instructors and finding piano instructors who are able to teach in that way. Because what we do at the Rock School, we are we’re about community, we’re about playing together. And so it always felt weird to have the piano students on the side saying, well, do you have the music for me?
Tim – TopMusicCo (05:16.398)
Yeah, that’s right.
John Kozicki (05:17.604)
How do we integrate that? So years ago, a friend of mine is a classically trained piano player. I think she had seven or eight years of traditional piano lessons growing up. Amazing reader. You could put any piece of music in front of her and she could play it. And I needed a sub at my studio. So I called my friend Tara and she said, yeah, I’d love to do this. I’m not.
You know, I don’t know a lot of pop songs. And I said, don’t worry about it. All these students are relative beginners. They’re working on whatever. You’ll be fine for a night. Right. So she she teaches for the day and then the night we’re talking about it. And she was ecstatic. She said, I had so much fun. I wish I could do that. And I I said, well, why you wish you could do what she said she wishes she could play pop songs.
And here I am thinking, this is the, yeah, seven or eight years of classical piano training. And she says, I wish I could play these four chord pop songs. And I don’t, I don’t understand why, why do you think so many piano instructors struggle with things like improv and four chord pop songs? Is it because of just, like you said, they’re, simply teaching how they were taught?
Tim – TopMusicCo (06:16.526)
This was the teacher.
Tim – TopMusicCo (06:22.638)
Mmm.
Mm.
Tim – TopMusicCo (06:45.238)
I there’s a lot of that. I think it is also, we also have in piano, unlike some instruments, a very long history of pedagogy. And it goes back to the 1800s with the likes of Chopin and Liszt and Czerny, people who were incredible teachers and performers. And actually in my book called No Book Beginners, I talk about this history of print music, when print music started to become popular.
it meant that people started reading music that was written. And then that became a thing because there was no audio recordings to listen to. So if you want to listen to a Beethoven sonata, then someone’s got to play it for you and they probably should play it the right way. so, and then pianos became very popular in the early 1900s. And so people started creating method books. And then we just got into this reading paradigm where learning an instrument
John Kozicki (07:29.858)
Mm-hmm.
Tim – TopMusicCo (07:44.918)
is all about learning to read notes. And it just stuck and really it’s only been the last 10 or 15 years that teachers are starting to shift and realize that playing some chords, some pop songs, knowing a bit of improv or being able to do that or being able to help your student play Happy Birthday without having to stress about it and have music in front of them is not just
you know, icing on the cake or a bit of junk food along with the important stuff. It is actually fundamental in both retention and engagement of students, but also it really deepens their musical understanding. And I’ve really tried as much as I can over the last 15 years to help teachers realize that an understanding of chords and an ability to play chords and chord progressions is a fundamental building block of music.
that we should be explicitly teaching students. A lot of the time, teachers actually can read a lead sheet because they might have to do it for church or worship playing. They can probably sight read, but they perhaps don’t know how they’re doing it or how to teach what they’re doing. So it can be kind of intuitive for some teachers to be able to play chords and understand that, but because these method books have never really talked about it,
John Kozicki (08:46.937)
Mm-hmm.
Tim – TopMusicCo (09:13.622)
and shown them how to teach it, that’s where I saw, there’s a huge learning gap here. How can I create resources to fill that?
John Kozicki (09:22.424)
That’s interesting. I was speaking with Dave Simon on an episode of the podcast and we had talked about, cause you mentioned just now, what is fundamental to students and learning. And we were talking about what do students want when they start playing an instrument and what do their parents want when they start playing an instrument? They want to be sitting at maybe
Christmas and the whole family’s there. And the kid jumps on the piano or picks up a guitar or whatever and plays a song and that everyone comes together because a sense of community. And it is interesting to me that that’s, think that’s how we all come to music, right? We all want that, but somewhere along the way, yeah, it sort of gets lost in this pressure to understand
Tim – TopMusicCo (10:11.992)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
John Kozicki (10:20.876)
to read or maybe that pressure comes from parents, maybe the pressure comes from the instructors, but like that desire for what the student wants sometimes gets lost, I think.
