But aside from the economical aspect, music, and therefore its education in our country, should not be underestimated. Having taken in a number of sources, namely a BBC podcast around the topic, this has become abundantly clear. It’s often easy to disregard performers of all levels, with many claiming it can’t be a real job. This couldn’t be further from the truth – whether its your local pub musician or the virtuosic players in the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO); music has a part to play in all our lives.

When you watch Lord of the Rings, Star Wars or the Harry Potter series, the music that encapsulates the emotions in any given scene so well is performed by the LSO. This can’t have started from nowhere. Each individual player will have needed to have passion and a drive to play music as well as undergoing years of intense musical education to get to where they are. An education which, in recent years, looks to be faltering.

For those that live in Trafford, we are extremely fortunate to have a music service that not many local authorities have anymore. To put this into context, every local authority in the country will have had one 30 years ago. The same can be said of state schools; in one North Manchester authority, only two of its ten schools offer music as a GCSE option. In some parts of Merseyside, home to arguably our biggest musical export, there isn’t a single institution that offers A-Level music.

In 2010, when the Conservative party formed their government, then Education Secretary Michael Gove announced the English Baccalaureate, a program which focused and honed students’ skills in Maths, English, Science, Languages and Humanities. It seems that the arts, and therefore music, was left by the wayside.

Just last year, it was announced that the arts will be subject to 50% cuts by the Conservative government, with the money being injected into STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths). This suggests that music education is an afterthought, and this has huge implications. This follows recent news that the BBC is to disband the beloved BBC Singers as part of it’s new strategy for Classical Music – the only full-time professional choir in the UK.

When a school places music at the centre of its teaching, the effects can be astounding; the academic results generally flourish and the students are generally happier. Teaching music in schools has been proven to improve a child’s ability at Maths and English as well as providing them with important emotional and social aspects of their upbringing, band rehearsals and orchestra practices playing a vital role in securing a child’s emotional intelligence.

Some 166,000 people have signed a petition to oppose this move by the government, but will it be enough to save the death of the arts that looks to be, for the moment at least, a certainty? “

Have you ever wondered what makes a career in music – what takes it from a hobby to a professional career. We consider this often confusing question!

 

Amateur vs Professional

I am always staggered to hear people use the term ‘amateur’ and feel it should mean ‘not good enough’. Some of the greatest musicians would likely define themselves this way, so what does it actually mean? Well for many it likely means whether you can solely earn a living from music or not. For nearly ALL musicians, we battle so often with Imposter Syndrome, a constant barrage of self-doubt and questions such as “Will I ever be good enough?”.  However, it is likely this inherent drive for ‘perfection’ that requires a musician to put in the supposed 10,000 hours plus, to reach that elusive Professional Status. Perhaps what we really mean is someone who can simply define themselves wholeheartedly as a musician – someone who gets enjoyment, enrichment, fulfilment and life-long satisfaction from the elusive pursuit of achieving the impossible ‘perfect’ moment.

One could also be tempted to define music in only one way, or to suggest that the aristocracy and elite in society were the only ones to benefit from, or at least in times gone by, the ones lucky enough to be able to afford the opportunity to hear it. We are in someways fortunate and other ways not – music is now so ubiquitous that we can consume really any form of music, at any time. However does that, or indeed has that, already meant we now undervalue it?

I guess like many careers, we continue to evolve our understanding of it, and to hopefully continue to learn and develop in our role. As musicians, we have the flexibility to define this to our own individual needs & personalities. Is music simply about performing, do we prefer to teach others, or do we prefer the adoration of the masses and getting into the ‘zone’ whilst on stage performing to a crowd, composing a great symphony or developing new ideas and pushing the boundaries of what we go on to define as music….

Often we define success through qualifications – a BIG topic, which often divides opinions, especially in the Classical Music world…. but many of the top performers have had a career that has been forged through their interactions and the people they met along the way – maybe in many ways this is what truly helps drive our careers! Other ways are the big milestones in our career, being  respected by your peers, asked to help drive an initiative, or to help lead the next generation and pass on your knowledge…..

