Schools teach kids music the hard way
Heavy-metal approach appeals to 'Guitar Hero' generation, owners say
By MARK AGEE
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
Behind a mix of headbanging and hair-twirling at the Creative Soul
music school in Watauga last week was a sound a lot bigger than the kids
making it.
Six 11-year-olds, some of whom had never picked up a musical
instrument before this year, were wailing Metallica's Enter Sandman,
a heavy-metal song that was released about six years before they were
born. The band's name is Tin -- a play on the word ten, because
that's how old the first members were when they got together.
"I like the classic stuff," said Payne Morgan, a guitarist
and one of the group's singers. "I've always liked rocking out to
it."
Creative Soul is one of a few music schools in the area using an
approach that might seem revolutionary to those who remember pecking
away at scales for hours during piano lessons.
"We ask what songs they want to learn and teach them that,"
said Casey Thomas, who opened Creative Soul in January 2007. "They
are so much more enthusiastic that way. Reading music and learning
theory and all that stuff can come later, after they've fallen in love
with it."
Different approach
Mike Mroz opened his For Those About to Rock School in Southlake in
2004, after his home lessons were drawing 50 students a week.
"I'd just teach them AC/DC songs, and they loved it," Mroz
said. He's the guitarist for Back in Black, a Dallas-based AC/DC cover
band that has developed a following. "If they like it, they're
practicing more and they can't help but get good. It's a lot different
from how I learned. You know, 'Here's your C chord. Come back next week,
and we'll do Kumbaya and Twinkle, Twinkle.'"
Several schools in Dallas are similar, and Keller School of Music
offers a garage-band class.
Both Creative Soul and For Those About to Rock focus on getting
students into bands so they can play together. They each claim more than
200 students, and Mroz opened a second location in Plano. Lessons at For
Those About to Rock cost $159 a month. Creative Soul charges $99 a month
for private lessons and $125 for band development.
Thomas and Mroz both said the students' music choices have been a big
surprise. "I thought I'd have to learn every new song that came out
so I could teach them, but they're coming in asking to learn Iron
Man and Sweet Home Alabama," Mroz said. "I had
three kids in a week wanting to learn Surrender by Cheap Trick.
"It's what their parents listen to, and it's [the video game] Guitar
Hero. Classic rock will never die."
Concerts, too
Both schools also focus on putting together shows for their students.
Mroz's students played at Main Street Days in Grapevine this month.
Creative Soul has a 16-band show lined up Sunday at 8.0 Restaurant and
Bar in Sundance Square in Fort Worth, including adult beginners and an
all-girl band.
The youngest group is made up of 8-year-olds who call themselves
Soldiers of Rock.
"It helps people's confidence when they play out at real
venues," Thomas said. "They can feel the energy of the crowd
and the music, and it motivates them to practice harder so they can do
it again."
Tin will be there. It will be the band's second gig. Its first was
last year at a pizza place that later closed. "That's purely
coincidental," joked Drew Duffy, the group's bassist and
sometimes-singer.
He swore that his throat didn't hurt from screeching out Enter
Sandman half an octave lower than he usually talks. "That's
how you gotta sing it -- so it rocks," he said.
For Those About to Rock School
985 N. Carroll Ave., Southlake
5017 Plano Parkway, Suite 400, Plano
817-442-9345
www.forthoseabouttorockschool.com