Tim – TopMusicCo (10:33.484)
Yeah. And I think you’ve hit on another element that’s important and that’s the social aspect of music making. And I would propose a question to your teachers who are listening. Think back to your childhood and teenage years of playing your instrument and ask yourself, what are the biggest, strongest memories from those days? What were you doing that you most remember as a teenage or young child music student?
John Kozicki (10:39.683)
Mm-hmm.
Tim – TopMusicCo (11:02.86)
Because for me and most teachers I speak to and ask this question of, it’s when they were playing for their family, when they were performing with a group of mates, when they’re in the school band, when they were accompanying somebody, when they were just had a friend over after school and they were just mucking around, when they were at a pizza party that their recital, their teacher had put on as a recital. It was, it’s all tends to be social. You remember the things you do with other people and
John Kozicki (11:29.238)
Right.
Tim – TopMusicCo (11:32.822)
In some ways, guitar, piano can be kind of isolated. think piano the most. Pianists are, and again, it comes back to this tradition, we’re kind of a solo instrument. And if you’re really good at piano, then you’re a soloist, you’re a concert soloist. That’s what we’re all striving for. But ultimately, the most fun I’ve had is playing in bands for musical theater.
and working with other musicians and having a jam with my mates and playing in the school rock band and things like that. So I think that’s another aspect that’s really important, particularly for the piano teachers listening. Think about ways you can get students together and if you can’t, then at least play along to backing tracks, get them grooving and vibing with other music musicians.
John Kozicki (12:05.955)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (12:21.654)
Yeah, I love hearing that from you because that’s another thing that I’m really passionate about. Obviously, coming from the rock school, it’s we talk about community all the time. We talk about kids finding their people and maybe they don’t like sports, but they can get those same benefits from playing in a band and meeting other people who play music. And it’s always been
It’s always been disappointing to me in a sense, but also like I sometimes I just want to shake those. My piano teacher growing up, I want to shake shake Mrs. Connolly, which was her name. Yeah, right, right. And say, why can’t why can’t we do this with piano? Why can’t we get these kids playing together? Why can’t we get the piano players playing with the drummers and the guitar players and everyone?
Tim – TopMusicCo (13:05.186)
gently, shake it gently.
John Kozicki (13:21.784)
That’s really what it’s all about. And so it’s incredibly refreshing to hear you say that. Thank you.
Tim – TopMusicCo (13:30.68)
That’s right. We just literally in the last couple of weeks released a course called Jam Sessions, which is all about how teachers with one-on-one students predominantly can do group sessions with four or five students, one piano and do very cool improv with them. And we’ve had teachers come back to us and say, you know what? I, I
I let my next student in five minutes early and I kept my current student for five minutes more and I got them to do some of this improv at the piano for just 10 minutes while they did a little crossover and it was the best thing. I’m going to like structure my lessons to have this now because they had so much fun and they were grooving and listening to each other. So yeah, there’s lots of ways to do this. You don’t have to be a group piano teacher in order to have group, a strong sense of group and community in your studio.
John Kozicki (14:23.342)
This kind of, didn’t expect to get into this, but it does get me thinking more about marketing. And when studio owners and instructors are talking about what they do in their studios. And before we start recording, you and I talked very briefly about AI and Mandy and I have had conversations about progress in AI and what that could potentially do for.
for music instructors, but I think if, yes, correct. Yeah, yeah, correct. And my takeaway is that if we start talking about all these things that you and I are talking about right now, like why we come to music, why we play music, how we play music in a community, then the AI stuff sort of disappears because,
Tim – TopMusicCo (14:55.575)
you spoke to Sam from Musi about it too, didn’t you? Yeah.
John Kozicki (15:20.994)
I mean, AI might be able to write music, AI might be able to teach music, but AI is not going to be able to come over to your house and put on a concert for you, right? So I think it does get into how we, as a community of music instructors, message to our prospective students and clients. Talking more about community is going to
Tim – TopMusicCo (15:32.76)
Yeah, yeah.
John Kozicki (15:50.308)
create more longevity for us and kind of future proof our businesses, I think.
