Today we have the opportunity to share another installment in our “Instructor Features” blog series! This week we have Andy Greenwell to celebrate! Andy is a piano, voice, and French horn instructor with a wide variety of musical interests. He is passionate about all styles of music, and his excitement is what drives him and his students to continuously educate, create, and innovate.
Read more about Andy below, and at the link near the bottom of the post.
To begin, what do you teach at Vibe and how old are your students?
I teach piano mainly. I have a French horn student, and I’ve had a few vocal students. My students range anywhere from 6-17 years old. I like teaching little kids because it’s fun to watch them grow quickly with the basics, but I also like getting into details with my older students and thinking more critically about stuff.
What is your favorite concept or skill to teach?
My favorite concept to teach is the circle of 5ths. I do it as the cycle of fourths, which is the same thing but backward. When you look at it as the cycle of fourths, every chord before it is the V, the dominant of the next, so it helps students visualize dominant to tonic. I think it’s a super useful tool, and I love telling everybody about it.
Talk about your background in music, all the way from your very first experience with an instrument.
I grew up in a musical home. Both of my parents were music teachers. My earliest memory with an instrument is breaking my dad’s upright bass because I was riding it like a horse. I started playing piano when I was about four with a great teacher that I studied with all the way up until high school. I picked up the violin in early elementary school and played French horn in Band. It was in middle school that I started figuring out about other styles of music besides classical music—jazz, rock, hip-hop, and pop and that set a different trajectory for me. At that point, I started focusing on a more improvisational style of music and more current stuff because it really resonated with me. I finally felt that I found something that I thought was worthwhile to practice instead of something that I was just forced to do. I stopped piano in high school for a while and took on some other things, but in college, I switched from engineering at Butler to piano performance, and I’ve been playing jazz, pop, and everything in between ever since.
When you begin lessons with a beginning player, what are some initial goals you help create with the student?
The first thing I want to do with a student is establish a personal relationship rather than a music relationship. A lot of teachers want to show the parents that they know what they’re talking about, but I think that establishing a personal relationship with the student is more important because the students who like you will practice more. I’m convinced that they’ll show up and they’ll practice more if they care about what you feel about their progress. If they like you and you tell them, “Hey, this isn’t quite where we wanted it to be. I’m a little disappointed that we didn’t get there.” That means something to them. Or if you tell them that they did a great job, that means something even more to them.
What is your favorite ‘90s jam?
Let the people know that I was firmly against the ’90s! I’m going with the ‘80s, and my favorite song from the ‘80s is “Sledge Hammer” by Peter Gabriel. I think it’s the perfect song. It’s jammy and bright. It’s got a catchy melody, and the drums sound great. It’s really light music that you can just bob and dance to. ‘80s hold my heart!
Do you remember one of the first times that you “fell in love” with music?
The first time I ever fell in love with music was the first time I heard Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin. Ragtime blew my mind. Because here was this music that was just catchy and bright sounding and swingy and it made you want to bob your head, and everything else I had played was so boring. I heard that and said, “I have to play that!” I think that was when I learned how to really practice.
Why do you feel that music education is important for developing members of society?
Music education is so much more than learning music. It is life-training. It teaches us how to dedicate ourselves to something just because it’s the right thing to do. Music teaches us how to explore, express, and deal with our emotions in a healthy space. Some of my first memories of playing the piano were when I was upset or frustrated and my dad would tell me to go play piano for a while and it would make me feel better, and he was always right. Music is a safe space to grow and explore yourself and then take what you’ve learned and give it to someone else. When you play music for someone, you’re giving a part of your experience to them so they can experience it with you, and that changes your experience of your own experiences. You start to realize that we’re capable of so much more than just punching a card and paying the bills. There are all the statistics about [music students] doing better in math and science, and getting better grades, and that’s special and important. But when you’re a grown-up and you stop getting grades and people aren’t judging you on whether or not you did algebra, I think these kids are going to be really happy that people are judging them on who they are as people, because they’re going to be better people.
Andy is such a great addition to our team, and we are so excited to have him on board! Read more about him here!
