Texarkana Gazette 8-23-09 by Aaron Brand
So you want to be a rock star ...
Texarkana Rock School helps music students learn to play well with others
By: Aaron Brand - Texarkana Gazette -Published: 08/23/2009

With a look of concentration and relaxed enjoyment, a young guitarist named Evan works on the distinctive guitar lick from the Blind Melon song “No Rain.”

Bandmates on the showroom floor at Mic’d Music hit their power chords, pluck a bass line, sing, and slap a drum kit. They’re learning to rock out—that is to say, play music as a band member, not just as a solo performer.

This jam session of sorts is part of a new idea for music lessons at Mic’d Music in Texarkana. It’s Texarkana Rock School.

For four days, young musicians spent about two-and-a-half hours each night learning to play well with others. That means getting the rhythm and timing right, gaining the confidence to play a whole song, and listening to how their sounds merge (or occasionally don’t mix well) with others.


By the end of their third night together, Anna, Cameron, Dylan, Evan, Greer, Lincoln, Spencer and Josh are accomplished enough at working in sync that in the first run through “Back in the U.S.S.R.” they just about nail it.

The Beatles would be proud, and their teachers sure are.

The idea grew from the recital Mark Meadows (of the band Ida Myrtis) holds with his guitar students each year, said Michael Lee, owner of Mic’d Music. Lee wanted to get them together with his drum students, and that idea led to some planning and two recent sessions of four-night mini camps.


“Guitar players play with drummers and vice versa,” said Lee. Kids will also get a T-shirt and CD of the music they make together by the end of the week, in addition to the memories they make while playing rock star with the group.

Meadows said in the future he and Lee want to set up a gig for the Texarkana Rock School graduates. “Hopefully we’ll have multiple groups that come out of these nights,” Lee said, hopeful the kids will want to keep working together.

During the night the kids are arranged in various groups, working different instruments or singing. “These young kids are just up there rocking out,” Lee said.

While one band plays a chosen song, the other kids watch. Usually it’s three guitar players, a bass player, singer and drummer playing together at one time. Meadows said with the guitar students he has, they otherwise don’t necessarily get the practice of playing with someone else.

“The closest thing they get is playing along with a CD,” he said. But with Texarkana Rock School, they get plenty of time to play as part of a band.

“Right when they get here one of the key aspects, especially for a guitar player, is setting your volume. You’ve got a volume knob on your guitar and you’re really listening to how loud you are compared to this guy and compared to this guy,” Meadows said.

It gives an understanding about how to get the right sound mix, so when the young musicians join up and work as a group they may just start off playing some chords and seeing how they sound. To be a good musician, you have to listen.

Lee, Meadows, and special guests will also perform, giving the fledgling rockers a chance to see how a whole song fits together.

The students approach songs by working first on their individual parts and then playing as a whole group, song by song. On this particular night, the first tune up is “Born to Be Wild,” and the kids’ energy soon matches that displayed by veteran rockers Steppenwolf.

It’s the kind of song that makes these youth feel like real, serious rockers. (During the lesson, Meadows pledges they will do the Alice Cooper classic “School’s Out” sometime.)

Speaking to one guitarist, Meadows gives a tip on the Beatles song and its guitar riffs. “When they come up, they’re gonna come up like a flash,” he said.

When you’re playing with a group, there’s no pause button, Meadows and Lee said. You have to play through and keep going even if you make a mistake.

“It’s all real time, so they start to understand that other people are depending on them to do their part as much as they’re depending on other people to do their part,” Lee said.

What the kids (aged 8 to 15 in these two sessions) are learning is the band fellowship they can forge together. During the night’s lesson they receive a lot of praise, even from each other.

“Continuity of playing in an ensemble piece, they’re really learning that—that you don’t stop and if you mess up put it behind you,” said Meadows.

He said when young musicians play on their own, they may not get the feeling they’re actually playing a song. Add in to the mix a singer and a drummer and then the whole song comes to fruition.

For example, a guitarist may only learn three different chords for a song, but in concert with others those chords become an integral part of the whole.

“The arrangement is really what I think has been the magic part of it, just letting them see how things all fit together to make it work,” Lee said.

He and Meadows plan to use this approach in their lessons going forward, perhaps as a quarterly program starting in the fall. These sessions were a way to gauge interest in this approach and, judging by what they’ve seen, the rock band approach should be a permanent fixture, said Lee.

And it’s also a way to keep people interested in continuing to play an instrument, he said.

The slogan for these rockers at Texarkana Rock School? “Don’t just learn to play, Learn to ROCK!”

Even at such young ages, they can truly rock the house.
Contact us now to be part of the next session!