Tim – TopMusicCo (15:54.222)
Yeah, a hundred percent agree. Yeah. I’m a, I’m a big fan of talking about marketing for music studios because I do hear from lots of teachers. my goodness. I can’t charge very much because there’s lots of people in my town and they’re all charging the same. And it’s like a race to the bottom. And there’s the, know, the old lady down the road is charging $10 for 10 hours and blah, blah, And so much of what we can do with our marketing revolves around what Dave Simon said, which is make sure you’re telling parents what they
John Kozicki (16:12.856)
Mm-hmm.
Tim – TopMusicCo (16:23.618)
what’s in it for them and their child, not about you, it’s about them. And I’m sure you do the same thing. But also talking about how you’re different and you know, just what we’re talking about before with like a tiny little crossover improv session. If you were to cement that into your studio, you could advertise, we do, you know, your child gets to groove with other children, even though they’re having one-on-one lessons. have this, or we meet once a month for a cool funk workshop.
John Kozicki (16:28.547)
Right.
Tim – TopMusicCo (16:54.2)
for a couple of hours after school every month and that’s just included in this package and here are all the things we do and here’s the package price. And if that is different, if what you’re offering is a different package, a different offer to what everyone else is offering, it’s not comparable. And so you can start to kind of set yourself aside. So not only is this great for retention, having this different approach, you can 100%, as you’ve said, use it to market yourself.
John Kozicki (17:11.373)
Right.
John Kozicki (17:20.26)
And I get it as music instructors, not necessarily, we don’t have a business background, we don’t have a marketing background, we’re scrappy. We figure that stuff out as we go. But I think the default, unfortunately, is always to look at what is that other person in town saying about their music lessons? What does their website look like? And maybe I’ll put my spin on it. And it’s not necessarily the best.
Tim – TopMusicCo (17:39.982)
Mm.
John Kozicki (17:50.637)
So I think that’s kind of where we get sort of a watered down version of the same thing across the board. So I’m, strong, strong proponent of talking about these things like socialization and community and all those other benefits that music allows us to experience in our kids. And again, that goes back to what parents want, what kids want.
So you had mentioned, you mentioned No Book Beginners. And I wanted to pick your brain about that a little bit because I was poking around your website. I’ve again, I’ve always had a hard time hiring instructors for piano because of what we’ve talked about. And I’ve found that jazz players have been great.
again, because they understand how to improvise and use lead sheets. I’ve had piano players who also play guitar so that they’ve been able to adapt how they teach piano. I’ve had some success there. And I’ve even had some success with multi instrumentalists, like maybe they’re guitar players or drummers or something else first, and then they pick up piano and
because they have a different background in how they learned their primary instrument, they’re able to then also adapt to piano. Now, if say I wanted to hire a piano instructor who maybe went through some of your top music courses, can I search for them? Can I say, hey?
Tim – TopMusicCo (19:45.71)
Yes, he can.
John Kozicki (19:47.109)
Or can I send an instructor through one of your courses or can I get your notebook beginner’s book and hand it to an instructor and say, is what we’re gonna do.
Tim – TopMusicCo (20:02.634)
Yeah, that’s right. Read this. Yes. Look, thank you. Yes to all of those questions. You can find, we do have a certification program at Top Music and we have a list of our teachers on our website. So you’re more than welcome to find those people. But just because they’re not listed there doesn’t mean they haven’t gone through and they don’t teach the notebook kind of approach. And for those listening, the notebook beginner’s approach is just my framework.
John Kozicki (20:25.71)
Sure. Yeah.
Tim – TopMusicCo (20:32.386)
to help classically trained teachers leave the method book closed for at least the first three or four lessons, but anything up to 10 weeks of lessons if you’d like to, and help them and guide them through an incredibly musical, engaging experience with their students, which is what we should be doing rather than opening a method book in those first lessons. Because what we do know from research is that the best things for
new piano, speaking specifically about piano here, piano students to do in those first few lessons is explore their instrument, to sing, tap, clap, move, create, be curious, be imaginative, and get to do all of these things in a musical context. But if you said to most teachers who have been brought up very traditionally, you know, it’s…
They might even agree. Yeah, actually that does make sense. We should probably do chords and singing and all that kind of stuff. But most of them don’t know how. And so No Book Beginners is a framework for how. So I do go through the history and I make the case for it and talk about the kind of arguments for it, which is what we’ve been discussing today, those building block ideas particularly. And then I give you in the book, the first five lesson plans for five weeks worth of this approach.
