Piano Lessons in Frankfort, IL

Instruments: Piano Guitar Bass Guitar Synthesizer Keyboard Electric Guitar

When did you decide to become a professional musician? Was it a gradual decision or was there a defining moment for you?
While there wasn’t a defining moment I just always knew music is what I wanted to do for my entire life, growing up around it just stuck it in my head and it became this innate want and need to pursue music professionally. There’s nothing like the feeling of performing music live and sharing something you worked so hard preparing and seeing how it resonates with the people listening. If I had to choose a moment it was probably the first time I actually played live and just the rush of adrenaline and the look of the crowd is addictive, music truly connects with people in a way nothing else does, and I wanted to be apart of that.

If you play more than one instrument, how did you decide to start playing the second? (Or 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc)!
I started playing piano before anything else which is what first made me fall in love with music, then as I got older I drifted towards bass guitar and then I decided why stop there?! Why not learn as many instruments I can and expand my knowledge of this art I love so much. So I started learning guitar on my own then I started singing more and more and then started getting into recording music and the production of it and training myself to be a mixing/mastering/recording engineer which is another huge passion of mine outside of just playing music. Recently I actually bought a mandolin and taught myself simply as a why not because now for any music I write if I ever need a mandolin it’s something I can play, I also did this with a lap steel guitar and a launchpad pro and the list goes on and on. There’s so much music in the world so why limit yourself to one part of it?!

Why did you choose your primary instrument?
My dad actually helped me pick out my first bass at 9 years old and to be honest I don’t remember exactly why I went with bass, though there’s something about the deep, rich tone of a bass that really resonated with me. When going away to University I considered going in as a voice primary or guitar primary but decided on sticking with bass and am so grateful I did, for electric bass is still a relatively new instrument, being invented in the 50s so there’s still so much to discover about it, as proven by the truly amazing players we see making ground breaking revelations in the way a bass is played, such as Jaco Pastoriuz, Victor Wooten, and bassists alike.

When will I start to see results?
When it come to music you get what you put into it, I believe if the student practices an appropriate amount of time results can be seen within weeks, but I believe it’s important to keep in mind that it takes time and practice to become a great musician, hence the old saying “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” However, if the teacher creates a fun learning environment I believe results will come quicker because when learning is made fun it doesn’t feel as much like learning and therefore you learn better, faster, more efficiently.

Did you have a teacher that inspired you to go into music? How did they inspire you?
I was truly lucky to grow up in a very musical family, stemming from my dad having a masters degree in classical piano performance and hearing him play everyday while growing up. Along with my dad i have two older brothers who are great musicians as well and I got to see them play in bands and tour the country over the years when I was younger, which only made me want to play music more and more because it was something we shared as a family, so at 13 I started playing in bands and learning as much as I could about music. I was inspired everyday by being surrounded by music in our house and that’s something I’m truly appreciative of having.

What advice do you have about practicing effectively?
Make it fun! The best way to practice is to find a way to make it fun, for example scales are not the most fun to practice, but something I do is put on a metronome and instead of playing the scale as straight 8th notes or quarter notes I will mess around with the rhythm and “groove” with the scale so it feels and sounds more like music, and not just an exercise. Also important is to practice different techniques while practicing rather than going through the same exercises for an hour straight, such as spend 10 minutes going through scales and then switch to arpeggios, or sight reading, basically whatever you can do to keep practicing from becoming mundane.

Read More