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Discover the Best Music Classes in NYC

Music is an artform that involves the blending of elements like rhythm, melody, harmony, and other emotionally evocative sounds into a pleasing aesthetic arrangement. While some genres like dissonant death metal may completely ignore the “pleasing” component of the arrangement, all genres are consciously working with the core elements of music in an attempt to produce art that evokes feelings and carries some sort of meaning.

Learning how to play music involves both a theoretical component and a practical component. The theoretical side of music involves understanding the fundamental principles of how sounds relate to one another. The relationship may be the sonic relationship between notes, as is the case with melodies and harmonies, or temporally, as with rhythm. The practical component covers technical skill in an instrument; there must be something to make the sounds in the first place. Whether the instrument is a piano, a guitar, or even your own voice, engaging with music involves manipulating some interface with a degree of technical skill. While any music class will attempt to cover both the theoretical and the practical components, the focus will naturally shift more towards one side of the equation. You can expect, for example, to learn the basics of music theory while taking a guitar class, but the lesson will likely focus primarily on how to play the instrument itself.

Why You Should Learn Music in NYC

From Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind” to Jay Z’s “Empire State of Mind,” good old “New York, New York” carries a musical appeal that transcends genre. With resources for any type of musician, including thriving conservatories like Tisch and Julliard, the musical theater of Broadway, and thriving local music scenes, New York is an excellent environment to get formal music training.

New York also boasts a strong niche as a center for jazz. New York’s jazz history extends back over a century to when Harlem served as a birthing ground for stars like Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Billie Holiday during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

In-Person Music Classes & Schools in NYC

Whether you’re looking to continue the great tradition of New York jazz or exploring a style of your own, there are plenty of opportunities to leverage New York City’s thriving music scene and find quality in-person classes.

Paying homage to the history of Harlem, classes focused on jazz form a solid core of the course offerings available to New York City residents.

Located in Midtown Manhattan rather than the heart of Harlem, The New York Jazz Workshop has built a strong reputation within the jazz community since it opened in 2008. A community-based jazz school for students of all ages, The New York Jazz Workshop seeks to make world-class jazz instruction accessible to those outside of major universities and conservatories. Most instructors are associated with renowned institutions like NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, The Juilliard School, Columbia University, and The Manhattan School of Music, ensuring the quality of education will rival that offered by a major conservatory.

New York Jazz Workshop’s “Let’s Sing” series offers workshops designed to provide foundational skills, helping beginner and intermediate-level students develop vocal techniques and familiarize themselves with the language of jazz. In Let’s Sing w/ Elana Hedrych, learn techniques for breathing and vocalization to help strengthen your singing voice, tips for phrasing, rhythm, improvisation, and mid-session communication, and also basic principles of music theory.

More advanced jazz vocalists may instead be interested in Jazz Singing with Michelle Walker. This weekly course aimed at intermediate and advanced singers features a chance to workshop vocal techniques alongside professional accompaniment from a solo artist and from a full jazz band. Michelle Walker is known in the jazz community for her charisma and her ability to effortlessly blend genres, incorporating elements of blues, bebop, swing, and soul into a distinctive sound.

Jazz enthusiasts with very specific interests may be interested in New York Jazz Academy’s Summer Jazz Intensives program, a summer-long series of weekly crash courses in different areas of jazz music. These workshops run between two and four days, with rotating weekly curricula devoted to specific instruments (including guitar, piano, and vocals) and to subgenres of jazz (including bebop, Brazilian music, and improvisation). Students have flexibility to choose which workshops they attend, so be sure to reference the course schedule on the New York Jazz Academy’s website to see which dates best match your personal interests.

City Music Schools in Hell’s Kitchen was founded in 1921 with a single goal: to make quality music education accessible to everyone. Today, City Music Schools offers affordable private instruction in practically any instrument. By offering short-term enrollment options, City Music Schools provides flexible access to quality instruction without needing to commit to an expensive long-term tuition. Course offerings from City Music Schools include private lessons devoted to Voice techniques, to orchestral instruments like Piano, Viola, Cello, Oboe, and Flute, to popular instruments like Guitar and Drums, and even to zanier instruments like Accordion and Banjo. Because each class is with a private instructor, you can be sure that class content will be tailored to your needs and skill level. Private lessons also provide a great deal of flexibility in coordinating a preferred time slot, with slots offered from 10:00 AM to 9:00 PM. City Music Schools requests that you please bring your own musical instrument with you for all lessons.

While City Music Schools offers classes in a wide array of instruments, other organizations focus solely on a single type of instrument. If you’re looking for a particular instrument, consider one of the many specialist organizations in New York.

Conor Hall Drums offers Private Drum Lessons for drummers of all levels out of his personal studio in Astoria, Queens. Conor has extensive training in jazz drumming and in world music, but his inspirations are various and he can both perform and teach a blend of styles including jazz, rock, R&B, world music, hip hop, and Latin rhythms.

