Music Lasts the Test of Time Leading Note Studios Toasts 15 Years of Music Education and Community!

“I’m wishing he could see that music lives. Forever.
That it’s stronger than death. Stronger than time.
And that its strength holds you together when nothing else can.”

— Jennifer Donnelly

Nestled on Encinitas Boulevard, in the quiet heart of Encinitas, two blocks from Rancho Santa Fe and four miles from Moonlight Beach, is a wonderful little Music School called Leading Note Studios. For the past 15 years, children and adults of all ages have attended this school for music lessons.

When I became a piano and theory student twelve years ago, I remember asking the owner, Camille Hastings, my teacher, why she started the school. She responded passionately: "I walked into the building, and I could hear music playing!" 

This passion for Music is at the heart of Leading Note Studios.  

That is exactly what happens there now. With more than 700 students attending weekly, her vision and love for Music continue to inspire and guide the school and the entire community. 

With the addition of a second location in San Marcos in February 2020, now averaging 500 students weekly, Music is thriving in North County San Diego as a result of the owner's passion for Music.  San Marcos also has a theatre with musical theatre classes, and it hosts music shows, comedy nights, and recitals. It is also open for the community to rent for shows and events.

Throughout its 15-year history, Leading Note Studios has been a critical music supplier to the community. Music floats into the spacious lobby, and smiling faces enter and exit the building. This is because music lessons at Leading Note Studios are wonderful and enriching. 

Regardless of the numerous awards the school has won, throughout its 15-year history, Leading Note has also provided Music to the community. Students play and sing at retirement homes and local events, such as street fairs, art institutes, and local restaurants and venues.

With its longstanding commitment to supporting Music, Leading Note has also offered numerous scholarships and instruments to students who needed more time to afford instruments or lessons.

With yearly summer camps, two to three Recitals a year, and an upcoming destination recital, the school offers many opportunities for its students to touch their community with the benefit and beauty of live Music.

Leading Note also faced the challenge of the global pandemic and continued to pivot to Zoom for lessons, helping teachers keep the jobs they love and helping the students maintain a weekly lesson. The commitment and love of Music from its patrons have also been unwavering. Many students graduate high school, attend college, and return with their music degrees to teach at Leading Note.

On August 17th at 2 p.m., Leading Note in Encinitas will host a Rock Block Party and event celebrating its 15th Anniversary. Food and Music, a Bounce House, Raffle Baskets, and Face Painting will be available! 

Students will play throughout the event, and studio tours will be available.  Join us to celebrate the timelessness of Music and community fun!

“Summer Music Concerts” The Value of Experience and Engagement With Music In The Community!

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane, by those who could not hear the Music.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Do you remember your first concert? I certainly do!! I was in High School, and it was the summer of 1978. Bruce Springsteen was promoting his album Darkness on the Edge of Town. I had never been to a concert before.  I didn’t know anything about Springsteen … his concert was …, to say the least… spectacular!!  

I was absolutely blown away by his energy and dedication to his band and his fans.  

Springsteen once described his concerts as “part-circus, part-political rally, part spiritual meeting, [and] part dance party.” I still remember feeling utterly moved by this artist that I had never seen before.   The entire room was singing “Born in the USA,” and as I looked around at the thousands of attendees rocking and singing, I felt this life-changing event and the importance of music!

Many young adults will be making their first-concert memories this summer. I see the excitement and joy in their eyes as they post social media updates and anticipate these special events. Concert music experiences provide social and community magic!

Two main themes help explain the attraction of concerts and the significance of attendance: Experience and Engagement.  Lets explore - Experience! Concerts are rich with engaging experiences. One recent tour featured an Artist performing his older songs with a hologram of his younger self. Audiences watched in awe as he rapped and sang along to music from a decade ago.  At another concert, young fans trade friendship bracelets with fans double their age. They are euphoric, singing along with their idol in the company of tens and thousands of their new besties.

Engagement also matters.  What does engagement do? Our society requires frequent positive community participation, which creates psychological resiliency against the forces that could potentially pull us apart. Attending concerts has life-long benefits, mainly an increased sense of belonging and improved well-being. 

Concert audiences experience feelings of profound togetherness and share a love for something that facilitates a path to connection.

Concert attendance serves as a public affirmation of one’s sense of self. Music is a way to help formulate identities and deepen specific emotional needs, which are critical, especially to the development of teens. 

At concerts, individual meaningful moments converge into collective joy, and people bond over creative expression and the sheer excitement of being alive together. Music has that unique power!

That first concert in the Summer of 78’ with Springsteen helped me understand my deep need for music, experience, and engagement. Being in that room, with that crowd, helped the hopeful young girl in me feel that I belonged — that there was a place for me in the world.

This Summer there will be numerous concerts and crowds teemed with excitement and engagement, reminding us that constructive shared experiences with music are necessary for a solid and cohesive society.  And the bottom line really is … without music and music education, there would be no Concerts!  Imagine that!!

