December 2020 On - Ear Training and Peer Mentoring

As we were going along, we realized one or two of our composers really did not have the music foundation they might have needed to be a successful composer. Thus our Ear Training Program was born.

Ear Training was well designed for the first couple years. It taught music fundamentals for those who both were starting to learn to play and those who didn't play music at all, but were interested.

We taught chromatic solfeggio, sight singing, hand signs, storytelling, creativity, and beginning notation & rhythm. Two organizations helped feed this program: Los Feliz Charter Arts School and Young Musicians Foundation.

Zoom squares of the young kids and peer mentors in the Ear Training Program. Everyone is putting their fists to their chin to warm up. Caption reads: The best way to start your Saturday! Join the Inception Ear Training, Sight-Singing, and Music Theory Club.

I'm not going to say I liked getting up an hour early on a Saturday to deliver this program, but there were more than a few kids who responded to it.

Yes, there was a five year old the first year who asked me, "Teacher, teacher, what time is class over?" in the middle of every session. But there were others who glommed on to their mentors and flourished.

My friend from junior high and high school, Sergio, had a daughter, Elliana (15), who it turns out has a beautiful singing voice. She joined our ear training program to learn some of the basics and transitioned to the composition class really quickly. While on the other end of the age spectrum, one of our future Board members had a daughter who was four and was looking to find a music community for her. (She just moved up to the composing program last year and is so much fun.)

We found our stride when we started to hand off instruction to some of the Inception students, and we began our peer mentoring program.

I still strongly believed in our format... group lessons every Saturday, supplemented by private lessons in the middle of the week for each kid.

I will confess a very poorly kept secret. I don't do well mentoring beginners. So... Angela, Huxley, Christopher, and Huxley became our mentoring team. (They would be joined by Jason, Abby. and Justin in 2021.) And we found success for a few years.

Mid 2023, we wrapped Ear Training into our regular composition programming and referred kids to YMF for the very basics. But several students carried through with us.

Additionally, the Ear Training program served kids in Los Angeles who were low income. So although our composition program was spreading across the country, we still had a robust local delivery.