Remember the kid I told you about a few posts ago? The one who was “learning Riptide” and couldn’t tell me what it was teaching him?
This is the post about what his teacher should have done instead.
The third letter of the ADVANCE method is Validate. It’s the step that turns a song into a skill — and a skill into something a student can actually feel themselves building. It’s the step almost every music studio skips, often without knowing they’re skipping it. And it might be the most important thing we do at MJS.
What Validate actually is
Once a student and teacher have decided what to work on, most studios go straight to the doing. The teacher pulls up the song, breaks it down, shows the student what to play. Lesson begins.
We don’t do that.
We pause first. Sometimes for ten minutes. Sometimes for half a lesson. Sometimes — for a goal that’s going to take real work — we’ll spend a whole lesson on Validate alone.
In that time, we’re not playing. We’re talking.
We’re saying things like:
This song is going to teach you breath control. Once you have breath control, you’ll be able to sing longer phrases without losing pitch. Once you can do that, almost any pop ballad written in the last thirty years is in reach.
Or:
This piece is going to push your left hand independence. That’s the hardest thing in piano, and once you have it, the entire intermediate repertoire opens up.
Or, in the case of one of my voice students who wants to be a worship leader:
This song isn’t just a song. We’re using it to practice assessing the qualities of a piece — the room you’d sing it in, what its purpose is in a service, what role it’s playing for the people listening. Then we’re making vocal choices that reflect all of that. Because that’s what a worship leader actually does. They read the moment, then they sing into it.
That’s Validate. We’re giving students the map before we hand them the road.
Why this matters more than people realize
Here’s what happens when you skip Validate.
Students start collecting song titles instead of skills. They walk into family dinners and say “I’m learning Riptide” — not “I’m learning breath control.” They can name the what but not the why.
That sounds harmless. It isn’t.
A student who only knows song titles is dependent on their teacher to pick the next song. A student who knows skills can think for themselves. They can hear a song on the radio and notice oh, that singer is using head voice on those high notes — I’m working on that too. They can listen to a piano piece and notice oh, that’s two-handed independence — I just learned that. They start hearing music differently. They start thinking like musicians.
That shift is the whole game. And it doesn’t happen on its own. It happens because somebody handed them the vocabulary.
What Validate looks like in a real lesson
I have a voice student named John. He doesn’t come to lessons asking to learn songs.
He comes asking to learn how to use songs.
He wants to be a worship leader. So his goals are bigger than any single piece. He wants to learn how to assess the qualities of a song — what kind of room it’s meant for, what it’s for, what it’s asking the people in the room to do. Then he wants to make vocal choices that match all of that. Tone, dynamics, phrasing, restraint, intensity — all of it shaped by what the moment needs.
That’s a real, transferable, professional-level skill. And the only way he gets there is if every song we work on is held up against that bigger goal. Why this song? What does this one teach us? What does it ask of you that the last one didn’t?
So before John and I work on a song, we Validate. We talk about what this piece is for, what skill it’s building, what door it opens for him in the work he wants to do. By the time he opens his mouth to sing, he’s not “learning a song.” He’s practicing being a worship leader.
That changes everything about how the lesson lands. He’s not collecting Be Thou My Vision and Great Are You Lord. He’s building the muscle of musical discernment, one song at a time.
That’s what Validate makes possible.
Why teachers skip it
Most music teachers aren’t lazy. They’re enthusiastic. They love their instrument, they love their craft, they love teaching the thing. And so when a student is finally ready to start working on a goal, the teacher’s instinct is to go. Let’s play. Let’s get into it.
That instinct isn’t wrong. It just runs ahead of the student’s ability to understand why.
When teachers skip Validate, they’re usually not skipping it on purpose — they’re skipping it because they assume the student already knows. Of course they know why we’re doing scales. Of course they know what this song is teaching. Why would I waste lesson time saying it out loud?
Here’s why. Because the student doesn’t know. Almost never. Not unless somebody told them. And without that knowledge, every lesson is one degree more confusing, one degree more arbitrary, one degree easier to walk away from when life gets busy.
We refuse to skip it. Even when we’re excited to play. Even when the student is excited to play. We pause, we explain, we make sure the why is solid — and then we begin.
What changes when Validate is done well
A few things start to happen.
Students start tracking their own progress. They walk in and say “my breath control is better, I held that phrase last week,” instead of “I practiced the song.” They use language like phrasing and dynamics and tone and control — because they’ve been given the vocabulary, and they actually know what it means.
Practice changes too. A student who knows they’re working on breath control will notice their breath control all week, not just in lessons. They’ll catch themselves running out of air mid-phrase in the car. They’ll pay attention to other singers and notice how they breathe. The skill becomes something they’re working on always, not something that lives only in our studio.
And the biggest thing — students start to see themselves as musicians. Not students. Not kids who take lessons. Not people who play Riptide. Musicians. Building specific skills. Making specific choices. Becoming someone with a real relationship to their craft.
That shift — from collecting songs to building skills to becoming a musician — is the thing we’re chasing every single time we Validate.
What this means for parents
If your kid can name a song they’re working on but can’t tell you what skill it’s teaching them, that’s a flag. Not a red flag. Just a yellow one. A worth-asking-about one.
Ask their teacher: what is my kid actually learning right now? What skill is this song building?
If the teacher has an answer ready — great. The Validate is happening, even if your kid hasn’t internalized the language yet.
If the teacher fumbles — that’s information. It might be time to find a studio where every song has a reason behind it.
Your kid’s lessons should be building something specific. They should be able to feel the building. And they should know — in their own words — what they’re getting better at.
What’s coming next
Next up in the series: Acquire. The fourth letter — and the one most studios think is the whole job. It’s not. But it’s where the actual skill-building happens, and how we do it matters more than people realize.
Subscribe to the blog or follow us on Instagram (@musicjunkiestudios) so you don’t miss the next one.
— Kristi