Who we are and why we do it...

At Anthem Music, we believe in the fundamental concept of freedom of thought through music, which is one of the most beautiful and uniformly recognized forms of art and expression found throughout humanity and history. That means we complete the entire musical circle where most programs keep players locked in the first phase. Our unique approach incorporates all three levels of the musical journey life-cycle: copy, create, and innovate.

Traditional music learning programs teach students by having them copy songs, styles, and techniques – something that is extremely effective when learning anything - from when we first learned how to talk, to eventually learning things like sports, how to drive a car, how we learn in school, and later in our business and professional lives.

But this is where most music programs end. Students learning piano or other instruments spend years with instructors learning ever more complex pieces of music, to the point they can read and play music with amazing efficiency, on the spot – but they are nothing more than glorified, high-speed copiers. They’ve never left the first phase of the musical journey life-cycle. Nothing from the heart, nothing from that deep part of us longing to be heard - to creatively express our emotions and the human experience through art. A fundamental flaw of the very definition of art.

At Anthem Music, we believe that studying and copying existing music plays a critical role in learning the mechanics of our instruments and provides the initial framework to develop the coordination needed to allow our instruments to become extensions of our hands.  It also helps us to understand styles and techniques that we wouldn’t understand solely on our own. The process of learning by copying never really ends, but takes on a diminished role as we advance.

No matter the age or experience level of our students, in addition to using traditional songs as a tool and track for learning, we begin immediately teaching the fundamental patterns underlying our western-style music. We dive into the very definition of art and sound, and how our major scales are manipulated to invoke feelings and reactions from ourselves and listeners. How alternative chords are created and utilized, and how different genres of music like rock, pop, country, blues, etc use slight variations of common chord progressions. We dive into frequency range balancing using different instruments as examples, common sequencing and pattern techniques, and incorporate exercises centered around scales, changing keys, and common chord progressions not typically prioritized in most music programs. Each lesson includes teaching two tracks – how to read (other sources included) and copy music, but just as important, how to think critically about their instrument and what they’re trying to create – how to play by ear and from the heart. Our number one goal is that we can go toe to toe with any traditional musical program that only teach students how to copy sheet music on the spot, but our students will also be able to immediately play anything they hear by ear and easily compose any style of western music based on what brings them the most joy.

And who knows, in time, they will become so inspiring and innovative that new students and other musicians will be copying them!