This is the heart of our work.

The UMC program takes your desire to play, perform, or produce, harnesses your talent, and brings out your inner musical genius.

Our approach is different, and we’re pretty proud of the system we’ve developed to create well-rounded musicians. Modeling the Berklee Experience, you’ll participate in lessons, classes, and workshops that work together seamlessly to help you carry your learning into practice.

So you won’t just sit in a lesson room and then head on home. You’ll be engaged with peers, learn both the practical and theoretical principles, and build a foundation of understanding that will catapult your skills to a whole new level. And through our integrated performance program, you’ll have the opportunity to showcase your talent every single semester once you enroll.

From there? Dig into music & video production and promotion with the iOn Uptown crew. Get behind the scenes with the Tech Monkeys. Teach younger students through our STOMP outreach program. Or become a bona-fide rock star in SPG1.

Regardless of the path you choose, we guarantee you’ll learn the language of music, and become part of a family of people who share your passion.

All you need are big dreams and a willingness to work hard.

Private lessons

We offer individual lessons on guitar, voice, drums, keyboard, and bass.
Click on the images below for more individual lesson info!

voice

Guitar

Keyboard

DRUMS

BASS

Private lessons provide the first step in shaping you into an exceptional musician.

Our dedicated group of musician-teachers follows a proven curriculum based on modern music and grounded in traditional concepts.

You’ll work to develop proper technique, tone, posture, production, rhythmic memory, notation, and your musical ear. And your teacher will make sure you have a healthy dose of scales, chords, arpeggios, and musical theory, too. At the end of each lesson, you’ll be able to apply what you’ve learned to the music you love.

Through hard work, and with passionate encouragement from your teacher, your confidence will grow, shaping you into the dynamic musician the Uptown Music Collective is known for producing.

Regardless of your starting point, we’re excited to help you grow.

Workshops

& Classes

Music is more than practical instruction. It’s a written and spoken language – one that all musicians should know.

Building a deep understanding of this language allows musicians to effectively communicate musical concepts with others. That’s why, in addition to private lesson instruction, our students are offered three additional learning opportunities each week. Through our Free workshop and class initiative, students can take advantage of a series of progressive programs to help them continue to add building blocks to their musical knowledge foundation.

Running for the duration of our 15-week semester schedule, classes and workshops begin in September, January, and May. Workshops and Classes change every semester. Contact, Admissions Director Brendan Mondell via email: [email protected] to inquire about current workshops and classes.

Click on images below for more workshop & classes info!

 

Drum Skills 2 Workshop at the Uptown Music Collective

FEATURED WORKSHOPS

Tech Monkey

Get behind the scenes! This high-impact team building workshop teaches the important skills of setting up, maintaining, running, and tearing down musical equipment. It’s the secret weapon to our performance success. Click here  to learn More.

 

Watch the Latest Videos of Our Students

As you progress through lessons, classes, and workshops, you will begin to DEVELOP A NEW SENSE OF CONFIDENCE in your ability to understand, and to perform music. This brings us to the performance program.

From beginners to more advanced students, we have performance opportunities for all levels.

Check Out Our Performance Program

A Note from Executive Director and Founder, Dave Brumbaugh…

“When I attended Berklee College of Music I found myself immersed in an interlocking system of lessons, workshops and classes. What I learned in one area immediatedly applied to another. Through this sytem my abilities in all the areas of music imporoved by leaps and bounds. When I started teaching privately I was immediately frustrated that I couldn’t share enough knowledge in a half an hour or even an hour lesson to give my students what they needed to learn rapidly.”
Dave Brumbaugh

UMC Founder/Executive Director

ENROLL NOW

VOICE LESSONS

The fastest growing lesson type at the Uptown Music Collective, vocal lessons train students to be able to front a band, captivating the audience with intensity and passionate lyric delivery.

Vocal Teachers at the Uptown Music Collective teach a proven curriculum that includes vocal warm up exercises, vocal technique, pitch control, harmony and group singing, improvisation and much more.

Students don’t just learn the technique of singing – they become musicians and performers. Through high-quality instruction, regular opportunities to collaborate with other musicians, and numerous performance opportunities, vocalists hone their craft so that they’re able to showcase their unique personality and vocal style.

GUITAR LESSONS

The founding education of the Uptown Music Collective, our guitar lessons have produced successful musicians from the very beginning of the organization’s forming.

Founder Dave Brumbaugh created the comprehensive guitar curriculum that has been employed for 20 years. It includes high-quality left and right hand exercises, beginner to advanced chord and scale concepts, and techniques from all of the major guitar styles, including rock, blues, jazz, classical, traditional finger-picking and more.

All styles, guitar types, and many guitar-related instruments are taught at the Uptown Music Collective, including electric, acoustic, 12 string, nylon string (classical guitar), ukulele, mandolin, and beginning banjo.

 

KEYBOARD/PIANO LESSONS:

Perhaps the most evolved instrument over time, pianos remain at the cutting edge of music, even after the first pipe organs were used in the 3rd century BC.

Remaining one of the most popular instruments to take lessons on, the piano is found on as many concert stages as our other modern instruments. Midi keyboards with their complex and seemingly endless array of sounds and textures join synthesizers, electric, and acoustic pianos in a curriculum designed to provide a wide range of learning experiences for pianists.

Students learn traditional and modern approaches to music through the study of conventional technique, reading and writing of chord structures, and the use of modern keyboard instruments.

DRUM LESSONS:

No one drives a band harder or is more responsible for dynamic contrast, solid tempos, and a great feel then the drummer behind the kit. But there’s a lot more to playing the drums then just keeping the beat. It’s a complex combination of tone, timbres, and rhythms, mixed together into a powerful blend through hand, eye, & foot coordination.

Our drum curriculum starts from the bottom up, teaching students the rudiments and fundamental beats before building on that foundation to teach fills, poly-rhythmic ideas, and more complex grooves.

BASS LESSONS

The heartbeat of a band, the bass guitar drives the music forward.

Playing the bass well requires a deep understanding of how the elements of music come together and a commitment to being the anchor which the whole band revolves around.

Uptown Music Collective Bass Lessons produce solid, powerful bass players, by emphasizing mastering the proper technique, rhythmic accuracy and groove, bass line construction, understanding chord progressions and much more.

WORKSHOPS:

Workshop opportunities place students of similar ability in groups together to learn how to collaborate as musicians. Serving a dual purpose of practice time and learning, you get to experience and develop an understanding of what it’s like to play with others. You’ll build your skill set sitting side by side with your friends, gain an awareness of how different instruments work together, and learn how to make the same sounds you hear on your favorite recordings. You’ll mess up (a lot), and you’ll laugh a lot too. And, ultimately, you’ll learn how to play music together.

Workshop placement is determined by a student’s playing ability. Workshop participation and completion sets students up for performance program success.

CLASSES:

Classes focus on formal instruction, pulling students from jam sessions and practice rooms into the classroom. Based on a modern musical curriculum, we teach the science and language of music, starting at beginning level and working up to college-caliber material. This learning will expand your knowledge from just the physical ability to perform on an instrument – you’ll discover how notes relate to one another, how they are stacked and move to one another in harmony, and how time is divided to create the movement that we call rhythm.

Entering students will be given a placement exam to determine their appropriate class level, and each successfully completed class will lead to the next, more advanced material.