I am a huge
baseball fan.
San Francisco Giants specifically.
Now, for those of you who aren’t as familiar with baseball as I am, there
are the major leagues, and there are the minor leagues. The minors have three
leagues in themselves: Single-A, AA, and AAA leagues, respectively, all feeding
into a single major league team. Sacramento plays host to the Sacramento Rivercats, which is the AAA team that feeds into the San Francisco Giants.
Basically, I’m in a smaller version baseball heaven living here.
Now, believe it or not, I have found my own weird comparison to the local
music scene in the Sacramento area. That’s right, a musician’s minor leagues.
Bear with me here for a second.
Roseville has been home to a recent resurgence of quality music teaching
services. It used to be, for a good chunk of time, that you could get most of your
musical education through school, with classes like band, guitar, and choir.
While those are good resources to use, it can often be difficult to get
individual help in a class of 20+ students all at once. And even then, if you
chose to pursue it into college, you would continue to run into a similar
situation, albeit with higher standards and greater difficulties. Unless you
started your own band, of course.
Both are extremely rewarding, don't get me wrong, but have some serious potential in the
discouragement department.
Some of the first places to offer this kind of education were: McLaughlinStudios in Loomis, The Music Store in Rocklin, and Skip’s Music in Sacramento.
While they did offer the kind of personalized attention that students wanted,
they were very spread out. Also, while they were excellent at serving and
teaching their students, they still were limited to their local areas, and
could only have so many students at one time. This left fertile ground here in
Roseville, for a good chunk of time.
Over the last 10 years, or so, several stellar music instruction places
have popped up right in the heart of downtown Roseville.
Imagine Music Instruction (IMI) is one of these places. Located in the
same parking lot in two separate buildings off of Galilee Road in Roseville, they
offer a huge range of instruction. They have classes in piano, guitar, bass,
violin, voice and brass, and are staffed with a strong cast of musicians and
teachers. They also give their kids the opportunity to play live in the form of
recitals, put on at local venues by the teachers themselves. They always manage
to jam pack the place, and the kids all walk away with huge smiles on their
faces. They also play host to Rock Band classes, where they get students
together and work on covers of rock songs. It’s things like this that give IMI
a reputation as a place that fosters excitement around their music instruction tactics.
Another place that often can be seen teaming up with IMI at their many
events is One Eleven Music Studios. This place, located right in Old Town
Roseville, has 2 buildings to optimize its effectiveness as an organization. On
one side you have the instruction rooms, which house room for teaching of
piano, bass, guitar, piano, and drums. On the other side, there is a recording
studio where they also teach drums out of. In addition to this, founder and
teacher Kevin Prince uses the studio to record his online lessons at
Drummer101.com, where he further extends his reach as a teacher online. Kevin
also plays host to musical day camps out of his studio as well, that are
excellent ways for kids to not only interact with other fellow musicians around
their age, but it also provides excellent, detailed instruction in a fun
environment.
A third place here in Roseville, located near the corner of Vernon and
Cirby, is CB Music Studios. They offer a wider list of instruction, including
lessons in clarinet, sax, flute, cello, trumpet, ukulele and mandolin. In
addition to this, they also have partnered with local charter schools to become
their local vendor for their music programs. This, coupled with a fairly
intensive theory-based education style, makes them a solid producer of both
sides of the music instruction game.
Despite all these differing ways these places teach their students, they
do all have something in common: the high quality of their teachers. They play host
to musicians who gig regularly and have immersed themselves into what it takes
to be a working musician and what to bring to the table, in terms of live
performance. IMI has local musicians like Matt Pinder, and his brother Mike Pinder
all have years of gigging under their belt. As well, they have Paul Lucia, who
has the benefit of both plenty of live performance experience, and a plethora of
classical music training. Vocally speaking, they also have Pamela Shankar among
their ranks, who has sung the national anthem for the Sacramento Kings multiple
times, and sung regularly with her father’s band, the Amir Shankar Band, and
the Serra College Jazz Choir.
Kevin Prince also is chocked full of performing experience not only from
his Drummer101 videos, but his excursions in the local music scene with multiple
bands over the years. Whether in the studio or on stage, he never fails to
deliver the quality of drumming he teaches.
All 3 studios also, at one point in time or another, have had Humble Wolf
members Jayson Angove, David Albertson, and Christian Winger among their
teaching rosters. These three know how to convey their passion for playing
perfectly, and have experience to back it up by playing with multiple other
bands as well, across all genres. Even across to other instruments, some of
which I didn’t even know existed or could be played in ways they play them.
Okay, back to my original point: Baseball.
One of the main reason players benefit from time in the minors is their
coaching staff. Every minor league affiliate has former big-leaguers coaching
these young, up and coming players. Not only providing them with the necessary
skills to play the game at their peak, but how to conduct themselves as people
in the process. You can’t have a player succeed if he is going to panic every
time a ball comes screaming his way. Learning from people who have been in your
spot for years, sometimes decades, helps shape you into an effective baseball
player.
Sometimes that’s not always the case but, more often than not, that what can
help you get to the majors. And even when you do get the call, you still have
seasoned ball players as coaches and managers helping you further more in the
majors.
This fostering mentality is exactly what students get with music education
at every place I mentioned above. It helps shape them into focused, well-rounded
musicians, as well as people. They get the benefit of learning from their seasoned
teachers (or coaches, if you prefer) and can help shape their musical future
for themselves with the high quality tools they have been provided.
Once these students get to the “Majors” in the local scene, they will be
better for it, having received their music education from these places.
One last thing they have in common, too: both these things sound much better with the roar
of an excited crowd behind them.