John Kozicki (21:36.322)
Mm-hmm.
Tim – TopMusicCo (21:54.474)
And it includes, yeah, chanting, singing, improvising. There are just lots of little ideas that any teacher can do, because I spell it out absolutely step by step. So yes, that book is available and I’m more than happy to share details about that later on if you’d like. And you asked about course as well. No Book Beginners actually started as a course as I was developing this.
John Kozicki (21:54.819)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (22:22.039)
Okay.
Tim – TopMusicCo (22:24.052)
geez, was one of my first courses. So probably eight years ago now, ish. And as I was testing it with the students I was working with, I started putting the course together, recording videos, et cetera. So all of that’s available in a course. And we do have that available as well as a standalone course that any teacher can buy. But for Rock School people like you as well, our membership, we have multi-teacher memberships too. So other proprietors of Rock Schools.
can actually sign up for that and then give access to any number of teachers that they want to.
John Kozicki (22:56.772)
Gotcha. So question about the notebook beginners. I think you mentioned five to 10 weeks, up to 10 weeks of lessons. that? Okay, now again, this is remembering my piano lessons as a child. When we got done with one book, I was given the next book. So, right? So when we get…
Tim – TopMusicCo (23:05.9)
Yeah, anything up? Yep.
Tim – TopMusicCo (23:19.17)
Yep. And next lesson you turn the page. Yeah.
John Kozicki (23:25.39)
to the end of No Book Beginners, what happens then? Do we have the tools that we say like, okay, I understand what’s going on now, or is there like first book beginners?
Tim – TopMusicCo (23:38.508)
No, we can use two. No. I, so look, I’ve got nothing against method books. Method books are actually the best way structured sequence scaffolded. are brilliant. Like most of them are all great. and I encourage teachers to use them when it comes time to teach reading. My argument is let’s not do that in the first lesson because my goodness, students do not want to do that at all. And teachers.
for the most part, probably don’t want to do that if they can be getting the student to act like they’re all different animals all over the piano and to just be able to engage them and have fun with them and just do cool stuff. So method books are great and I encourage teachers to use them. what the reason I call it a framework and not a method is that it can be structured with and alongside whatever you tend to use yourself.
So a lot of teachers will use notebook beginners for the first, say three lessons and do it in a very structured way. And then during lessons four and five, they’ll start bringing in their regular method book. So they’ll do some notebook stuff and then they’ll start the reading and the two will work in parallel. And then at the end of the 10 weeks, if you choose to use it that long, some teachers might only use five weeks. They continue with the reading approach. But what we have also found is that
John Kozicki (24:55.94)
That’s great.
Tim – TopMusicCo (25:07.8)
teachers suddenly have their eyes open to what is possible outside of reading. And so for the most part, they continue to use these kinds of elements and think strategically about, okay, how can I pull this piece apart with a student? How can I get them, make this more creative? How can I get them curious about what they’re learning? How can I help them improvise in this space?
John Kozicki (25:15.865)
Mm-hmm.
Tim – TopMusicCo (25:35.286)
even if it doesn’t have improvising, even if it’s a bark piece, you what can I do with this? And so they start to take on some of those concepts and use it in their everyday learning. also have, so we do recommend some method books that we like. And we also have had in the past Paul Myatt on to talk about whole body learning.
John Kozicki (25:35.406)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (25:47.53)
I love that. Yeah.
Tim – TopMusicCo (26:01.218)
which is a great approach that aligns beautifully with the, okay, let’s continue using this into repertoire that students are learning. And the whole body approach, I’d recommend any teacher look it up. It’s a great next kind of step after that. And I should say too, we also have a preschool notebook beginners for ages three to five too. So if you’re teaching or you wanna teach even younger students, we’ve got that approach lined up as well.
