Hometown Music Gazette

Special Recording Means Special Musical Gifts!

Now is the time to record some special, custom music for your loved ones, family, and friends. Thanks to our fully equipped, state-of-the-art recording studio, we would love to help you put together a one-of-a-kind keepsake that will be welcomed and cherished for years to come.

Whether it's the grandchildren singing some Christmas carols for the grandparents, or even a garage band producing a cool album for friends, this is the perfect gift for the holidays.

We can record your music to your specifications, including multiple tracks, instrumentation, and arrangements, as well as CD graphics production. Call us today to set up your recording appointment!

Thanks for Your Business...Cash or Check, Please!

Although debit and credit cards are a convenience these days, we’ve got to level with you...those processing fees are killing us! If at all possible, we request that you make your purchases here by cash or check...and leave the plastic as a last resort. It will help us keep our costs down and our doors open - thank you so much! We appreciate your business...thanks for shopping at Hometown Music!

Why Play Music?

• Musical training actually changes the brain, enabling it to form the new neural connections needed for speech, language, memory, attention, and personal expression.
• Working with musical sounds helps the brain to adapt, thus enhancing overall learning.
•  Premature babies hearing 30 minutes of Mozart a day grew far more rapidly than those who did not.              

• Music education leads to improved achievement, attitudes, and behavior in the classroom.
• Musical training helps children with learning disabilities by helping them to focus better in the midst of background noise.
• Playing musical instruments enhances children’s cognitive development, builds their confidence and self-discipline, and helps them to make friends and enjoy relationships with others.
• The study of music helps children to master advanced math concepts, especially the proportional math (fractions, ratios, proportions) so important for advancement to higher level mathematics, such as trigonometry, analytic geometry, and calculus.
• Kids who study music tend to have a wider vocabulary and better reading skills.                                    

• Middle school and high school band students perform better on standardized tests than students with no instrumental music education.
• The number of years of instrumental music instruction correlates strongly with academic achievement in math, science, and language arts.
• Music participants receive more academic honors and awards than non-music students, along with higher grades overall.

• The most likely group of college grads to be admitted to medical school are music majors.
• College-age musicians enjoy greater emotional health, including less test-related performance anxiety, less alcohol abuse, and greater emotional stability.
• Music majors consistently score the highest in reading among all majors including English, biology, chemistry, and math.

• Arts education programs can help improve American education and better prepare people for work in the 21st century, say many top American business executives (“The Changing Workplace is Changing Our View of Education,” Business Week, October 1996).
• People suffering from excessive blood pressure experience dramatic reductions in hypertension by listening to classical, Celtic, or Indian (raga) music once a day on a regular basis. Playing an instrument or singing also helps reduce excessive blood pressure.
• Playing a musical instrument exercises the brain and helps fight memory loss.
•  Lifelong musicians experience less stress, less depression, and less loneliness.

A Friendly Reminder

Here at Hometown Music, it gives us great joy to help our students get the most out of their musical instruction. Weekly lessons are important to building daily habits of practice. It is this regular discipline of practice, along with weekly review, instruction, and accountability that has enabled students to enjoy the most success in mastering music in general and their instrument in particular.

We greatly value the time and resources that our students are investing in their musical education, and we honor the commitment they are making. This includes a regular, weekly lesson time agreed upon in advance both by the student and the teacher. In order to best serve all of our students, Hometown Music will continue to provide weekly private lessons only, for the current monthly rate of $100. We regret that we are unable to make exceptions to this long-standing policy, such as bi-monthly lessons or other non-weekly arrangements.

There will be a 3% upcharge for using credit or debit card

Thank you for your kind cooperation and understanding. Again, it is our pleasure to provide quality music education for the residents of our area, so that all may have the opportunity to enjoy making music for a lifetime!

Sharpen Up on Music Theory

If you're looking for a way to beef up your music theory skills, we have the perfect website resource for you! Found at www.musictheory.net, this wonderful website will take you through the basics of music theory, with a wide variety of self-paced tutorials to choose from.

Pick a Chord...Any Chord

No more searching for the Lost Chord with the fantastic website Chord House, found at http://looknohands.com/chordhouse/. Whether for piano or guitar, this website has it all. Just one click on the link above will take you to its homepage. From there, you can navigate through a number of different musical rooms according to your interests and needs.

In the Piano Room, you’ll find easy-to-read keyboard diagrams for all scales and chords in all 12 key signatures…and then hear them played.

In the Guitar Room (Easy), you can find any chord in any key, and with every possible fingering located up and down the neck of your guitar. If you’ve been wondering what an augmented, diminished, suspended, or even a major or minor seventh chord sounds like, this website allows you to choose a certain chord and then hear it played on a variety of guitars (classical/nylon, acoustic/steel, and electric jazz, clean, or muted guitar). All chords may be printed out or e-mailed directly to you.

The Guitar Room (Advanced) truly lives up to its name, with its wide variety of standard and alternative tunings (drop, double-drop, open, modal, minor, custom, and others) and scales (major, harmonic minor, melodic minor, chromatic, whole tone, pentatonic, octatonic, exotic/international and others). All scales can be diagrammed for the right or left hand as well as bass string on the top or bottom. As with the other two Rooms, you can listen to everything - quite educational and fun!

Have Fun While Learning More About Music

Ahoy, kids! Be sure to check out this fun website, http://www.learninggamesforkids.com/music_and_art_games/music_and_art_games_musical_notes.html. When you go there, you'll find all kinds of fun stuff to do, not only with music but with art, nature, science, geography, and math too! Just click on the various icons on the website and you'll be having more fun than you ever thought you could!