Staten Island School of Rock: Smart About Music

GREAT KILLS, STATEN ISLAND: Innovation isn’t all about Web startups and seizing the spotlight. With his eye on multiple generations of musicians and music lovers, Mike Grande likes making things happen from borough to borough.

At SI School of rock, there's a lot to learn.

The Staten Island School of Rock that he established in 2004 is a forward-thinking educational facility for students of all ages learning guitar, bass, drums, piano and voice. Reflecting Grande’s dual commitments to the guitar and to getting young people excited about playing music, SI School of Rock is a place where ideas, ideals and smart business intersect.

How did you first get into music education? What made you a motivated music teacher, and interested in taking it beyond simply giving lessons at a music store?
When I was ten years old my dad took me to a guitar lesson in Brooklyn. The teacher sat me down, handed me an acoustic guitar and a Mel Bay book. It was awful. He told me in a few months I’d be able to play “Reuben Reuben”. Needless to say I quit before I was able to play the song.

Five years later, still yearning to learn to play the guitar, I found a guitar teacher whom I would take lessons with for almost seven years. My lessons were based on what I wanted to learn, not what my teacher wanted me to learn. So after a year or so I began teaching others how to play.

The key to my teaching success was to teach what the student wants to learn — not what the teacher wants to teach! I knew if I would follow this approach I couldn’t fail. I was able to teach music theory, reading, scales and chords based around the songs they wanted to play. It was immediate gratification. Most of my students would start their own band within a few months of taking lessons.

That makes sense. In addition to your experience, it sounds like there were other intrinsic abilities you had that made you gravitate to teaching. What are the special mental tools that teaching music takes?
The most important tool any great teacher needs to have is the ability to “connect” with their students.

I’ve met hundreds of “great” guitar players that would never be able to teach. If you cannot relate to a kid playing an instrument, or put yourself in their shoes knowing how difficult and frustrating it could be for them, you’ll never be a good teacher. I tell my teachers who work for me all of the time: “All of your students come to you for lessons because they like the way you teach. You don’t have to be a great guitar player to be a great teacher”.

It’s a good philosophy. So why did you take that beyond simply teaching lessons in a music store, and starting something large-scale like the SI School of Rock? What does it bring to Staten Island?

A very musical reception.

Coming from Brooklyn, I still maintained some of my student clientele — my students would come to my home on Staten Island and take lessons. But many of them were unable to make the trek out to Staten Island, so I found a job teaching at a local music store. You know the type: instruments in the store and guitar lessons in the storage area.  I believe all of the music stores on Staten Island teach that way.

When I started teaching there, I was told to start out all of the students on Mel Bay books and acoustic guitars. At that point I suggested I stick with my own method of teaching. My lessons consist of a PC running Sonar, and electric guitars into a mixing board. This was quite different from the oversized acoustic guitar used by the students coming into this music store for lessons. The owner agreed to try out my method, which was to give each student a CD of backing tracks to play over, over the course of the week.

The lessons were structured in such a way that if a student wanted to learn a song, I would teach them the guitar parts and program the drums, play some bass and burn them a CD to jam over for the week. This approach was so foreign to this music store owner that he thought I would fail!

How’d it go?
Needless to say, within a month I had more students than any teacher. Students were all buying electric guitars and forming bands! It was as if someone woke these kids up and said, “This is what playing guitar is all about.”

(Eventually), I decided to leave and open up the Staten Island School of Rock. Adam Reich, my most loyal and talented student, who had followed me from Brooklyn to Staten Island had still been coming for lessons. So I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: If he wanted to teach guitar, based on my approach, I would open up a school for him to teach in. He agreed, and the Staten Island School of Rock was born.

What kind of experience do students in the SI School of Rock have?
The Staten Island School of Rock hosts live performances. We encourage everyone to participate, and we have the teachers and students perform their favorite songs in a live concert. We’ve been doing this for almost three years. It’s amazing to see the progress of a student who started with us three years ago. I think it’s also important that the parent sees their child play live. Many music schools don’t offer these types of performances, and usually the parent never gets a chance to see how talented their children really are!

The ability to record each lesson and teach our student how to write and record their own songs really separates our school from the others. When a student decides they want to write their own song, our teachers are able to teach them the entire songwriting process.

What are the Band Camps? Is this like when I played quad toms in high school before football season kicked in?

Adam Reich was Mike Grande's first hire.

The Staten Island School of Rock also offers summer Band Camps. This is the first camp on Staten Island to bring together musicians who have never played together before, to write their own song, rehearse it, arrange it and produce it.

Week Two; the band focuses on recording their song, and the entire recording process. For two weeks you see how this brand new band writes and records together. The parents are completely blown away — they usually never believe it was their son or daughter on the CD.

