Our music education
Blog
for parents and students.
Congratulations, you’ve decided to embark on a musical journey that has the potential to last a lifetime. You’ve decided you want to play JAZZ! Now I know this journey can seem intimidating; it can even be scary. But stay cool, I’m here to give you a few ideas on how you can get started on becoming the next jazz legend.
Do you ever sit down to watch TV at the end of the day and not know what to put on? It’s not like there’s any shortage of great shows and movies to watch, and yet, how can you be sure that the one you pick isn’t going to be a let down - or worse… a waste of your time? Choosing music to learn to play on the guitar can feel the same way at times; there’s literally an endless sea of repertoire to choose from, but how do I know that I’m choosing the right song in the right style at the right difficulty?
Are you tired of playing the same old chords over and over again, only to produce the same sound? There are always additional notes we can add to chords to add much more “flavor”. In fact, music wouldn’t be the same today without the bold inventions and creativity of artists with unconventional chords. The list of available combinations of notes to form a chord (any three notes played at the same time) is very long, so for the purposes of this article we will explore the most basic options.
Your child has expressed interest in learning the piano? Hurrah! Mazel tov! Sound the trumpets! That is WONDERFUL news. News so great that it would be a shame to not set your kiddo up to succeed, right? Well luckily, we’ve started hundreds of students on the piano, and we’ve got four tips to help you and your kid avoid some obstacles that cause a lot of people to quit prematurely.
Many of our instructors at Vibe go through significant twists and turns in life to get where they are today. Sometimes this means through intense personal challenges, or sometimes this means clarification in themselves as an artist and creative human. This week, one of our great instructors, Rob Lowman, wrote this piece on what some of his search in his musical identity looked like. Please enjoy, and hopefully this might be of encouragement to someone!
Though I’m not a parent myself, I certainly have observed that many parents feel partially responsible for what interests their children will possess as they get older. Of course interests will ebb and flow between things as time goes on, but I believe they have some validity to this hypothesis. There is rarely ever a need to “force” an activity/interest on a child, but there are certainly great and healthy ways to encourage it. These are a collection of ideas about how we might encourage you to best bring out your child’s unique gifts and talents as they pertain to music...
Students hear this all the time: “Make sure you fill your schedule with enough honors/AP/IB/advanced (you name it) classes to be successful!” They’re constantly bombarded with the idea that some sort of academic "status” or numeric figure like a GPA will set the rest of their lives up for success. Although in some rare circumstances this may be true, for most students what they really need is an opportunity to grow and develop as an entire person.
Today we have the opportunity to share the third installment of our “Instructor Features” blog series! This week we have none other than Rob Lowman to celebrate. Rob is a freelance cellist performing in and around Indiana and Illinois with session recording work for The Varsity Recording Co. and Orangehaus Studio (both in Anderson, IN), local orchestras, Christmas concerts, weddings and special events. Rob is also an established composer in both contemporary and traditional music for quartets, solo performances and scoring for short films.
