The Tuned In Academy

NEWS & BLOG

No Summer Camps for Music? Have Your Kids Make their Own!

What if you empowered your kids to create their own groups?

We would be more than happy to help lead them and train them in how to rehearse a group and work with them on the material in our lessons. Oh that would be so much fun and you could do so many cool things! Various different groups, whatever you have in mind, rock, pop, chamber or extra, jazz! Let your imagination run wild! You could meet every afternoon at one of your homes or even in a local park! And then put on a little yard concert at the end of the summer!

We’re here to help you do that, totally! Let’s rock!

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Improvisation is not Just a Huge Part of Jazz and Music, but Life

Improvisation is not just a huge part of jazz and music, but life.
The students in our JazzLab are so good, so fun to work with, and learning so much! Yesterday was a unique situation with two key players (bass and piano) out for different reasons. But everyone showed up and did a great job of improvising not just in terms of improvising over chord changes but as instrumentalists and musicians in a group with a need to make some on the spot changes to arrangements and such!

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Songwriting in Action

There are so many unique and important elements of songwriting: the purpose of the song, the melody, the harmony (chords), the song structure and format, lyrics, verse development (how each new verse colors the chorus differently), rhyme, and so much more! Looking to learn the craft of songwriting? Jenna and Caleb are here for you in Olympia!

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The Power of the Flute

If you are looking to learn a fun and versatile instrument, the flute is a great choice. They are also small and easily portable/travel well so if you like to be on the move, the flute is a great choice. If you are here in the Olympia area, Brandy would love to work with you!

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Do Young Musicians Still Listen to Music?

Listening to great music is such a significant part of learning to be a great musician, I would say it’s almost impossible to make great expressive music without it. And regardless of the kind of music we make or desire to make, we are all a part of a tradition, a history, and a current community of music, I would suggest that to honor that tradition, we have a certain obligation to listen and know what others great musicians have done and are doing. 

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Audition Champions

Years ago, long before COVID, we had an annual event called Celebration of the Scales. It was a lot of fun. This is kind of like COS 2.0, even better, and involving more music, more fun, and more learning experience! Celebration of the Scales was an opportunity for students to come and demonstrate their hard work in learning their scales before their peers, the TIA community, and the rest of the TIA faculty. We had pizza and had a great time. Audition Champions takes this to the next level to include the sorts of things a musician would experience in an audition: Sight reading and a prepared piece or two. Students will take the mock audition on stage in front of their peers, in a fun and casual environment as always with TIA, and afterwards they will get encouraging feedback from us, we will all have pizza, and have a great time!

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Music is a Journey

Most of our students are with us for a long time. Many of our students practice, and many practice a lot and work really hard!

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Trust the scales, Practice scales, Take the wins

Scales can be a big win for you, that’s one of the reasons they’re so important. Just yesterday I had a great example experience of why scales are so important with a wonderful student, and not for the reasons that You might think! Yeah we extol the virtues of scales all the time because honestly there are so many virtues to learning scales and theory that we could do it forever.

But one of the reasons that scales are so important that I think a lot of people miss, is that scales are a big win for you!

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Piano is a Great Foundation

“Piano is a great foundation. It’s an awesome instrument and it’s a ton of fun. Once you learn how to play it can be a lifelong discipline, relationship, community builder, and source of joy and inspiration. It can of course legitimately also be a source of income for you as well if that’s something you really want to do.

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What Others Say...

“Sean-David is an excellent and patient piano teacher. He makes every lesson a fun and adventurous when it…

– Parent of KAB Kids Students