LIVE MUSIC CENTER IS ALIVE AND KICKING
Vacaville business has adapted and thrived during the pandemic
The philosophy of the Live Music Center in Vacaville’s Alamo Plaza Shopping Center is very simple.
“Music for everyone,” says Megan Tucker, co-owner with her husband, Bryn, of the Center. “You don’t have to be a professional musician in order to enjoy playing music. Everybody can play music. It’s one of the things I hear so much: ‘Oh, I would love to play music but I don’t have any talent.’ And the answer is, ‘You can absolutely play music. If you enjoy it, do it.’”
The Center, which was founded by Ken Stout and his family in 1987, employs 15 instructors who teach guitar, drums, voice, orchestral (violin, viola, cello), woodwinds and brass.
“And ukulele is really popular now and banjo,” said Tucker. “With the bluegrass revival and the folk music revival, it’s been really neat to watch those instruments come back into focus.”
Music students of all ages are welcome.
“My favorite students are the ones who are excited to be there,” said Tucker. “No matter what their talent level is, if they are excited to be there and they are excited to play music, I love teaching them. I love when adults sign up for lessons because they really want to be there.
“I have a new saxophone student who signed up who is in
his fifties. He never played saxophone before. His wife got him a saxophone for his birthday because he has talked about it for years. He has had three lessons, he has practiced diligently and he is doing great. I love when adults and especially retirees come in to pick up an instrument that they have always wanted to play.”
Tucker took piano and saxophone lessons at the Center before she left for college and got her music degree. She returned to the center as an instructor in 2004 and, when Stout decided to sell the center the next year, she and her husband took over the business.
“It still feels like it’s in the same family just because I’ve known him (Stout) for so long,” said Tucker. “I still maintain a pretty full teaching schedule. I love teaching. That’s one of the things that makes this business so much fun.”
Students start taking lessons at the center as young as four years old.
“We will pretty much start kids as long as they have a good grasp on numbers and letters,” said Tucker. “Then they are ready to start music.”
The center does both individual and group lessons but had to adjust during the pandemic.
“We were lucky in that we had just done two of our big performances (jazz band and rock band) right before the pandemic hit,” said Tucker. “When everything shut down, we were in the same boat as all the other businesses of having this turning-on-a-dime moment of how are we going to deal with this. We transitioned all of our teachers and students onto Zoom or Facetime within about 72 hours. It was a little rocky at first, but we managed and we never shut down our lessons.”
Group lessons online were tricky to navigate.
“That was a learning curve for us together as musicians,” said Tucker. “We transitioned some of our jazz programs into theory-based. So we would talk about improv and how to solo, so everybody would do some individual work through Zoom.
“With our rock band program, we figured out ways to get people to play together online. We had to cancel one of our big band shows that was scheduled for April. So we transitioned into a recording process. Each musician would record their part at home. Then they would send me all of their video and audio and I put them together and we made a collaboration which we then posted on YouTube.”
The center’s instructors came up with an ingenious method for online group sessions where computer speeds may vary, making it virtually impossible for everyone to play together.
“One person would be the leader and everyone else would mute themselves,” explained Tucker. “Everyone would play along to that one person so that it didn’t sound like anyone was lagging behind because you just play at the pace that you are hearing this person play. And then we took turns with who was leading and it gave us a chance to learn who really knew their parts and who needed more practice.”
The center also employed the chord accompaniment program of the music app iReal Pro. Tucker would send a .wav file as a backing track to the students and then listen to her students solo over the backing track.
Private music schools like the Live Music Center have become even more essential since the public schools cut back elementary music classes to once a week about ten years ago, said Tucker.
“That really put a nail in the coffin of the music programs,” she said. “They do still exist but they really need the community support… Private lessons were a really good supplement for the students who wanted it because they were falling behind or wanted it because they were too far ahead at school and needed something to keep them excited.”
The center resumed in-person individual private lessons last fall. Students must wear masks, socially distance and wash their hands before practice. The center has also resumed some group sessions in their largest room where they can keep everybody spaced. Singers and horn players, who cannot wear a mask, play in an isolation room with a speaker and microphone.
“They can’t necessarily see everybody but they can hear everybody and everybody can hear them,” said Tucker.
Currently, the center has one junior rock band (ages 11-14) and three teen bands (ages 14-20) that meet once a week to rehearse. They recently performed outdoors, including a gig in the courtyard of the Harbor Theater in Suisun with an audience. The bands also did a backyard recording with no audience that they posted on YouTube.
The center initiated its summer rock camps in 2015.
“We started with just a single teen rock camp and it has grown over the last six years into this enormous program which is super fun and I love doing,” said Tucker. “We are going to do the program the same way that we do rehearsals. People who can space out and keep their masks on will be able to play in a room together and those who have to have their masks off to sing or play, like saxophone, will go into isolation rooms. We have a big sidewalk area outside of our studio space, so for some of the rehearsal process we may put people outdoors.”
The center is planning a big performance for their teen rock camp groups at the end of the summer in Vacavilles’ Theater DeVille, where Journey Downtown opened for business in early April.
The center’s string ensemble is still on hold because of the pandemic, but the jazz group is rehearsing together and did a few outdoor performances in April with more scheduled for May.
“We’ve managed to keep the jazz band going very nicely,” said Tucker. “Right now it is a small ensemble, a jazz combo which consists of four rhythm section (instruments) and four horns. When restrictions are lifted more, we will put together a big band.”
The center also rents instruments. Currently, they are offering one free private lesson to anyone who rents an instrument from the center.
The center offers a songwriting class as well.
“That is available to anyone with even a minimum of musical experience because we are not going to get too deep into music notation,” said Tucker. “It is going to be more lyric writing and how to put together a melody.”
The center also offers private lessons in recording, audio engineering and editing.
“We have had musicians come in who want to learn how to use digital audio workspaces,” said Tucker. “And with the pandemic and so many things having to be recorded and having to go online, this has become a really good subject to learn. Even my saxophone and clarinet students who are still doing school band have come to me because their school band instructors are suddenly asking them to work in these digital audio workspaces so that they can do collaboration in school.”
The Live Music Center also sells instruments and does instrument repair.
To learn about all their services and events or to sign up for Summer Rock Camp, call 448-1511 or email Tucker at megan@livemusiccenter.com or visit livemusiccenter.com.
Myles Patrick, 8 of Fairfield plays Scott Joplin’s classic piano rag “The Entertainer” during an in-person lesson Tuesday from his music teacher, Megan Tucker of Vacaville’s Live Music Center.