Rosie's Music Studio
Private Voice & Piano Lessons
About Me
Hello!
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I have been playing music and singing for as long as I can remember. My mother is a piano teacher so I grew up listening to piano and I started lessons with her when I was 4 years old. I learned through the Suzuki method, so I was constantly listening and singing along to music. I've performed solo, competed, performed in duets and trios, accompanied singers...been the singer someone else is accompanying...often I do both at the same time.
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While I focused on piano I also sang in choirs, plays, camps, etc. At age 14 I started taking private voice lessons--I had decided that I was serious about it, and ready to trade in my private cello lessons for voice lessons. I studied voice all throughout college covering opera, musical theatre (what I'm most passionate about), jazz, and pop. I've performed in multiple choirs, musicals, cabarets, and a cappella groups.
Philosophy
I began my teaching career when I moved to Los Angeles after graduating from Illinois Wesleyan University. I have consistently taught both my own private students as well as students for a music school in Woodland Hills. I have taught students from ages 3 to 40 +. Each lesson I teach is different depending on what the student responds to best and what excites them. I aim to engage and challenge my students, but my ultimate goal is to help them enjoy and experience music.
That said, it does take a fair amount of discipline to get to that point. I am firm about practicing and encourage parents to be involved in the student's daily practice. I have seen so many students become frustrated with music when they are caught in a cycle of not-practicing. It goes like this:
The student doesn't practice --> the student doesn't play or sing their piece correctly in their lesson --> they feel frustrated and discouraged --> so they avoid practicing --> repeat.
When students get stuck in this cycle they aren't able to enjoy music--which was the whole reason they started lessons in the first place! Disciplined practice and enjoying music go hand-in-hand and are contingent on one another.
Piano
Piano lessons with me will cover 3 main things:
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Theory - reading music, rhythms, etc...all the building blocks that make up music.
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Technique - taught with warmups, to be incorporated and reinforced in pieces.
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Musicianship - how to play a piece of music expressively!
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While each lesson is tailored to each individual, a typical lesson will begin with a warmup, incorporating both technique and theory; next we usually move on to the pieces that the student is working on. Students often work on two at once--one is in the process of being polished and the focus is musicianship, and another will be new so the focus will be on the mechanics and make up of the piece. At the end I like to wrap up with theory, which is usually a written assignment out of a theory book.
During the lesson I takes notes on a Daily Practice Sheet template, writing down each item we covered and leaving detailed instructions on how to practice (I'm a big fan of isolating trouble spot in order to tackle them--divide and conquer). This sheet is an invaluable tool for the student's daily practice. Most of the time students know that they need to practice but not how to do so effectively. The sheet also has a place for the student to check off each time that they practice which improves their accountability. It is a vital tool for the parent, the teacher, and most importantly, the student.
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You will develop the technique, theory knowledge, and skill to explore other genres you are interested in, and I am happy to help with that! Whether you're interested in pop music, jazz piano, or writing music, classical training is the groundwork.
Voice
My goal for my voice students is the same as my goal for my piano students: to be able to enjoy and experience freedom with their music.
A sense of freedom is essential to singing. The last thing a singer wants to feel is constrained and limited. This requires strong and consistent technique--technique that will keep your voice healthy and strong no matter the genre you're singing! I work to open up the voice so that eventually my students will be able to sing however they want--to go from singing opera to, five minutes later, belting out a pop song or a musical theatre ballad.
Here's a little bit of my background in singing and where my passion for vocal technique and health comes from...
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I've always known that I had a very high voice--it just came naturally. My voice was perfectly suited for soprano arias (which I have done quite a few of), but my real passion was musical theatre. Unfortunately the range and resonance that I heard in musical theatre did not come as naturally to me as the soprano arias. So I focused on classical. Once I got to college I met a voice teacher who changed everything. She challenged my perspective (that my voice was "limited") and worked with me to expand my voice. It was like I had only used 25% of my voice before and was suddenly discovering the other 75%. The freedom to sing what I wanted became a huge source of joy for me.
My aim is to do just that with my students--help them find 100% of their voice. In order to get there though, it takes a lot of discipline and work. Like piano, I encourage daily practice. Your voice is made up of all the muscles in your body, and muscles need to be trained properly on a regular basis to taught how to best serve the voice.