UPCOMING HOLIDAYS:
THANKSGIVING BREAK - 11/23 to 11/25 (CLOSED), WINTER BREAK - 12/23 to 1/5 (CLOSED)
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WE ARE
OPEN
MONDAY-WEDNESDAY THIS WEEK, NOV 20-22,
CLOSED
THURSDAY-SATURDAY, NOV 23-25 &
OPEN
ON SUNDAY, NOV 26!
Happy Thanksgiving! We are grateful for all of the teachers, parents & students that choose to spend time making music here at our little studio. It is an absolute joy to hear such a wide variety of music from so many different instruments & voices every single day. Thank you, to each and every person reading this!
Hard to believe, but we are only DAYS away from the big Winter Concert! Please keep reading for some big announcements for all participants.
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WINTER CONCERT - DECEMBER 3RD
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NEW & IMPROVED INFORMATION FOR STUDENTS PARTICIPATING IN THE CONCERT!
In an effort to make the concert day run as smoothly as possible, we are pleased to announce call times for students (subject to change, but as accurate as possible). Please visit the following link to view your assigned stage & call (arrival) time:
LOOKING FOR MORE INFORMATION FOR CONCERT DAY?
What to bring, what to wear, if there will be food available (yes, there will be delicious brick over pizza, cooked fresh on-site).
CLICK
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Recording yourself playing your instrument (or doing any activity) is a fantastic way to learn & improve. Watching a video of your performance allows you to observe yourself from an outside perspective, so that you can become aware of how you truly look and (most importantly, for us) SOUND! Once you're aware of your strengths & weaknesses through observation, you can experiment with new ways to adjust. This playful experimentation is the heart of effective practice! Because we care deeply that your practice time well-spent, we're offering a little extra push for you to try the video thing...
1ST EVER VIDEO CONTEST!
GRAND PRIZE: 50 RAFFLE TICKETS!
EARN 5 TICKETS JUST FOR ENTERING (LIMIT 2 ENTRIES PER STUDENT)!
ENTRIES ARE OPEN NOW,
DEADLINE TO SUBMIT IS 11:59PM ON THURSDAY, NOV 30.
WINNER WILL BE ANNOUNCED AT THE START OF THE RAFFLE DRAWING - don't worry, we'll even have your name pre-filled on the tickets, so you won't even have to write it 50 times.
The winner will be selected by the Music Time Academy Staff, judged for points on: Creativity, Performance Quality, Improvement of Performance (if you submitted 2 videos), Shares/Likes. For solo performances and/or group performances. If you're in a group, you may submit a video of you practicing on your own. If a group performance video wins, 50 tickets will be awarded in total, to be split between participants. Limit of 2 entries applies to videos of the same solo or same group.
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WIN 6 MONTHS OF LESSONS OR AN IPAD MINI!
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EARNING TICKETS IS EASY & FUN - JUST PRACTICE!
It's not too late - but it will be soon! Those prizes can be yours if you just get down to doing what you know you should already be doing, PRACTICING. Don't forget that we're giving away FREE LESSONS (6 months, 3 months, 1 month), an iPad mini, instruments (guitar, ukulele) and lots of gift certificates to local businesses.
Be
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STUDENT(S) OF THE MONTH(S)
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Congrats to the Banas girls, Eve & Emma! Each will receive not only priceless glory & endless bragging rights, but also gift certificates to Music Time Academy & Livermore Cinemas.
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Eve Banas
Instrument:
Piano
Teacher:
Nick LW
Grade:
11th
School:
Livermore High School
Student Since:
2012
Hobbies (besides practicing):
Film-making, Debating, Musical Theater
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Emma Banas
Instrument:
Voice (& previously Piano)
Teacher:
Tim G
Grade:
7th
School:
Christensen Middle School
Student Since:
2012
Hobbies (besides practicing):
Drawing, Computer Programming
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Since this newsletter is for the months of both October & November (the first ever double-month newsletter), we figured it would be appropriate to have our first ever double-honor for Student(s) of the Month(s)!
Fortunately, and conveniently, Eve and Emma Banas have been on our radar for quite a few months (if not years) because of their passion for music and their continuing musical growth. They first started lessons here over 5 years ago. The girls' passion, dedication, love of music and general positive attitude has stood out to the various teachers that have had the joy of working with them over their many years here. We hope that the girls appreciate this honor as much as we enjoy awarding it to them, finally!
A LITTLE ABOUT EVE:
Eve loves music. She has been playing the piano since she was 3 years old. Within the last few years, she has really developed as a musician enjoying not only playing the piano, but singing and dancing in LHS's Show Choir. She has performed in the school talent show for 2 years in a row, most recently in this past April's show.