Aspiring guitarists can look to the Brooklyn Guitar School or the Queens Guitar School, local branches of the New York City Guitar School. New York City Guitar School believes that people succeed through committed practice, and so their lessons break down long-term goals into smaller, achievable steps. While many levels of guitar are offered, beginners might look consider Guitar I: Guitar for Absolute Beginners at Brooklyn Guitar School or Guitar I: Absolute Beginners at Queens Guitar School for a thorough introduction to the instrument. Starting from zero, these courses teach the basics of guitar playing techniques and common chords, playing along with popular songs from a diverse selection of bands like Sublime, John Legend, and Taylor Swift. Most students feel they’ve mastered beginner techniques after six to eight sessions.

A more orchestral string instrument, the violin, is the focus of NYC Violin Studio, a music school based in Hell’s Kitchen. Instead of following a single model of instruction, like the Suzuki method, NYC Violin Studio operates from a belief that it is best to expose learners to a wide range of pedagogical models. Beginner Violin Technique is designed to help students build a strong foundation, focusing extensively on bow technique, which is essential to producing beautiful sound at any level.

Virtual Music Classes & Schools

In addition to the robust music communities available in New York City, CourseHorse offers an impressive range of online music classes available to anybody with an internet connection. No matter whether you’re a New York resident who can’t work on the schedule of online classes or you’re looking to tap into New York’s music community from a different state, the various online courses organized by New York institutions seek to make music more accessible to all.

By opting for an online class, you are securing all of the core benefits of in-person instruction. An instructor will be working with you in real time, demonstrating techniques for you to follow, responding to your own technique as you play, and providing feedback and technical advice as you go. Moreover, online classes provide you with more access to niche subjects that may not be available in your local scene, and instructors are typically willing to provide flexible scheduling to find a time that best accommodates your busy schedule.

If you consider yourself a bit of an audiophile, be advised that online classes do come with some additional technical demands. While high quality speakers and microphones are not essential - even basic equipment is functional - the sound quality of a session will depend on your equipment, and cannot hope to match the acoustics of being in the same room as your instructor. While the notes will still be recognizable, the discrepancy in quality may prove frustrating to those particularly sensitive to such matters.

If you can’t make it to the in-person “Let’s Sing” classes offered by the New York Jazz Workshop, there’s always the option to opt for the online versions of the program. Depending on your schedule, you can sing With Olivia Foschi on Wednesday evening or With Jocelyn Medina on Thursday evening. As with the in-person classes, you’ll learn techniques for breathing and vocalization to help strengthen your singing voice, tips for phrasing, rhythm, improvisation, and mid-session communication, and also basic principles of music theory. Be assured that you’ll find the same quality instruction, delivered in a manner more accommodating to the limitations of your schedule.

Other New York organizations that offer online instruction to supplement in-person offerings are the Irish Arts Center and the 92nd Street Y. The Irish Arts Center offers online classes in a wide range of traditional Irish instruments, including Fiddle, Irish Mandolin, Celtic Harp, and even Tin Whistle. In each class, you’ll learn techniques for how to play your chosen instrument as well as develop listening skills to pick up tunes by ear. Additionally, they offer theory classes like an Introduction to Music Theory, designed to provide a strong foundation in basic principles of music theory, and a course devoted to Learning Tunes by Ear and developing active listening skills to recognize and latch onto common musical patterns, especially those found in Irish melodies.

The 92nd Street Y offers similar classes in Music Theory and Ear Training for Singers, which is designed specifically for vocalists to help them build aural listening skills while learning fundamental components of music theory. The class helps participants develop sight-singing skills that allow them not only to read musical notation and reproduce the correct notes, but also to form a theoretical understanding of the tonal relationships between the notes.

Private Group Music Classes in NYC

If you’ve ever joked about a reunion as “getting the band back together,” you’ve tapped into a prevalent cultural assumption that playing music together facilitates a special bond. This assumption certainly is not without merit; while music as a solo endeavor does serve as a great outlet for creative expression, merging that expression with a group of like minded individuals is a great way to collaborate and bond on a deeper level. To get the band back together for some group bonding, CourseHorse offers online music classes for private groups.

Although CourseHorse doesn’t currently have any public listings for virtual jam sessions, they can work with you on an individual basis to organize a customized musical event. You can reach out to CourseHorse to learn about the options they can provide, and they’ll get to work scheduling the perfect event for your group.

If you’ve got a team of music lovers who don’t necessarily all play instruments, music can still be the centerpiece of a team social event. Let your team flex their music knowledge with a Music Trivia night, or have a bit of Christmas in July with Holiday Music Karaoke Trivia.

Booking a class with CourseHorse is a simple, streamlined process, so you can spend less time scheduling and more time jamming. The easy-to-follow checkout process gives you options to customize your event to your specific needs, and gives plenty of flexibility in scheduling. You can even change your booking details after the fact, so you don’t need to worry if your band size grows unexpectedly. CourseHorse will reserve your booking date, but allows you to change your group size after the fact, and will not finalize payment details until you’ve locked in your headcount.