Dear Music Educators,
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At the core of what we do lies a simple, foundational principle: listening is integral to learning and performing music. Yet, in daily teaching, structured listening is often relegated to an occasional recommendation. With only 30 to 60 minutes of weekly contact, we simply cannot facilitate the daily immersion our students need.​
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To bridge this gap and truly grow, our students need daily musical immersion – 1 Hour a Day.
Challenges of the Listening Deficit in Our Lessons
As music educators ourselves, we wish to address these real-world gaps. In our conversations with colleagues across Sydney, the same recurring challenges constantly appear – challenges that may sound all too familiar in your own lessons:
In failing to address these foundational gaps, students rely entirely on us to select their repertoire, focusing strictly on passing the next exam. When practice feels like a mechanical chore rather than a creative pursuit, many ultimately walk away from their instruments altogether.
EXPRESSIONLESS PLAYING
Students may be technically advanced, but lack musicality. They rarely listen to music for leisure, struggle to name key composers, and seldom attend live performances.
NO MUSIC EXPOSURE AT HOME
Young learners, especially those aged 5 to 10, often lack a rich musical environment. Without a listening routine, they struggle to connect with music beyond basic nursery rhymes.
STRUGGLING WITH PITCH AND RHYTHM
Students may still struggle to internalise a steady pulse or stay reliably in tune. They lack the subconscious exposure needed to map these core concepts.
Why Should Listening Be Part of Our Daily Routine?
Consider cultures where daily life is steeped in rhythm, dance, and song – their natural musicianship stems from a simple truth: music must be heard and felt daily before it can be played with genuine understanding.​
Pedagogical research consistently backs up this cultural wisdom, echoing Dr Edwin Gordon’s Music Learning Theory. “Audiation” is the ability to internally hear, imitate and comprehend music without it being physically present – audiation is to music what thinking is to language.
Just as children are able to speak and understand a language before learning to write or read, children who audiate are able to perceive and reproduce musical patterns before they even formally learn music theory and notation.
Listening – both passive exposure and active listening – ultimately enhances students’ musical comprehension.
WHAT CAN YOU DO NOW?
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Join and Share the Campaign
Learning is a fundamentally collaborative process and by incorporating 1 Hour a Day into your own practice, you can first handedly share to students and parents how music listening augments your musicianship.
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Integrate Listening Exercises in Lessons
Allocate 3 minutes each lesson to discuss the music you and your student has listened to over the week, including any concerts they have attended. Assign students to listen to specific pieces and their different interpretations. In the following week, focus the discussion on analysing aspects like instrumentation, mood/expression changes, and the layering of musical elements.
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Provide Support with Our Free Resources
Save, share, and send these resources to students, parents, and colleagues to spread the word!
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The 1 Hour a Day initiative does not ask you to add more work to your limited teaching time. Instead, we are partnering with you to educate parents and build the auditory foundation your lessons require. When a child’s home environment is rich with purposeful listening, they come to your lessons with trained ears already primed for pitch, phrasing, and rhythm.
Let us embed active listening and aural training into our shared teaching philosophy, making it as fundamental as scales and etudes.
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By championing the 1 Hour a Day campaign in our classrooms, lessons, and communications with parents, we can shape how music is taught by nurturing a generation that does not just play music, but truly understands it.
Sincerely,
Concerts for All
Under the Music Development Association Inc. (INC2400330)
Support for 1 Hour a Day
Dr. Anna Reid
Dean of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music:
I am hoping that the venture to listen for an hour a day, as well as play, makes a significant difference to the lives of young people and their parents. It is when a family is immersed in music that real progress is made with children — and as we know — musical practice and listening has a strong effect beyond the music lesson and into the centre of all communication and sciences.
At Simply for Strings, we passionately believe that every child should have the opportunity to explore the beautiful world of music. Music is a universal language that has the power to transform lives. That’s why we are delighted to support Concerts for All and their wonderful '1 Hour A Day' of music listening campaign...
Music education is important for many reasons. It fosters creativity, supports cognitive development, relieves stress, boosts confidence, fosters connection and brings joy. The team at Concerts for All is making these benefits accessible to children everywhere with a wealth of fantastic online resources for teachers, parents, and students. We recognise the tremendous value of these resources in fostering a musical environment at home to establish a lifelong love of music.
Simply for Strings echoes Concerts for All's message: integrating music into daily life is crucial. The '1 Hour A Day' campaign is an inspiring initiative that encourages families to make music a regular part of their routine, enriching children's lives in countless ways.
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Simply for Strings is proud to support this campaign, standing alongside Concerts for All in our shared mission to make music education accessible to all. Let’s create a future where every child has the opportunity to experience the transformative power of music.
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