Simply put – I think any person who decides to carve a career in an ever changing landscape, who takes on the role of Business Owner, Head of Sales & Marketing, drives their own ambition and creates a way to enjoy and share their love and passion for music with others – deserves the right to be called a Professional.

Music has the power to lift us up and support us when we’re down – not least because of the amazing musicians that helped to create it! For anyone who feels they are undervalued, know that you get to decide how you define yourself, and if you can see yourself with greater generosity maybe others will too!

So we’ve been busy this month too!

We’ve been working behind the scenes to get ready to officially launch our first fully optimised video for Youtube and we’re proud to say we’re now live!

Something we have been wanting to do for a long time is create content that responds directly to our students and parents. So often we get asked about current music to learn, possible choices for future repertoire, what our favourite pieces are, supporting videos for greater mid-week learning and so much more…

Finally we are able to begin creating this content and it is here for you – so if you’re reading this blog right now, make sure to click on the link below and become a subscriber to the channel. With lots of future content planned, we hope to become the go-to place for all things music – and support our students and wider community to help them on their musical journey.

Do you have an idea for an upcoming video? Leave a comment here, or better still, go watch out first video and join in the conversation, leave a comment, and join us in building a wealth of resource that best supports you!

Oh and don’t forget to tell everyone to subscribe as well! You never know where it might lead….

Following continued success as a private tutor the time had come to grow the business into something that would be fit for 2022 and beyond….and so the Dinsmore Music Academy was born!

This has been an idea in the pipeline for at least 3 years but I was unsure what it would look like and how I could differentiate from many local tutors. Something I have always prided myself on is providing home tuition, so I wanted to continue to offer this, but to expand the offering.

Partly inspired by the pressure of online teaching and lockdown, I decided to pursue a variety of options for lessons and expanded to offer Singing and Guitar tuition, as this seemed to fit well with my desire to put music-making at the very core of our offering. This has also helped to develop our Academy Curriculum to incorporate a broader approach to teaching Foundations of Music, through play, singing, clapping and musical games, which then includes Ukelele and singing in early musicianship lessons.

Having also continued to explore the array of local talent here in Manchester, I continued to  expand our teaching to include Associate Tutors to help support lessons and increase our student numbers.

In addition I wanted to be able to continue to offer students opportunities for performing, including our own student concerts, both casual smaller settings, and larger more formal concerts, alongside workshops for exam preparation and duet playing.

However, first thing was to have a complete new website designed to make it clear what would differentiate our approach. After approaching a web designer and working to develop a fully bespoke website, we set about to create a clear image for the business – to engage students on social media and to offer helpful tips for students and the wider community via a dedicated Youtube Channel.

Of course all of this takes time and to make sure it is right from the very beginning. So from September 2022 the focus has been to continue to develop this offering so that over the course of the next 12 months more options will come on stream to help support learners and promote enjoyable music-making in all its forms.

When I decided to focus on music full-time back in 2011 I wasn’t sure where it might lead – so I’m glad to see with a further 10 years experience, it has given me the tools to develop something that will be industry leading, and hopefully continue to inspire future generations of musicians.

Read an article from 2011 published in my local newspaper that explains my reasons for making the change from a job I wasn’t enjoying, to a full-time career as a musician!

Make sure to follow us on social media and join in our growing community of musicians, teachers, parents, amateurs & professional alike, supporting music-making in all its forms!

Following further interest in the use of our teaching space, Judy at Mushroom reached out to write a blog about us and the space – as their first Manchester host!

Covid has been a challenging time for many of us, and we wanted to make sure that once things opened up again, we were in a position to offer some fantastic facilities to both our students and the wider music community. How excited were we to find Mushroom – the AirB&B of music spaces!

Having invested in a brand new Hailum 161cm Grand Piano & Casio’s Flagship GP510 Grand Hybrid Digital Piano, our hope was the space would continue to gain interest, not least from my students and families but also from local musicians wishing to use it too.

This year alone, the space has been used by a postgraduate singer preparing for recital work, and a local singer-songwriter to name but a few. Here’s what Amy wrote about her experience: