Sax player dennis hits right note with webbased music school
A CASTLEBAR musician has launched a wed-based music school catering for students on a one-to-one basis worldwide, writes Tom Gillespie.
Dennis Wyers, from Snugboro, has been running the Melody College for the past six months and his pupils come from destinations as far apart as Mexico, America, Uganda and Ireland. They receive online lessons on a variety of instruments. The online classrooms at Melody College use the latest easy-to-use, HD web technology to let students meet face-to-face with great teachers, learning from the comfort and convenience of their own home.
Melody College director Dennis, a saxophone player with a degree in business management, explained: “The project was basically taking a physical music school and putting it on the internet so students can log in from where ever they happen to be. The idea is to create a place where you don’t really rely on teachers being in the locality in order to give lessons.
“I have been teaching music for 12 years. If anybody needs to travel for 30 minutes to get a lesson for 30 minutes, it does not make sense time wise. The college gets around that and it also means you are ready to play that moment and in the comfort of your own home. You can practice straight afterwards. It has all the services that a physical school provides with the added benefit of being in your own home.”
The school set up is exactly like a traditional music school. There are six teachers in all, based in Dublin. They are the main European team, but the plan is to have a US team and an Australian team as well because it is time zone dependant. All are qualified to a minimum BA degree in music, have many years of experience and were chosen by the school because of their warm, personal teaching style and their proven track record of helping students at all levels achieve their musical goals.
At the moment the demand is all flavours of guitar, Flamenco, classical, heavy metal and acoustic, as well as piano, saxophone and drums and he plans to expand that.
Dennis is involved in a lot of musical related projects with the Mayo Concert Orchestra and Music Generation Mayo who played in the National Concert Hall on Monday. He said: “We did a six-month project where I got a team of teenagers to come together and compose, and I taught them how to come up with their own material. They wrote five pieces and we performed them at the Linenhall Arts Centre in May. It was a fantastic success and they invited us to play at the National Concert Hall.
“I am really interested in getting people together and enjoying themselves through music.”
Dennis can be contacted on (086) 3204175.