This also builds the confidence of the students as well. The feedback is always positive, and it’s a real ego-booster for them. It’s something they are all really proud of. This would never be the success it is had it not been for the incredible teachers running the band camp.

We’ll be offering recording training as well. The Band Camp’s session is recorded on Cakewalk’s SONAR — we currently equip all of our teaching rooms with SONAR. Incorporating SONAR with the band camp will help the students recognize the recording process a little better since they are taught with the same format.

You told me you have some specific criteria for the teachers/faculty that work at SI School of Rock. How do you decide who gets a position at the school, and what are all the different instruments and topics that they teach?
As far as guitar teachers go — the majority of our students are guitar and bass players — I only hire teachers who have taken years of guitar lessons from me. This guarantees me that every student will get a quality lesson.

Mickey King, who started taking guitar lessons with me at age twelve, runs the Staten Island School of Rock. Mickey took lessons with me for years. He has become one of the most versatile guitar players I have ever taught. Mickey is a guitarist who wanted to learn everything about music. Our lessons were primarily based on theory — Mickey interpreted each lesson with his own approach and just took off. He has been managing our Great Kills location since it opened. Mickey is a natural and one of the most-loved teachers at the Staten Island School of Rock. He also went on to get a degree in Music Business from Hofstra College.

Mickey King is a big force behind the SI School of Rock.

As far as drum teachers, piano teachers and voice teachers go, they are all hired based on their reputation. Having teachers and players like Adam Reich and Mickey King, they have a lot of contacts in the music scene. I rely on them to help me find the best teachers available to teach.

That’s quality control. On the other side, how have you seen the expectations and needs of your students change over the last few years? In turn, how is what you need to provide them with evolving?
Yes — most of our students end up forming their own bands. At that point, the students rely on the expertise of our teachers to help them with songwriting. Because our students are taught with such a broad musical background, no band sounds the same. Helping each student with their writing, performing and recording is usually how they “evolve” into a musician. Fortunately we have the facility to have them learn the process of recording as well.

Recently, Mickey had come up with the idea to start a “Staten Island School of Rock Band”. Every Saturday Mickey holds rehearsals for them and teaches them how to perform as a band, and prepare them for a lifetime of gigging.

What’s rewarding about running an educational endeavor like this? And what makes it tough?
The most rewarding thing for me is watching my students become teachers. Watching a student, who has never picked up an instrument before play live on stage with a band is priceless. We have a six-year-old student named Timmy: Timmy takes the stage as if he has been doing this for 50 years.

Watching these kids develop into real musicians is the most rewarding part of owning a music school. But again, I can’t stress enough that having phenomenal teachers are the key to our success. If I may, I’d like to name the teachers who are responsible for making such a tremendous impact on these kids: Adam Reich, Mickey King, Kelley Olson, Dima Shnaydman, Dani Bauso, Mike Testa, Chris DeSalvo, Bill Gagliardi and Phil Triolo.

The toughest thing about running a music school is keeping up with renewals. As a small business owner I can only pay teachers when their students pay us. There are weeks where some of my teachers need to wait on renewals before they get paid. It’s unfortunate because my teachers put their heart and soul into their children. All they ask is to get paid for it. That’s the toughest part about this business.

You’re a multi-faceted music industry entrepreneur. Who’s another music business innovator you can name that you think does a particularly good job, and why?
Oddly enough, my true inspiration comes from Walt Disney. Although not a musician, Walt knew the true power of music, and the importance of music in film. Like Walt, I feel that if you are going to do something, then you’ve got to do it right.

For example, I don’t believe you should give music lessons in the back of a music store, somewhere next to the storage closet. Our music schools are exactly that — (schools). We have custom rooms that have computer workstations to assist in teaching. True weighted keys for piano lessons, a real drum set as opposed to practice pads, amplifiers and electric guitars. Our rooms are all big enough to accommodate other musicians in the event a student wants to play a song with another musician or student.

Is this an only-in-NYC story? And what makes making this work in Staten Island particularly interesting for you?
What makes this business an only-in-NYC story is the approach to teaching: NYC is so diverse, and you can see that whenever a new student signs up for lessons. We have people coming in wanting to learn so many different styles of music. The culture in NYC is unparalleled.

I believe Staten Island has the greatest number of children out of all five boroughs. We see a lot of children come in with their parents, who generally stay and watch the lessons on a weekly basis. The parents are an excellent foundation for our students. Many times the influences of the parents play a big role in what type of music the student wants to learn. Very often, parents take lessons with their children. This all goes back to our teachers — to have a staff of musicians that can teach any style of music to any student truly is a testament to how talented our staff is.

— David Weiss

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