S1Ep8: Duolingo's New Feature For Learning Music

In this Christmas Episode of Heard It Through The Grooveline, Will Bennett shares his thoughts on the Duolingo app's new music feature and talks about the benefits of using it, especially during the holidays when children may be busy with other activities. The episode also highlights the gamification aspect of learning and how it can make music education more engaging. Will recommends trying out Duolingo's music feature and encourages parents to learn alongside their children.

00:02 Introduction to the Episode

00:42 Reflection on Previous Episodes

01:07 Introduction to Duolingo's New Music Feature

01:20 The Importance of Practice During Holidays

02:05 Understanding Gamification in Learning

03:00 Exploring Duolingo's Approach to Music Education

04:19 Critique and Recommendations for Duolingo's Music App

06:28 The Benefits of Learning Music Theory with Your Child

06:58 Potential Classroom Application of Duolingo

07:13 Final Thoughts and Recommendations

07:57 Conclusion and Sign Off

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Transcript

  Hello and welcome to another episode of Heard It Through The Grooveline. My name is Will Bennett and I'm the founder of Grooveline Music Education. I'm here to help you know how to best support the musical education of your child, even if you are not musical yourself.  At Grooveline, when the lesson ends, the learning doesn't stop.

And so as part of our wraparound approach to music education, This episode, I'll be sharing my thoughts on Duolingo's new feature for learning music. 

 Good morning guys. And welcome to another episode. Just me this week. The last few episodes we've had guests on doing some interviews. Personally. I found it really interesting. I hope you guys did too, to hear from some other experts in the industry about the way they see music education. 

Their opinions on certain aspects, different learning styles

and their own actionable top tips with that they've shared with us. I think it's been really quite a good month, actually. Personally, if I may say so myself. I Want to talk to you today about swing. Pretty cool. Which is that juror lingo now have a music feature. And I've checked this out and I just wanted to let you guys know about it and share some thoughts about it too.  So particularly during the holidays from school, you. At the time of this coming out, it is actually Christmas day. 

I have recorded in advance. Don't worry. I'm not actually sitting at home on Christmas day, recording this. But, you know, it would be the Christmas holidays. And what often happens particularly at Christmas is that. Kids are so busy with parties and they're excited. They got new toys and the practicing can often go out the window. Obviously, I'm not recommending you put it out the window, but I do understand it can happen sometimes a little bit. 



It'd be great. If you can,  keep on top of things with your child. And try and get at least a little bit of practice in learning Christmas songs is a great way to do that. Because it's kind of something that they want to practice in time for Christmas. So at least for that first week and maybe a few days afterwards, you can kind of be practicing that. bUt another great way. 

And this is a theme that a few people have talked about this month on the previous episodes is gamification of learning. This basically means  turning, learning into a game.  And Duolingo I've done just that. So if anyone who doesn't know what Duolingo is, it originally was created by a guy in, I believe it was from America. 

He originally had the idea that he wanted to start a gym.  But the gym is completely free and you go there and you exercise and the exercise creates electricity and energy, and they then sell that energy to the grid. That was their new disruptive business model idea. That didn't work out at all, but the. Philosophy behind it whereby you do something for free for the greater good of the world. 

And, you know, offer it to anyone to make it accessible. They did manage to find a way of making that work and they did it by teaching people, languages.  sO you basically look onto the app and you learn languages. I myself started learning Spanish on Duolingo and I did it for,  18 months, two years on Duolingo every day. And it's quite fun. 

You get a little hot streak and you gotta try and keep it going and you get rewarded and you just do 10 minutes a day. And it's really fantastic at teaching you the basics. You could never get fluent just from learning on Duolingo. But it really gave me a foundation. From which I then went on and to learn Spanish in other environments,  I had classes, I went to Spain. I had a Spanish girlfriend for a few years, which obviously helps. 

