Music educator publishes book on reading musical notation
Music educator Adam Brown’s teachings on music have expanded outside the confines of a classroom setting as he recently unveiled his published work titled “Fundamentals of Reading Music.” Released last month, the book focuses on teaching the basics of reading standard music notation.
Adam shared that this has been in the works since 2015. He started writing and finishing his first draft during his last contract while working onboard cruise ships as musical director and drummer, which lasted almost eight months long. He added that writing a book wasn’t part of the plan but it was the search for the perfect kind that would aid him in opening BAM (Brown Academy of Music)—together with his wife Anna Fegi-Brown—that led him to write his own.
“I was searching for a book to use for the school. I never
found a book exactly as I wanted so that gave me the drive to write my own. I have been teaching music for more than 20 years so I used my experience how I was taught and how I taught over the years,” he said. “Then, I had to go through the editing process and I had other musicians from different countries and different instrumentalists go through the book to test it out.”
Prior to opening the performing arts school BAM, the Cincinnati native earned his Bachelor in Music Education degree at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas, then returned to Cincinnati to teach high school music with lessons including percussion, marching band, percussion ensemble, drumline and guitar. He later earned a Master of Science in Education degree broadening his knowledge in creating curriculum to meet the students’ needs, then ventured to working for Royal Caribbean International where he met his wife, featured singer Anna, who shared his passion to open a music school.
For as long as he can remember, he has always been fascinated with music.
“Growing up, we had a piano in our house and I would learn to play songs by ear. I would listen to music in television shows, commercials, on the radio, or in movies and then start teaching myself the song at the piano,” he recalled. “By 7th grade, I knew I wanted to pursue music as a career. I first started teaching drum lessons when I was only 15 years old. I was asked to teach the younger, beginning students. From there I decided to go to college for music education where I had to learn all of the instruments, and then eventually earned my Masters Degree in Education. During my Masters program, I specialized in curriculum writing, which really came to be useful when writing this book.”
When asked how it felt