Guitar Teaching Artist Tim Carolla joined the Academy music faculty late last Fall. His private studio is open for new students, and we thought our families should get to know him better. Trained in classical, jazz and more, Mr. Carolla has a lot to offer! Learn more about this versatile teacher and musician through his interview with Academy Faculty Coordinator Claire Allen.
CAllen: What excites you the most about joining the music faculty at the Academy?
TCarolla: I’m excited to join the music faculty at the Academy because I went to Mason and was in the Music Department as an undergraduate student, and it feels great to be back and part of the community. I’m hoping that being around other faculty members and the Music School will provide lots of opportunities to play and perform with peers.
CAllen: How did you first fall in love with music?
TCarolla: I had always had a relationship with music as a listener, but I remember I really started to fall in love with music on a personal level when I discovered some of my parents’ records when I was about 12 or 13 and started to listen to them. Getting into sort of the classic rock era bands like The Beatles and Steeley Dan as well as some more modern stuff at the time like Nirvana and Soundgarden really influenced my early days of playing as well.
CAllen: Tell me about a teaching experience you’ve had that was especially memorable.
TCarolla: I’ve been teaching for almost ten years now, and for about 7 ½ of those years I’ve had the same student. I have recently moved back to Northern Virginia from the Boston area where I was doing graduate school the last four years, and luckily through Skype and getting in a face to face private lesson around the holidays, etc., we have been able to continue his studies. Recently this same student and his mother have asked me to start prepping him for moving into music more seriously, including joining some local groups and to attend music school in the future. It’s been a really great and rewarding experience to have as a teacher in so many ways, and it really helped me quite a bit to be able to see what introducing and developing certain concepts and techniques over time looks like over the course of years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iyMVxBmiBo
CAllen: What are some unique things you do when you teach?
TCarolla: When I was in school, I was lucky to be able to study both classical and jazz for several years each, so I’m glad to be able to offer lots of different paths for my students. One of my favorite things to do with students who are more advanced is to have them bring in recordings they are fans of and transcribe them together in lessons. Teaching them how to listen for certain patterns that give away chord progressions or common licks helps to develop the ear, and once you get everything written down it’s a great opportunity to talk about single line playing, harmony and stylistic choices.
CAllen: Do you have any pets?
TCarolla: I do not have a pet right now unfortunately. I really want to get an English Bulldog in the near future. My parents had one for years, and I love that breed of dog. They have a lot of character. #teamdog
CAllen: What else would you like us to know about you?
TCarolla: I studied Classical Guitar primarily in my undergrad, but about halfway through I started to become interested in Jazz as well. In Graduate School I studied at Longy School of Music of Bard College, where I found a program called Modern American Music where I could study both, as well as Free Jazz – and you were encouraged to find your own connections in all three fields. It’s a great place to go if you want to focus on something a little out of the box. I had always loved the playing of the great pianist Thelonious Monk. To me, it sounds like nothing I have ever heard, and it’s a musical language all to itself. I made translating his playing onto the guitar my ongoing project and had a very open-minded and great teacher named Joe Morris who helped me a great deal to figure out how to approach and begin to work at the problem. I ended up transcribing a lot of his solos, and later used them to put together some arrangements of his tunes, which I ended up performing at my Master’s and GPD recitals. The Youtube clip that’s a part of this feature is one of my arrangements of my favorite Monk tunes, Light Blue.
Along with private guitar lessons, Mr. Carolla will also be teaching the Guitar Beginnings Class for Ages 5-8 this Spring (starting in February). It’s the perfect way to introduce young children to guitar playing!
LEARN MORE ABOUT PRIVATE LESSONS AT THE ACADEMY