A LITTLE ABOUT EMMA:
Emma loves being creative. She has played piano since she was 3, and has just this year decided to switch to vocal lessons. She loves composing and improving, and having a piano background has allowed her to sing and accompany herself! She recently performed in the Christensen Middle School talent show, singing a song with one of her friends.
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Michael Meagher
You might know him from taking your phone calls and setting up your make-up lessons, but throughout that Bay Area, Mike Meagher is known as one of the most solid, grooving bassists-for-hire. Mike averages several public gigs per week, with a variety of bands and musicians. It was my pleasure to interview him about his musical background and how he got to be the professional, working musician that he is today. I even got a little advice out of him too. Enjoy!.
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When did you start playing music?
I started playing bass when I was 10ish, since my dad had instruments around the house. I changed to guitar then stopped playing music outside of school for a while. I played Trumpet in 6th to 8th grade, then French Horn in 9th to 12th grade. In 9th grade I picked up guitar again, then started playing bass towards the end of high school, senior year.
When you started playing guitar again in high school, what were you playing?
I was mostly playing with dad, Grateful Dead stuff or songs that he or his friends had written. I had one band with 2 friends from high school called “xDead kSerious” (mostly songs they had written). We would turn on a drum groove on the casio keyboard & just jam over chord progressions.
Did you have any lessons? How did you you learn?
No guitar lessons. I would go to his dad’s house, but my dad would leave to see his girlfriend, so I would throw on a bunch of his old Grateful dead recordings and just play along, figuring out what Phil Lesh [the bass [player] was doing & why it worked that way. I would use music theory from high school & apply it, little things I found out along the way, what worked and what didn’t.
It was a lot of just fishing around for what notes worked and what didn't. I learned a lot by what didn’t, so you didn't do that again.
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Were you learning the songs note for note, trying to get it all “correct”?
[With Grateful Dead] I never learned them note for note, since it’s all improvisation. There would be a 2 chord jam back and forth so you try to just pick things out see what you like, then try taking it elsewhere and applying it to different things. I got more more music theory because you can figure out what chord progressions were, what bass scales work. Then walking through those progressions, what would not work so well, which ones were super cool and jazzy and which were less cool, but still jazzy.
About how much time would you spend playing music?
Holy moly! Playing with my friends, at least 4 hours each day 2 or 3 times a week, if we were lucky. Usually the band with my dad would play once a week for 4-5 hours. And then lots of time just sitting in my room strumming on my guitar or playing along with recordings on bass.
Did you go to school for music at all?
Went to chabot, I was about a semester away from my AA when I transferred to Ex’pression Center for New Media to do sound engineer stuff. I learned a lot, but ultimately found that I was learning to be on the wrong side of the glass. I was more interested in what they were playing rather than how to mic and record them, so I went back to Chabot & finished my AA.
[Mike currently plays with a lot of different bands & musicians. Some of the more well-known groups he plays with are Stu Allen & the Mars Hotel and Lonesome Locomotive, through which he has made himself a large (and always expanding) network of Bay Area musicians. How did did this happen?]
It’s a long chain of connections. I met a bass player in my dad’s band and although we stopped playing together, we remained friends. I later met his neighbor, Pat, who saw me play at an open mic at The Bistro. I was playing with a guy I’ve known since 3rd grade. We did a really silly set with a song called “Watermelon Love”. Pat was looking for bassist in Neil Young tribute band, and I guess he liked my bass playing at the open mic enough to ask me to join. Playing in the Neil Young band, I met a guitarist named Stu & stayed in touch through going to his gigs. It was the most ridiculous setting, but I guess you never know who's in your audience!
Another time, I went to McLaren park for a concert. I really liked watching Erin (the drummer) and went to his next show. I kind of made him become my friend. It took about a year before we played music together, but we casually did for a little bit. Then he met Mike, they started Lonesome Locomotive and pulled me into that.
How do you feel about playing with so many different bands and musicians?
There are advantages and disadvantages to both. I do like playing with a lot of different people because every different person you play with you can learn something from. Then you take that to the next person and there's just this big whirlpool of learning and playing together going on which is really neat. Also the variety of it. I can experiment with different styles, it's a fun thing to interact with different people!
And the disadvantages?
You can’t really put much focus into any one project and get super tight with a group . And if you're always out giggling you don’t have any time to practice and sit around and work on your craft because you're always gigging! There's not a lot of time for woodshedding.
If you could give any advice to yourself when you first started playing music, what would that be?
I don't know what I would tell myself to do. Keep taking random gigs? You never know who is in your audience, or what it might lead to. Don’t half-ass it. Apply your skills to the silliness and it’ll pay off. Mostly, have fun with it! I know it’s cliche, but it's a rough business. All you can do is keep doing it. It's a constant hustle.
