Today we have the opportunity to share another installment in our “Instructor Features” blog series! This week we have Derek Hutchinson to celebrate! Derek is a guitar and vocal enthusiast who has traveled throughout the United States and the world to share his love of music with others.
Read more about Derek 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’m primarily a guitar instructor, and I also teach voice and ukelele. Right now, my students range from 8 years old to seniors in high school.
What is your favorite concept or skill to teach?
I would have to say relative theory—being able to relate certain aspects of a song or what they’re learning into understanding the language and expanding upon it. I mostly like music theory. Also, a lot of the guitar is knowing the fretboard and being able to navigate it successfully without getting totally confused—which is not an easy thing to do because things get pretty wild past the first couple of frets!
Talk about your background in music, all the way from your very first experience with an instrument.
My father played guitar and sang casually in a worship group, and he was pretty much the sole reason I got interested in playing music. I picked up a guitar and took private lessons for about 5 years until I joined a band with my guitar instructor about halfway through high school. After high school, I went to Ball State University with a major in Music Media Production where I did a lot more with the production of music and more with recording and editing, but I also refined my vocal skills, helping found the current a cappella organization that is in place at Ball State University. Toward the end of college, I joined an independent group and we’ve been creating original music and performing around the United States for the last 5 years. I’m also a part of a contemporary a capella group who has traveled the world. We’ve gone to Taiwan, Russia, and different places around the world to spread the idea of vocal music. I’ve just enjoyed being able to travel and share my music with others and seeing other people enjoy it has been incredible.
What are some of your favorite method books to use and prescribe?
I’m not a huge method book guy. For the sake of learning very basics, I use the Hal Leonard Guitar Method books 1 and 2, but just for reference. I usually use a lot of more exercise-based stuff—scales, exercises, chord progressions. To me, the exercises and assignments are subjective to what the student is interested in doing. Some students prefer not to play chords, and much prefer doing melodies, so we’ll learn melodies of their favorite songs. With others who enjoy learning about theory, we won’t spend so much time learning songs. We’ll do more scales and try to relate them to everything else. I’d say exercise-based and teaching via their favorite songs is one of my favorite things I like to do.
Do you remember one of the first times that you “fell in love” with music?
My very first concert, my parents took me to a radio-station sponsored concert called Loop Fest in Chicago. It was all based on radio, and they had a couple of pretty big headliners, but the one band that I connected with as a middle schooler who liked 80s heavy metal was a band called B-tallica. They played Beatles covers in the sound of Metallica, and I thought that was the most interesting thing because I had never been a Beatles fan or heard many Beatles songs and knew them by name, but to hear some of them being played in the form of my favorite band showed me that there was a lot more to how to interpret music and how to play it. I have really enjoyed seeing how unique people can get with music ever since.
What is your all-time favorite performing experience?
I was a part of a huge a capella spring festival where there were more than 100 different a capella groups from around the world that were conjoined into Moscow, Russia. Every night they did a little get together for all the groups. But one day, they had a lot of the groups perform for each other. It was the biggest a cappella competition in the world, but at that moment, it was all about supporting each other and raising each other up. The amount of support that everyone was showing each other was just incredible, and when we went up there and performed and got just as much applause and support as everyone else from Africa, Egypt, and the UK—it was very surreal, to say the least.
You are the newest addition to a crayon box. What color are you and why?
I would be magenta because it’s one of those colors that’s so vibrant and distinguishable yet hard to place in context with a lot of other colors. It’s unique in its identity and vibrant as a stand-alone color, but it seems to fit and play along well with others.
Why do you feel that music education is important for developing members of society?
Music is its own being, its own art form. Arts, in general, are something that everyone should dive into for the sake of culture. If you’re not doing anything artsy, it’s almost all business and everything kind of boring and strict. The fact that you can relate with music in one shape or form, even if it’s just really liking a band or playing classical music by yourself is a bit of a release of any tension. It’s a great way to express yourself, what you like, and who you are—just like any arts are. Music specifically is easy to relate to anybody. It’s hard to relate to other art forms sometimes, but if you hear a song and one little bit of it catches you, then you’re hooked on it. I think what’s so cool about it is that there are so many different elements of music that people can appreciate, and it’s one of the best ways to express yourself and your ideology.
Derek is such a great addition to our team, and we are so excited to have him on board! Read more about him here!
