Owner Mike Grande first opened the school in Charleston in 2003 and quickly outgrew the space. Today, he runs two music schools and a recording facility called SOR Studios on the South Shore of Staten Island.
Grande first picked up a guitar when he was 8 years old. When he was 15, he stepped into a Brooklyn studio run by Kenny Lee, a guitar teacher with long hair and passion for music, and within hours Grande was playing Led Zeppelin.
“From that day, I never put down my guitar. My parents thought it was just a phase.” Twenty-three years later, Grande hasn’t outgrown that phase. In fact, he made a career out of teaching that unconventional method to his students, who eventually became the teachers in his own School of Rock.
The heart of his method is to teach aspiring musicians to play what they love. “I throw the book out the window. I ask them who their influences are…what they want to learn to play.”
Instead of teaching students songs like “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on an acoustic guitar that’s three to four times their size, Grande breaks out the electric guitar and has students anywhere from 5 to 70-years-old learn songs from artists like Green Day and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. “While teaching our students how to play, we teach them music theory, ear training technique and songwriting,” he explains.
“Within two to three weeks they are playing the music they love. Because we integrate recordings of each lesson at both of our schools, we are able to send them home with a CD complete with the drum track and the bass line so they can pop it in their iPod and practice…like karaoke for guitar.”
Behind the glass walls and inside the soundproof studios, the Staten Island School of Rock team teaches not only guitar but bass, drums, piano and voice lessons. Grande himself has been teaching for 23 years and even recorded his own instrumental rock CD (check it out at www.GrandeLand.com).
He personally trains his teachers for a minimum of 5 to 10 years. When he first opened his own school he was working at various music centers across Staten Island. “I said to my students: I will open a school if you will run it.” And thus was born the Staten Island School of Rock, a classroom where the students become the teachers.
Grande says his integration of a music school and a recording studio was a first of its kind on Staten Island. It’s a place where aspiring artists can learn the music, then create it and eventually lay down the tracks and record their own albums. Every year the Staten Island School of Rock hosts a Battle of the Bands competition. And new this summer, Grande is hosting the first ever School of Rock Band Camp, at which students will learn to become artists. “In Week 1, the band gets together and forms for first time. They will write their very own original song, arrange and rehearse it.
“Week 2 we head to our Tottenville recording studio and record their new song track by track. It is here each musician will learn how to record, mix and master their own music.”
Grande says some in his field worry that games like Guitar Hero are taking clients away from music schools. He doesn’t. “Because of those games, more kids are being exposed to music. That’s good.”
The best examples Grande gives of his ability to teach are his own kids. “Check out YouTube and you will see my 8-year-old son Sal playing the guitar and my 3-year-old son Matteo playing drums.”
Staten Island School
of Rock and SOR Studios
101 Ellis Street
Staten Island, NY 10307
718.984.6988
3948 Amboy Road
Staten Island, NY 10308
718.984.6988
www.SISchoolofRock.com
www.SORstudios.com
