About Us

What is Learn to Rock(11-18)? Back to Top

Learn to Rock(11-18) is a unique ‘after school hours’ weekly Rock Music School dedicated to teaching children and teenagers (aged 11-18) about all aspects of performing and composing contemporary popular music.

Students are given the opportunity to develop performance skills in one of the following instruments: electric guitar, bass guitar, drums or keyboards. Alternatively, students can opt to develop their performance skills in popular vocals.

Students are tutored in very small groups by practicing professional musicians and qualified teachers.

The Learn to Rock curriculum is diverse and has been specifically designed by popular music teachers, music education researchers and performers to enable learning in a manner that is most appropriately suited to the popular musician. The curriculum includes teaching and learning about aspects of performance and composition within a wide variety of contemporary popular musical styles.

Each term students are tutored in: instrumental or vocal technique and developing skills in improvisation, band musicianship skills, using music technology, understanding popular music theory, developing aural skills and song writing and band arrangement.

Students approach learning about popular music in a practical ‘hands on way’ which encourages experiential learning.

Students are taught to compose their own songs using current music technology in state of the art music IT suites. In addition to this, all students have the opportunity to work in a professional music studio. Here, students’ music technology skills are enhanced even further as they learn about and experience what work in the commercial music industry is really like. In the studio students gain experience in performing, recording, editing and mixing down their own songs/ band arrangements to CD using high-tech recording equipment.

Students are encouraged, in a highly supportive environment, to build team skills, gain confidence and raise their self-esteem and have great fun with creative music making whilst developing into first class popular performers and composers.

Learn to Rock Objective and Ethos Back to Top

One objective of Learn to Rock is for students to learn about performing and composing popular music in a way that suits how the popular musician learns best. Essentially, we hope to encourage students to develop a passion for performing and composing contemporary popular music using a variety of teaching and learning styles that might not typically be experienced in the traditional school music classroom. We intend for students to have great fun in learning how to become better performers and composers whilst playing the types of music relevant to children and teenagers of today.

Learn to Rock is committed to providing the highest standard of music education within the contemporary popular music field. The Learn to Rock curriculum is unique in that it is a music curriculum exclusively devoted to teaching and learning about contemporary popular music. The genres studied in the curriculum range from early Blues to modern day Rap encompassing many styles of popular music from Blues to Rap including R and B, Metal, British and American Pop, Gospel, Indie, Soul, Hip Hop, Funk and Rock to mention but a few.

Learn to Rock is dedicated to helping students develop skills to enable them to work in the commercial music industry, whilst concurrently helping all students to develop a passion for playing, listening to and composing popular music purely for pleasure.

Essentially, one of the most important objectives of Learn to Rock is to allow each and every student to explore popular music in a supportive environment where a principle emphasis is on helping students to develop self-confidence, self- esteem, team building skills, communication, creativity and imagination.

Our key aim is that each student, each week, has fun, makes friends, becomes confident and experiences the ‘feel good’ factor whilst being expressive through performing and composing popular music.

How you Learn Back to Top

The teaching and learning styles employed are those which research and practice has demonstrated as being as ‘best practice’ for the contemporary popular musician.

Students engage ‘hands on’ experiential learning where an important emphasis is on developing an aural approach to performance, e.g. copying and listening. Students are encouraged to become metacognitive learners. This means that students are guided in becoming independent learners and thinkers which consequently impacts on them developing a greater self-awareness of their personal learning process. Basically, this approach allows the students to make progress outside of the formal taught environment, e.g. when they are practicing on their own in between the tutored Learn to Rock sessions.

Students are taught in small groups. The atmosphere is informal but structured to allow for students to gain confidence and be expressive within a supportive and encouraging environment. An important part of how the popular musician learns is through experimentation and sharing of ideas. Therefore we, at Learn to Rock, only support an environment where the student feels safe in presenting their musical ideas through performance and composition.

Students are encouraged to make the music ‘their own’ through applying their personal interpretation to ways of performing and how the music should sound in a performance.

All students are encouraged to be evaluative and reflective in an attempt to constantly improve their performances and compositions.

Finally, students learn how to plan for personal practice and how to manage band rehearsal practice outside of the Learn to Rock directed tuition.