John Kozicki (26:08.046)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (26:23.217)
okay.
Yeah.
That’s great. Yeah, and for the record, I am not anti-method book either. we’ve had that, Mandy and I have had that discussion. And so this doesn’t feel so imbalanced. One of my big criticisms of so many guitar instructors is that they don’t use anything, they don’t write anything down.
Tim – TopMusicCo (26:34.657)
No, no, they’re great.
Tim – TopMusicCo (26:53.39)
Yeah, that’s right. It’s like, let’s jam.
John Kozicki (26:53.476)
You know, that’s like that complete, right? The complete opposite side. And so again, the spirit of what Mandy and I talk about is how do we kind of bring everyone in the middle a little bit more so you’ve got something that’s going to work for for everyone. All right. So I yes.
Tim – TopMusicCo (27:15.898)
Sorry, John, just on that, I also thought I should mention too, because teachers often ask, okay, if they’re not using a book, what do they do at home? Because as you’ve said, you you send the student home to learn those three pieces. Don’t turn the page because I haven’t taught you that next thing yet. So for each of the lessons, we give you a practice plan. It’s really structured so you can tell the student exactly what they need to do. And we give you the backing tracks that allow them to keep improvising when you’re not there.
John Kozicki (27:31.524)
Ha ha ha.
Tim – TopMusicCo (27:44.27)
We have activities where they have to teach their siblings how to sit at the piano and things in their first lesson. So there is a really structured plan to what they need to do at home as well.
John Kozicki (27:55.269)
Okay, so I was on your website and I took your quiz because, yeah, I took your quiz because Mandy and I did an entire episode on traditional versus non-traditional instructors and what they can learn from one another. And so I saw that on your website and I saw, I’m gonna take the quiz. I got the avant-garde. So tell me a little bit about…
Tim – TopMusicCo (28:02.713)
yeah?
John Kozicki (28:24.316)
what that means and what I should probably be thinking about if I’m an avant-garde instructor. Or does that surprise you?
So I guess one, does that surprise you? And two, what should I be doing as an avant garde instructor to look to improve to be best possible instructor for my students?
Tim – TopMusicCo (31:46.934)
Yeah. Yeah. Good question. And thanks for doing the quiz. So yeah, the avant-garde teacher, I’ve been this kind of teacher in the past. So the avant-garde teacher tends towards being pretty creative, flexible, imaginative, doing all of those kinds of things that we want, not getting stuck in tradition and things. The challenge for avant-garde teachers sometimes is trying to do too much. And in the process,
John Kozicki (31:49.74)
Of course.
John Kozicki (32:14.926)
Mm.
Tim – TopMusicCo (32:17.166)
making your students kind of confused and not following up on things or sticking with one thing for long enough for them to actually embed it. And I’ve done this to my, students before, because I’m very excited as you can probably tell about lots, like any new idea in pedagogy, I want to try it out. I want to give it a shot. And that’s great. But I remember a particular student, his name was James, and I was actually just overwhelming him because each week.
John Kozicki (32:26.295)
Okay.
Tim – TopMusicCo (32:46.55)
I was trying something slightly new and experimenting with him. And it just got to the point where he was overwhelmed. just, we weren’t reviewing and embedding things enough. And it was, I actually, it was quite close that I was almost going to lose this student actually, because I was almost trying too hard. It was a little bit of that kind of squirrel moment where you’re just looking for the shiny next thing without.
John Kozicki (33:00.74)
You
Tim – TopMusicCo (33:15.346)
really working on what you’ve been and reviewing what you’ve been doing. So I think that is a challenge for avant-garde teachers because you’re really passionate and you’re modern and creative and innovative, but you just have to remember to not go overboard.
John Kozicki (33:31.109)
question when when you had that experience because what you were saying reminded me reminded me of myself as a new instructor where I I felt an immense amount of pressure to be teaching something new every single week and it was self-imposed pressure by the way they were it wasn’t you know I I thought in my mind okay well
Tim – TopMusicCo (33:42.126)
Mm-hmm.