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FEATURED CONCERT:
Who:
Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Niall Horan, Fifth Harmony, Logic, Khalid Khalid, Dua Lipa
Where:
SAP Center in San Jose
When:
Saturday December 2nd
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Taylor Swift is that rarest of pop phenomena: a superstar who managed to completely cross over from country to the mainstream. Other singers performed similar moves -- notably, Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson both became enduring mainstream icons based on their '70s work -- but Swift shed her country roots like they were a second skin; it was a necessary molting to reveal she was perhaps the sharpest, savviest populist singer/songwriter of her generation, one who could harness the Zeitgeist and turn it personal and, just as impressively, perform the reverse. These skills were evident on her earliest hits, especially the neo-tribute "Tim McGraw," but her second album, 2008's Fearless, showcased a songwriter discovering who she was and, in the process, finding a mass audience. Fearless wound up having considerable legs not only in the U.S., where it racked up six platinum singles on the strength of the Top Ten hits "Love Story" and "You Belong with Me," but throughout the world, performing particularly well in the U.K., Canada, and Australia. Speak Now, delivered almost two years later in the autumn of 2010, consolidated that success and Swift moved into the stratosphere of superstardom, with her popularity only increasing on 2012's Red and 2014's 1989, a pair of records that found her moving assuredly from country into a pop realm where she already belonged.
This sense of confidence had been apparent in Taylor Swift since the beginning. The daughter of two bankers -- her father, Scott Kingsley Swift, worked at Merrill Lynch; her mother Andrea spent time as a mutual fund marketing executive -- Swift was born in Reading, Pennsylvania and raised in suburban Wyomissing. She began to show interest in music at the age of nine, and Shania Twain wound up as her biggest formative influence. Swift started to work regularly at local talent contests, eventually winning a chance to open for Charlie Daniels. Soon, she learned how to play guitar and began writing songs, signing a music management deal with Dan Dymtrow; her family relocated to Nashville with the intent of furthering her music career. She was just 14 years old but on the radar of the music industry, signing a development deal with RCA Records in 2004.”
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Every Thursday:
Tim G (guitar) at Tiki Tom's in Walnut Creek
Every Thursday:
Michael Solomon at Live Oak Lodge # 61 in Oakland
Wednesday, November 22
Mama Foxxy @ Red Hat in Concord
Friday, November 24
The UnOriginals at Maggie Mcgarrys, SF
Saturday, November 25
Fast and Vengefully (acoustic) at Slainte, Oakland
Thursday, November 30
Professor Jones at Boom Boom Room
Timmy G at Tiki Toms
Friday, December 1
DUELING GUITARS at Pura Vida Sangira Bar, Livermore
Sunday, December 3
Music Time Academy Concert at the Bothwell Arts Center in Livermore
Thursday, December 7
Timmy G at Tiki Toms
Friday, December 8
Fast & Vengefully at Johnny Foleys SF
Saturday, December 9
The UnOriginals at Meenar, Danville CA
Thursday, December 14
Timmy G at Tiki Toms
Friday, December 15
Professor Jones @ Boom Boom Room
Friday, December 15
The UnOriginals at Maggie Mcgarrys, SF
Saturday, December 16
Fast & Vengefully at O'Flaherty's, San Jose 10pm
Thursday, December 21
Timmy G at Tiki Toms
Friday, December 22
Professor Jones at Boom Boom Room
The UnOriginals at Johnny Foleys
Saturday, December 23
Mama Foxxy at Vinnie's in Concord
Fast & Vengefully (acoustic) at Slainte, Oakland
Thursday, December 28
Timmy G at Tiki Toms
Sunday, December 31
THe UnOriginals at Maggie McGarry's - NYE Celebration!
CHECK OUT OUR TEACHER'S BANDS ONLINE!
Black Box Radio (Xavier on vocals/guitar)
Brett Hunter Band (Tim M on guitar)
Fast & Vengefully (Tim on guitar/voice, Belinda on fiddle)
LunaSol (Judy on violin)
Push (Tim M. on guitar)
Super Soul Brothers (Neill on guitar)
The Undercovers (Sal on keys, Xavier on guitar/vocals)
Zach Bateman & the Coal Minds (Judy, violin)
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From the Music Time Academy Administrative Staff:
Anna, Monica, Mike & Adam
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For every new private lessons student that you refer to Music Time Academy, enjoy a 25% discount from your monthly tuition! REFER 4 STUDENTS & GET A FREE MONTH OF LESSONS!
*Offer does not apply to immediate family members or to prior students re-enrolling.25% discount applies to tuition rate for one student only.
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