Beach Music has been a well established part of the Beaches community since 1984. The warm and friendly atmosphere has proven to be an integral part of the studio's success. The teachers at the studio are all well educated, talented performers and composers. Lessons are tailor made to suit the wants and needs of the students, whether it's preparing for Royal Conservatory or university entrance exams or just learning the basics to have fun.

Press Article

Big Sounds in a Small Town Studio

Beach Metro News article, 1998, by Pat Devlin

Very few people are completely without musical talent - and fewer still are truly tone deaf. That’s the considered opinion of Scott Cameron and Andrew Donaldson of the Beach Music Studio, 1928 Queen Street East. For the most part, they say sympathetically, those who believe themselves to fit these descriptions have simply been discouraged from learning and developing their natural ability.

Opened 14 years ago, the studio now employs 10 full time and part time instructors, all but one of them with a music degree. Expertise is vital but because a sense of community is also vital, says office administrator April Cameron, hiring is carried out on a basis of personal knowledge and by committee decision. Every instructor is also a performer, independent of the studio, usually on several instruments. Teaching and playing are complimentary, experience shows, and satisfaction levels are higher than salaries.

A very encouraging approach is taken at the studio to help students overcome their inevitable self-doubt. Staff bend over backwards to motivate their charges and a high proportion of business comes from referrals. Ninety percent of students hail from the Beach, and range in age from three and a half to seventy years old, from truckers and taxi drivers to lawyers and architects, with one retired, handicapped individual using lessons therapeutically.

Prospective students start with a no-charge interview, during which applicant and staff question and evaluate each other. Lessons are based on mutual acceptance and are always on a one-to-one basis. Beginners are advised not to buy their own instruments, but rent until their interest in lessons is confirmed. There’s no point in buying an expensive guitar, goes the reasoning, if a student’s fingers can’t bend to an F chord.

Deliberate fostering of a sense of community in the studio seems to have struck the right note. There is an atmosphere of relaxed enthusiasm and students respond accordingly. Pleasantly old upstairs rooms in a typical Queen Street commercial building add gentle comfort to the surroundings. So comfortable, in fact, that students have been known to drop by at odd hours just for as visit.

Otherwise, and at other times, such habitués might be engaged in vocal, piano, guitar or bass lessons. And the feeling they impart, all in all, is that Beach Music fits easily into the small town called the Beach.