Review of Music Lessons at Mom’s Music
Music lessons in Louisville at Mom’s Music
If you are looking for drum lessons for your child, or maybe something else musical, read on. There might be a good fit for your child at Mom’s Music.
Kids looking for music lessons in Louisville have options around town, sometimes at school, sometimes through a local business. My son started playing the trumpet in the fifth grade and delighted us all when he made the All-County band that year. He went on to play in Meyzeek’s awesome band program, but then the pandemic hit. While we were doing school at home he started asking for a drum set. I told him to practice his trumpet more and learn to play the ukulele and I would consider it. He learned the ukulele in four days. Stunned, we started making plans to get him a drum set for Christmas 2020, another instrument he excelled at immediately, which was followed by guitar and later bass guitar.
He’s been back at school in person for the last year at a new school, and his band teacher was gracious enough to allow him to play both trumpet and percussion. Now he’s off to high school next year and needed to learn some advanced percussion techniques to qualify to do the same there. We asked his teacher for a recommendation and he told us to see if Rob Edwards was still teaching music lessons in Louisville at Mom’s Music on Mellwood Ave.
We went into the store the following weekend and while I talked to the Music Director, Karen Miller, my son and husband tried out some guitars, bass guitars, and even a compact portable guitar.
We started percussion lessons the following Monday. Because he needed to learn a completely new instrument — marimba — in a few weeks for his audition, we decided to do lessons for an hour twice a week.
I was briefly disappointed to learn that no one had an actual marimba for him to learn on, but I learned that the techniques are transferable to Xylophones, Glockenspiels, and even drums and other percussion instruments. There is a marimba at school he can practice on and record his audition material on, which is great because those things are expensive and also huge.
Lessons take place in separate padded (for sound) rooms throughout the upstairs and a few downstairs off the main sales floor. Each instructor has their own room, so there are rooms that are for guitars, entire bands, and percussion, like our room. The doors have windows on them and parents can sit inside with their students, outside in the hallway, or downstairs in the store. I prefer sitting downstairs in the store because the chairs are more comfortable and they usually play good music.
We’re about three weeks in now and planning to continue these music lessons in Louisville another 4-6 weeks until he is able to record his audition music. Then we will reassess and see if we would like to continue percussion lessons for other techniques, such as jazz drumming, which they have covered a bit of already.
We have really enjoyed our time with Rob Edwards, our percussion teacher. Like many of the other instructors there, he is a professional musician and has a music degree from the University of Louisville. He is well-versed in many aspects of percussion, including several different instruments. Most importantly, my son likes him and is comfortable learning from him.
When the Music Director, Karen Miller, called me to schedule upcoming lessons, I had a few questions for her. For starters, what instruments do they teach at Mom’s Music’s Rising Stars Music Academy?
“We are guitar, bass, drum, and vocal-heavy because of our rock school band,” Miller says. “The perception of Mom’s music here in Louisville is being one of the top guitar sellers, but we also have plenty of teachers on staff that can do brass, woodwinds, I’m working on violin, we have several in the works to bring on staff, mandoline, ukulele. Basically, any instrument we can try to get in here, we do, and currently we have plenty of brass, a couple of woodwind instructors, all the strings like ukulele and guitar, and if we can’t do violin here, our sister store can do it in Jeffersonville, Maxwell’s House of Music.”
I’ve also seen some posters on the walls while I was there hanging out for a music lessons in Louisville program called Girls Rock, so I asked her about that.
“Girls Rock Louisville, they’re going through a name change, and I think it’s Out Loud Louisville now, they are a non-profit organization, and I am an alumni of that as well,” Miller says. “We’ve partnered with them to give a discounted lesson price for alumni and current campers, and we just gave them $1500 from the benefit show that we did in December. They focus more on women, girls, and gender non-conforming youth as well as youth that are less privileged. They are a non-profit that I support, and I’ve talked to my boss, Jeff, who owns the store here at Mom’s about partnering up with them and trying to expand more into bringing more females into the music field here and giving them opportunities that they’re not able to get on their own. We very much support their mission and try to help them grow in all those ways.”
As I sit in the store and watch the music students come and go, I notice a wide range of instruments and age ranges, from little ones who are maybe five with ukuleles to middle school and high school aged kids with guitars to adults with guitars and other instruments. So I asked Miller if they have a specified age range that they teach. Miller says that it depends on the kids and that they like to try to start around age five, but it depends on the kid and it depends on the instrument, noting they will teach anyone from 7-107. And for the younger kiddos, if they want to try an instrument but aren’t sure where to start Miller likes to recommend the ukulele because it’s small and inexpensive, though they do have smaller-sized guitars and bass guitars if someone would prefer to start there. Piano is another great starter instrument Miller will often recommend.
Music lessons in Louisville at Mom’s Music are available according to the individual instructor’s schedule, but based on the calendars I’ve noticed outside many of the classrooms it would appear that each instructor has availability at least 2-3 days a week at varying times, mostly in the afternoons and evenings. Miller says that there are no contracts, commitments, or upfront costs. The standard cost is $115/month for 4-30 minute classes a month, held weekly. There is a slight discount to do hour-long classes. They also offer rock camps and other programs.
Overall we have thoroughly enjoyed our time at Mom’s Music, and it’s highly likely we will return for music lessons for other instruments.
“Our slogan is Come Play, Be Happy. You’re welcome to play any instrument on the floor and try it out. And if you like it, [we hope you] take it home with you.”
What are your kids wanting to learn? We have a lessons page to help you connect with learning opportunities.