Contact Us
Schedule Your First Lesson for $1 with the highest rated Odessa, Texas music school today, and become a part of our growing music community.
We look forward to getting to know you!
Get In Touch
Why Music Lessons Matter
In our world today, the idea of community has been significantly altered by the internet. What once was a simple concept has now become infinitely more complex and difficult to navigate. With the emergence of Facebook, YouTube, Google, and a host of other bourgeoning platforms, the subject of what comprises community is not easily identified. Fraught with all sorts of difficulties, people have learned the hard way how transparent their digital footprint has become, and how easily sensitive information is leaked into the public square.
It is still possible to participate in a healthy community environment, but one has to be hyper-intentional to do it. The alternative is to give up on relationships, altogether, and become a hermit, unplugged from all digital devices and going ‘dark.’ Believe me, at times this seems like the only way forward.
But community is still vitally important to our well-being. Interacting with others who may or may not agree with us on every subject, or being challenged to think in a different way, or considering a new idea is, ultimately, the only way we will grow. In our Music School Odessa Texas, we have a high standard for growth and community involvement.
Music is uniquely placed in culture to provide a ‘meeting ground’ for community. In all of our consumerism and technology, it seems like we have found ways to water-down the experience of community that music can provide; however, music, in its rawest form, is about physically gathering in relationships at a common location.
While we can all enjoy the same produced recording of an artist from anywhere in the world, gathering together with friends to sing around the piano, or worship together with family and friends is still a richer experience. Why? Because it was unique to that moment, with those unique relationships, sharing with one another something no one else will ever know. Instant interaction, musically, is expected for our students in our Music School Odessa Texas.
I remember looking up at our West Texas sky during dusk to stand in awe of this beautiful morphing-moment-by-moment sunset (and we have many of them here). I realized I was standing in just the right spot, at the right time, to appreciate this fleeing moment of beauty. I know this sounds egocentric, but I had the feeling that this moment was made just for me.
Such is live-performance in unique community. It is a brief gift of beauty, given to enrich those, and only those, who are present in a way that is profoundly meaningful.
The fact is: the more intimate the circle of relationships and community, the more real it is. It is simply healthier. Conversely, the less intimate the circle of relationships, the more dangerous and problematic it becomes, even though it seems deceptively benign.
The Bible boldly states, “A man of many friends comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” (Prov. 18:24)
Real relationships are not just one-way streets, they require mutual interactivity. Intimate relationships are highly interactive and involve a high level of commitment and consequence to the decisions made on the part of the participants. Another word for this is: Accountability. Accountability is something that we expect at our Music School Odessa Texas.
It’s easy to sit at a computer, surf the internet and have cyber-relationships. But it’s just as easy to disconnect, and no one seems the worse for it. There’s no accountability. If someone says something or does something you disagree with, all you need to do is shut your computer down or go to a different site.
By contrast, when you sit in a room with people having a disagreement, things are not so easy. Conflict, and resolution to that conflict, must happen! There’s no way around it. The importance of proximity in community is all-important. Even human life begins with physical proximity.
The less direct accountability a Community Circle provides, the more potentially dangerous it becomes. Fame is an illusion, in that it promises self-fulfillment and esteem, but only gives vague and inconclusive relationships.
When discussing what community looks like in making music, one must ask the obvious question: What is Community?
Community begins with agreement. Agreement, or harmony, with one’s self is at the core of this equation. When tuning an instrument, the closer a note gets to being ‘in-tune,’ the more dissonant it sounds to the tuning note. It becomes more intense, more strident. Then, when agreement happens, it’s like a calm sea with no ripples.
In acoustics, when two manifestations of the same frequency, in phase with one another, come together, they double their amplitude. In other words, when two sounds are ‘in agreement’ they create an exponential power.
Conversely, there is the principle of division:
“Can two walk together except they be agreed?”
(Amos 3:3)
“Can a throne of destruction be allied with Thee, one which devises mischief by decree?”
(Ps. 94:20)
“If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.”
(Mk. 3:25)
Disagreement and division is the place of destruction.
In acoustics, again, when two similar frequencies come together, yet are out of phase with each other, they will cancel each other out. This scientific knowledge has been used in military applications, such as the Stealth Bomber. Sound system engineers are very careful to make sure all the electrical signals to the speakers are ‘in phase’ so that ‘phase cancellation’ doesn’t happen in their system.
Agreement is the place of power. By extension, community is the place of power.
And by even greater extension, making music in community is powerful.
When an ensemble comes together to sing in a choral setting, or play in a string quartet or a symphony orchestra, there is an exponential power that everyone senses when they bring their own uniqueness into making music together at that moment. The sound made by each individual coalesces into the acoustics of the room, mixing and merging together in a way that creates a unique moment for that time and space which will never happen again the exact same way. Students in our Music School Odessa Texas learn to participate in making beautiful music.
Just like the fleeting sunset I experienced, the moment of beauty was meant for those present. Each person will take that moment with them throughout the rest of their lives and has become uniquely part of them. The beauty of that moment, however, doesn’t stop there. When does frequency stop? It doesn’t. It just keeps going. In the same manner, the experience each individual had in that community will be carried forward into new an unique expressions of that beauty in ever new combinations of community, exponentially.
This kind of music is truly powerful.
These are powerful lessons for the students in our Music School Odessa Texas.