Tim – TopMusicCo (33:51.694)
Mmm.
John Kozicki (34:00.228)
Parents are gonna expect that their kids learn something new every week. I gotta make sure I’m giving them something new. In your teaching journey, where were you when you had that experience?
Tim – TopMusicCo (34:12.098)
Yeah, first few years, I guess. So after I had, I’d started trying to do more and more that wasn’t the method book, but I was, yeah, I was going too far. And so, and, and I, you know, I think it’s actually a fairly common process through learning to teach that you do do that. And you’re right. It’s all self-imposed. No one’s telling you to do this. And parents, if you ask them, they just want their child to be enjoying it, making some
John Kozicki (34:14.85)
Okay, yeah, yeah.
John Kozicki (34:22.441)
Mm. Yeah.
Tim – TopMusicCo (34:41.408)
nice sounds, being able to excitedly come to lessons and things like that. We hold ourselves up to these expectations all the time, don’t we? That we must do this or that. Often the case, it actually take that pressure off yourself and you can enjoy much more what you’re doing and be in the moment with a student. And that’s often where the magic happens.
John Kozicki (35:03.059)
Yeah. We, yeah. And Mandy and I did an entire episode. It slips my mind what number episode it was, but we did an entire episode about taking that pressure off, putting playing more central in, in lessons, as opposed to trying to teach constantly. Um, so I’ll, I’ll link to that one in the show notes. Um, Tim, with, with top music and your, your courses and your
Tim – TopMusicCo (35:15.821)
Mm-hmm.
Tim – TopMusicCo (35:23.95)
It sounds like a good one.
John Kozicki (35:31.492)
notebook beginners, where can people find all of that if they want to?
Tim – TopMusicCo (35:38.478)
Thank you, yeah, it’s all at topmusic.co. That’s our sort of main site where we have our blog. We’ve got a monthly magazine as well. It’s all free. And we’ve got a podcast, which is free too. And you’ll be able to find the links on there to pretty much everything we offer webinars, various events, and the membership as well, which is called Top Music Pro. That’s our subscription membership, which includes all of our courses and community, all of my resources, et cetera. But there are also a number of
courses that can be bought just as a one-off course. And that’s at topmusic.co slash course or courses. I can’t remember one of the two will get you there or both of them will. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And the book is on Amazon and it’s also digitally available through the website too.
John Kozicki (36:11.225)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (36:17.4)
But everything’s there at topmusic.co, right? Everything’s at, okay. All right, okay.
John Kozicki (36:26.968)
Fantastic. Tim, this was an absolute pleasure. I’ve seen your name come up. We’ve had a little bit of interaction back and forth, but fantastic speaking with you. I really appreciate you coming on the podcast, so thank you.
Tim – TopMusicCo (36:43.366)
Absolute pleasure and it’s great to know we’ve got lots of mutual friends as well So yeah, look forward to continuing listening and anyone that’s listening to this if you haven’t listened to the chat GPT episode that John put out the other week Go listen to that. It’s hilarious. I was like in the car going. my god. What is going on? This is crazy
John Kozicki (36:46.808)
Yeah, yeah.
John Kozicki (36:56.58)
you
John Kozicki (37:00.708)
Five days, Tim. It was five days where I felt like, well, you know, it was probably around day three where I started thinking, I don’t think Chet Chee Pee Tee is really doing what I’m asking it to do.
Tim – TopMusicCo (37:03.79)
I don’t know how you kept going.
Tim – TopMusicCo (37:14.346)
Yeah, yeah. It’s brilliant though how you, you, the two of you read out and I love that, chat GBT’s voice was your female cohost. just, she just did such a great job.
John Kozicki (37:26.308)
Reluctantly Mandy was chat GPT. Yeah, yeah.
Tim – TopMusicCo (37:29.851)
Really good, really good. So thanks for your show though too. I’ve really enjoyed listening to it.
John Kozicki (37:35.747)
Well, thank you, Tim. Yeah, we’ll wrap this up for Rock School Proprietor Podcast, and we’ll see you next time.