So, you know, it's not going to get you fluent in Spanish, but it is going to help, help you get started and really get a solid foundation. And I would say exactly the same thing is true about music. So.  The way it works on the music app. There's a few different things. Whereby your placing the notes in the correct place on the stave, your playing along with music and physically touching a. Piano keyboard, which appears on the phone. And you press the different keys at the right time. 

So you also learning about rhythm. I think it's a great way to reinforce some theory and make it fun. It's quite quickly rewarding. And as I mentioned earlier, you do get those points and the hot streak and stuff. And. It is designed to be addictive and keep you doing it for a longer period of time.

 One thing that I would say about it is that as you progress further into the app, I would say it gets maybe less helpful. Because as the rhythms get more complicated, the music gets a bit faster. And you are in order to pass the lesson, having to actually physically. Input the notes by basically playing the piano on your iPhone. And we're not trying to learn to play the iPhone. 

We're trying to learn to play the piano. And it's not really transferrable. You're not using the correct finger positions. The correct posture. Switching hand positions, anything like that? You're just going to be tapping it with your thumb. So I do think the knowledge and the theoretical side of things, the pattern recognition that is all transferable, but. It's not necessarily transferable actually onto the piano. 

So perhaps as you get to the high levels, you could actually use your real piano and use it as sight reading practice. Just one tiny drawback that I would personally make about it, but. overall it's, it's very, very good.  

One thing that it doesn't do, which I found interesting is it doesn't really spell things out. 

It just kind of, you learn by doing is quite an interesting way that they've done it. So for example, in the first lesson, They don't necessarily tell you here. They don't explicitly say this is where a C is on the stave. But they ask you to put it there. And then you realize where the correct answer is. And once you realize that it's just basically following that pattern. 

So sometimes I think people don't give kids enough credit and they, we think we have to spell everything out for them really explicitly, and then allow them to take what we've told them and apply it to a task. But you know, if you listen to this and you've got kids, you, you I'm sure, you know, Actually they're pretty good at figuring things out for themselves and they realize patterns. So they realized when I put this here, I get a tick. And so I know that this is where it goes for me to get that tick. 

And so step by step using progressive mastery as Tim talked about on an episode two weeks ago,  you do start to understand music theory and it's pretty fun. 



It's all quite bite-size as well. So you could just do it. I mean, you could do it every day if you wanted to, but I think just five or 10 minutes, two or three times a week, when your kids wants to want to have a bit of screen time, this can be a really fun way to do it. 

And actually I do think it's even better because you as a parent could do it with them. So if you yourself don't know a little bit about music theory, this is a great way to learn. You're learning with them, but also when it comes to them, practice in their instrument. If they're a bit stuck, you at least have a basic understanding of where they're coming from. And you can start to show them, oh, this is a see, that's where you're going wrong. 

You need to put your thumb here because now, you know, where C belongs on the keyboard. For example, I do think it's a really cool app  and actually something that we may well trial. Particularly in the whole class environment. I think it could be really fun to have five minutes at the end of a lesson on Duolingo. 

And as a class, we try and progress to the next level again. Gamified it with levels and tasks and points. I think it's really quite interesting. 

Yeah. So I definitely recommend it overall. And I would say now's a great time to start, you know, during the holidays, just play a little five minute, 10 minute screen time game with your child. And see what you think have an experiment with it. I would love to hear your thoughts as well. I know Duolingo is a really great company. 

I really am a fan of their values. And also that huge. So they've obviously got a massive team behind this that I've really studied. They've got music experts, and I'm sure they've got psychologists and a behavior specialist and obviously a tech team. It is pretty good and they have put a lot of money into it. 

So I'm sure they've thought about a lot of these things as well. So I'd highly recommend it. Give it a go and let me know.

And don't forget, try and do a couple of practice sessions before going back to school. Join these Christmas holidays.  Thanks guys. Have a great time. Speak to you soon.

  Thank you for listening to another episode of Heard It Through The Groove Line, the podcast that helps parents like you best support your children's musical education, even if you are not musical yourself.  To find out more you can follow us on social media and don't forget to hit like and subscribe.