WHAT IS LISTEN PLAY GROW COACHING?

Listen Play Grow isn’t a fixed course with a curriculum for everyone to follow. The coaching starts with you: what you want to do with music, where you are now and what’s getting in the way.

From there, we’ll work out a direction together and build the coaching around the musician you want to become.

That means I’ll sometimes teach, sometimes demonstrate and sometimes offer ideas. But just as often, I’ll ask questions, get you listening, experimenting and finding things for yourself. The aim isn’t to make you more dependent on me. It’s to help you become a more independent musician.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I START?

We’ll begin by getting clear about what you actually want to do with music and what you want to get from the coaching.

Before we meet, I’ll ask you to complete the Musical Check-in — my DUEL Wheel assessment. It looks at four areas of your musicianship: Doing, Understanding, Expressing and Listening.

It isn’t a test and there are no right answers. It simply gives us a useful picture of where you feel you are now, what’s already working and where you might be getting stuck.

From there, we’ll agree what would be most useful to work on first. There’s no fixed syllabus. The direction comes from your musical goals, and we’ll adjust it as things develop.

The plan gives us direction. It doesn’t tie us to it.

WHAT DOES A COACHING SESSION LOOK LIKE?

We’ll start by looking at what you’ve been working on since we last met: what went well, what felt difficult and anything that needs clarifying.

You’ll usually play or demonstrate what you’ve been working on, and we’ll explore what you’ve noticed. I may ask questions, demonstrate something, explain a bit of theory where it’s useful, or suggest another way of approaching it.

But I won’t simply tell you what to do at every turn. A big part of coaching is helping you learn to notice, experiment and make musical decisions for yourself.

Before we finish, you’ll decide what you’re going to work on before we next meet. We’ll make sure it’s useful, realistic and fits into your life.

WHAT WILL WE ACTUALLY WORK ON?

Listening is at the heart of Listen Play Grow. You’ll spend time actively listening to music and learning to notice what’s happening rather than reaching immediately for a chord sheet, TAB or notation.

We might work on hearing the home note, following and singing bass lines, recognising chord movement, picking out melodies and riffs, and transferring what you hear onto your instrument.

As your ear develops, you’ll gradually need your instrument less to work things out. Patterns and familiar musical movements start becoming recognisable by sound.

And it doesn’t stop at learning the song. We can use improvisation, arranging, transposing and experimenting with rhythm and harmony to explore how the music works and make it your own.

Listen first. Sing what you hear. Find it. Play it. Make it yours.

HOW MUCH DO I NEED TO PRACTISE?

The more purposeful time you can give your music, the more quickly you’re likely to progress. For many people, 30–60 minutes on most days would be excellent. But consistency matters more than occasional heroic practice sessions.

And not all musical practice has to happen with an instrument in your hands.

You can listen actively while you’re walking, sing a bass line while doing the washing up, work out a melody in your head or notice what the music in a shop is doing. Five or ten minutes of purposeful musical thinking still counts.

There’s room for noodling too. Experimenting, getting curious and simply seeing what happens can be an important part of making music your own.

Music can become something you do throughout your day, not just something you practise.

WHAT HAPPENS BETWEEN SESSIONS?

If we’re working together over several sessions, the coaching doesn’t completely disappear between meetings.

I’ll check in with you between sessions to see how things are going. You can send me a question, a short recording or tell me about something you’ve noticed, and I can help you get unstuck before our next meeting.

I’ll also encourage you to record yourself from time to time. Apart from giving us something useful to work with, those recordings can become a great record of your progress.

WHAT IF LIFE GETS IN THE WAY?

It will. Some weeks you’ll practise loads. Other weeks, work, family, holidays or life in general will take over.

There’s no guilt attached to missing a week. We simply look at what happened, whether anything needs to change, and get going again.

If something repeatedly isn’t happening, we’ll get curious about why. Perhaps the task isn’t clear, it’s too ambitious, or finding the time is proving difficult. We can work on those barriers too.

You don’t have to succeed at everything we try. What matters is that you stay involved, communicate and keep taking the next step.

HOW DO WE KNOW IT’S WORKING?

Progress isn’t always obvious while you’re in the middle of it.

So we’ll keep an eye on what’s changing — what you’re hearing more easily, what you’re able to do without help, what feels more natural and where you’re becoming less dependent on written information.

If we’re working together for longer, we can also revisit your Musical Check-in and compare it with where you started.

But your goals matter more than a score. If you wanted to learn songs by ear, sing while you play, improvise more freely or feel confident joining other musicians, those are the things we’ll use to judge whether the coaching is helping.

Progress gives us information. It also gives us permission to change direction.

HOW CAN I WORK WITH YOU?

You can book a one-off session if there’s something specific you’d like help with, or work with me over a longer period if you’d like ongoing personal coaching.

Whichever you choose, the coaching starts with your music, your goals and what you’d like to be able to do.

NOT SURE WHAT YOUR NEXT MUSICAL STEP IS?

Book a free Next Musical Step call and we’ll work it out together.

WHY DO I OFFER THE CALL FOR FREE?

Playing by ear came relatively late to me.

When I finally began to hear things I’d spent years thinking I simply wasn’t very good at hearing, I was genuinely amazed. And it left me wanting to help other musicians discover that these things may be far more learnable than they think.

That’s a big part of why Listen Play Grow exists.

So the Next Musical Step call isn’t something you have to ‘qualify’ for, and you don’t have to be considering coaching to book one.

We’ll talk about where you are, where you’d like to get to and what’s getting in the way. I’ll help you work out a useful next step.

If it seems that working together might help, we can talk about that too. You already know what I offer and what it costs, and you’re completely free to say no.

If you leave the call with something genuinely useful that helps you move forward with your music, I’m happy.