Faculty

"As a singer, I can share a different perspective with students. Singers and drummers usually do things by ear. Drummers are dealing with rhythm, and a lot of times they say, 'Why do I need to know this stuff? I'm just a drummer.' But if you talk to famous drummers who write and lead bands and compose, it's a lot more."

"Growing up in Argentina after the dictatorship, there were not many resources in schools. I had some really good teachers, but music education was very sloppy. That turned out to be a positive, since I had to teach myself a lot of things I'd missed, espectially when I started teaching myself the vibraphone. That process has given me the sensitivity to see my students' missing links. I'm very sensitive to those things because they were in me at one point or another."

"My focus is to give good technique across stylistic genres, even to the more aggressive forms of r&b and gospel where people tend to burn their cords out because they only use the lower half of their register. But I want my students to have longevity and to use their entire vocal range. So I teach a specific concept of mixing 'head voice' with belting that I had to learn to do myself in order to sing these styles and not burn myself out. I tell them that learning to belt in a mix of your head and your chest is not an easy process; it takes discipline and practice and a lot of effort to make this cross happen-and make it sound stylistically appropriate, because that's important, too."

"A hit song is actually somewhat formulaic--the repetitiveness, the rousing section that leads us to that ever-so-hooky thing that we call a chorus--those things seem to happen over and over in hit songs, whether we like to admit it or not. It's not necessarily a good song from a musical standpoint, one that uses The Chord That Stops The Planet From Rotating On Its Axis; it's not that at all. I think one of the most difficult things to give students a grasp of is an idea of the dire simplicity of most of the music in a song.