Why Music Causes Memories

“Music, at its essence, is what gives us memories. And the longer a song has existed in our lives, the more Memories we have of it.”

— Stevie Wonder

This ability of music to bring up clear and emotional memories is a phenomenon well-known to medical doctors and brain researchers. Music can trigger intense recollections from the past. It can trigger our senses, even such senses as taste and smell. It can also provoke strong emotions and memories from early life experiences. But why?

"Music can take you back in time, as well as act like a jolt of electricity that can fire up your brain and get it going," says Andrew Budson, chief of cognitive and behavioral neurology at Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System. "We all have the familiar experience of going back to our hometown, visiting our high school, and feeling the memories come flooding back. Music provides an auditory and emotional setting that allows us to retrieve all those memories."

The Different Types of Memory

• When we perform music, we use "procedural" memory.  This is a type of long-term "implicit" memory, which is the unconscious ability to remember a habit or routine we can do every day without thinking about it, such as riding a bike or brushing our teeth.

• Episodic memory is a type of long-term "explicit" memory, which is a conscious recollection and is what your brain uses to remember — for example, items on your shopping list.  

Both implicit and explicit are types of long-term memory — procedural memory is unconscious and effortless.  Episodic memory requires conscious work to remember.

In healthy brains, episodic memory allows you to be transported back in time to a specific event or time when you listen to a piece of music. Episodic memory originates in the brain's hippocampus region, which "is the first to go" when dementia hits.

While the ability to sing or make music is procedural memory, meaning you don't have to deliberately think about what you're doing.  Research has shown that Alzheimer's attacks the hippocampus first, explaining why procedural memory still enables dementia patients to remember lyrics and perform - it's an entirely different memory system.

Patients with Alzheimer's can still experience the music "time travel" episodic memory phenomenon even after the disease has attacked their hippocampus; as long as those episodic memories are more than two years old and have been 'consolidated, they can be accessed even though the hippocampus has been destroyed.

And this is why people with Alzheimer's can recall stuff from their childhood but not remember what they had for lunch or whom they saw yesterday. 

 A well-known recent example has been that of legendary singer Tony Bennett, 96, who, in the throes of Alzheimer's, could still flawlessly perform his classic hits. That is awesome!

We know there is power in music, but today's research shows how powerful it is. We don't just hear a song once, we encode that memory, and deeply encoded music can unlock memories. Just another reason to study and play music!!

The Impact of Music How Music Can Heal Your Heart

“Music is therapy. Music moves people.
It connects people in ways that no other medium can.
It pulls heartstrings. It acts as medicine.”

— Maklemore

Music has always been a powerful tool for stress reduction, relaxation, sleep, and drug-free pain management. In addition, new research provides continuing evidence for the healing power of music as Heart medicine.  Research suggests that music can heal the Heart.

Music can alter your brain chemistry, and these changes may produce cardiovascular benefits, as evidenced by numerous studies. For example, studies have found that listening to music may:

• Enable people to exercise longer during cardiac stress testing on a treadmill or stationary bike.

• Improve blood vessel function by relaxing arteries.

• Help heart rate and blood pressure levels to return to baseline more quickly after physical exertion.

• Ease anxiety in heart attack survivors.

• Help people recovering from heart surgery to feel less pain and anxiety and sleep better.

Music changes our heart rates, breathing, and blood pressure and alters our heart rate variability, which are cardiac and mental health indicators.

Did you know that the human heartbeat provided the standard measure for "musical timing" until the mid-19th century? After that, it was replaced by a mechanical metronome. A metronome is a device that produces an audible click at an interval set by the user. Set to "BPM" or beats per minute, musicians use this device to practice playing music to a regular pulse or rhythm.

Music moves us. It does so because music is part of our deep primal intuition related to our heartbeat.

The very distinctive rhythms in Beethoven's music closely resemble those of heart rhythm disorders. Cardiologists speculated that these rhythms might be transcriptions of Beethoven's possible heart arrhythmia—perhaps a result of the awareness of his heartbeat - enhanced by his deafness.

For cardiac patients, music-based interventions can modulate cerebral blood flow, reduce pre-operative anxiety and post-operative stress, improve surgery outcomes, and lower cortisol levels.  In addition, music interventions significantly affected heart rate and blood pressure in coronary heart disease patients. 

And sound processing begins in the brainstem, which controls the rate of your heartbeat and respiration.  This connection explains why relaxing music may lower heart rate, breathing rate, and blood pressure — and also seems to ease pain, stress, and anxiety.

Physiological feedback studies and how we respond to music can also help us shape the music to influence listeners' heart rates and breathing, such as increasing or slowing it down.

And, with the widespread adoption of biofeedback devices, tailoring music interventions to individual cognitive or neural-cardiac states is now well within reach, enabling a "musical prescription" for improved mental and physical well-being.

Music should be part of every physician's toolkit, as evidenced by all this research. So maybe next time you visit your doctor, he will ask if you are ready to take music lessons!