OUR HISTORY
Celebrating our 30th Year

2025 marks our 35th anniversary in the Manning Valley and Great Lakes districts under the N E W T O N E M U S I C and Groundwater’s Guitar School banner.  Originally set-up as a mobile “house-to-house” or “venue-to-venue” operation, business soon took off as the word about our travelling music lessons spread.  In the early days, summers were sweat boxes with cooling fans while winters were blankets with blow heaters – but, we persevered.  Founder and principal, Peter Groundwater rushed, most days, from place to place to run music lessons, only to rush back to the recording studio base, to arrange and re-arrange various artists demo songs while recording other artists guitar parts alongside the studio sound engineer.

Operations eventually settled down to more secure rented suburban settings.  Offices usually took the form of converted garages or veranda entry side rooms.  Pioneering tuition methods, building up the resource material and buying equipment all dominated the early years.  He recalls 'We got our first mobile phone in 1992, and our first computer in 1994!'  Can you imagine life now without a mobile phone or the internet?   We became an incorporated association in 1996 after introducing our music school curriculum – a huge document which took months to write.  This set us apart from the rest because we became education driven right from the core.  Everything we did was now guided by our constitution and articles of association which clearly stated our aims and goals.  We even got to have a board of directors and an annual AGM!

1997 saw the release of the Australian Music Examination Board’s (A.M.E.B.) tertiary entrance accredited Contemporary Popular Music (CPM) course.  It was our biggest change and remains so to this day.  Students complete this graded course through four annual exams on their own chosen instrument.  Results are tangible as pupils are continually steered toward music industry vocations.  We were now able to assist our students with sensible career choices while still at school, not after – when it was all a bit too late.

Growing through this period, we continued to operate from smaller rented premises which, due to space limitations, compelled us to take on students at a number of the districts high school campuses.  This gave us the opportunity to build our numbers and our name until, in 2002, we finally purchased our current building next to the towns CBD.

Adding and training staff and more departments, all while renovating the building and increasing our public profile, would best describe the last decade.  The constant improvements became a blur; more students; “branding” the building with paint, signs and banners made it the landmark now known throughout the district.

We have since become the areas biggest supporter and architect of new original heavy music.  In the last 5 years, through the development of Momentum Studios, numerous secondary students from all eight Manning/Great Lakes high schools have taken to recording their original CD’s and projects here.  Momentum Studios heralds a new era as we impact the north coast music scene with our unstoppable infectious heavy sound.  Our CPM exam students enjoy the studio environment first hand as they record their original assessment items.  We are closer than ever to training and releasing secondary level music career potentials.

Most recently we divided our operations into four distinct businesses to cope with the ever increasing demand on our services.  Presently under the one website hosting domain name www.newtonemusic.com.au, the four businesses are:

TUITION ​Music Instrument & Vocal Tuition School
RECORDING Momentum Music Recording Studios
SALES Music Instrument & Equipment Shop & Online Store
REPAIRS Music Instrument & Equipment Repairs & Maintenance Workshop

​These four sectors reflect our desire to be the best and most definitive in our field.  N E W T O N E M U S I C is the culmination of an extraordinary musical journey.  

In our latest chapter, it became clear that we had outgrown our previous location as we grew our website sales to service the whole of Australia and even beyond to international sales.  we moved to Australia's Gold Coast in 2022 to be located in a bigger city environment for transport and the services offered in the major urban environment of South East Queensland