Best Music Lessons in Oklahoma | Developing a Love for Music
This content was created for Curtis Music Academy
Hi, this is Andrea with Curtis Music Academy here with another podcast about the joy and delight of learning a musical instrument. Now, Curtis Music Academy does offer amazing piano lessons, guitar lessons, vocal lessons and the best music lessons in Oklahoma. But today, I would like to talk with you about the subject of creating memories around music so I could just go back through my own childhood and list you off many memories of just enjoying life and enjoying music. So I actually came from a musical family, and so my mom majored in music.
My dad was also a really skilled cellist in junior high and high school and even played in a symphony orchestra that was a part of the region of the state where he lived. And so he was really great at that. And my mom also, when she grew up, she also performed with her sister at a very young age in front of various audiences, even on TV back in the 60s, the early 60s, and just performed at many different musical venues and festivals and different things. And they were kind of a big deal in that area where she lived at the time as well. And so there’s that love for music that runs in both sides of my family, and they enrolled us in piano lessons.
And growing up, music was always a huge part of what we did as a family. I started taking the best music lessons in Oklahoma when I was eight years old and it did not come naturally to me at all. In fact, one time I remember playing the piano in my first year of piano lessons and playing it completely wrong, and I could go into the details of what I was doing wrong. But anyway, I just realized, oh man, I’m not really playing this music right at all. But anyway, over time I started developing a love and a joy in playing despite my rocky start. But there were many memories created in my childhood and adolescence that connect a love with music like even riding in the backseat of the car before I even started to take piano lessons.
And we’re going through these countries. Roads in the windows are down and the music is playing. It’s one of my favorite songs and I just remember that as a memory, like something came alive in me. And it’s so simple. Just listening to the radio, we’re listening to a tape player because this was back probably in the mid 90s. So we still had tape players in our cars and it was just so fun. And so I’ve always loved music. And so any time that there was a performance or a music concert at school or a spring concert, I just loved those. I loved performing. I loved even things like memorizing, which not all musicians loved.
But I love to do anything about, like group reciting something, you know, how elementary schools do anyway. So I loved it. Even things like, you know, how most elementary schools love to do the recorder segment of their piano lessons, which are the best music lessons in Oklahoma. And so I loved that too. And a lot of times you can’t get the recorder to sound good. But I worked really hard that week on my recorder and it did. It sounded amazing. So it’s these little feeds that just plant memories in you of how much you love music. And so fast forward to, I guess, my junior high and high school years.
I was blessed because we actually moved schools and I got to be a part of a school who had a really good music program. And so they were very competitive. But also the school was relatively small. And so you got to be a part of anything you wanted to be a part of. And so you have to be a part of the choir and you get to be a part of the handbell choir, which not everyone is familiar with. But it was a blast, you know, in junior high and high school, when you get eighteen kids and they’ve all got their own, like maybe four or five handbells that you’re a part of and you have to play them at the correct time, which is really beneficial for those who take the best music lessons in Oklahoma
And, you know, you’re all playing one song together and it’s just so fun. And so we got to do that. And again, a lot of memories were created, a lot of love of music and to be honest, a lot of love of choral music and a cappella music because that school was really big into that kind of songs. So I really love that. And then later on, we moved schools and the music program there didn’t exist, but we actually got. To therefore create some of the different music that we did and I got to do like a whole I guess I got to learn and to be a part of a whole different vein of music, which was more like playing in a band with others and things like that rather than the traditional piano lesson genre.
And it was fun. We didn’t always sound great, but you know what? That is OK? Because it was fun to get together with people. Sometimes we were a little out of tune and everything like that, but so I could just kind of look back and remember all these different things. And it just sparks a love of music within me, just from some various stories from when I was a kid and when I was growing up. The cool thing is probably every single person can do the same. They might have been seven or eight years old in a concert hall when somebody was playing live music and they just fell in love with the music they were listening to. So that is what we love to do at Curtis Music Academy. It’s not just we’re not slave drivers with a whip saying learn this song during piano lessons. The does not produce the best music lessons in Oklahoma.
No, we’re actually developing within people an appreciation for music. And so that is really important to us, whether in guitar lessons or piano lessons or vocal lessons or any kind of lessons that Curtis Music Academy offers. So if you’re listening or reading this podcast, your homework assignment is to remember what makes you love music. Is there a specific memory maybe from when you were a child that you remember just falling in love with the music that you were hearing? So think about that this week and think about maybe other times in your life or adolescence that music really came alive to you. Thank you for joining us for this podcast. We will see you next time at Curtis’ Music Academy.