“Live your passion. What does that mean, anyway? It means that when you get up for work every morning, every single morning, you are pumped because you get to talk about or work with or do the thing that interests you the most in the world. You don’t live for vacations because you don’t need a break from what you’re doing–working, playing, and relaxing are one and the same. You don’t even pay attention to how many hours you’re working because to you, its not really work. You’re making money, but you’d do whatever it is you’re doing for free.” -Gary Vaynerchuk

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An Inspiration

In 2008 my dad gave me Gary Vaynerchuk’s book “Crush It” for Christmas. This was the Christmas after Stacey Stoltz and I went to the first International Body Music Festival in San Francisco, and I was still on fire from the whole event. I was loving all the world music I was learning at Lawrence and had just stumbled into body music, which completely changed the way I look at music. The seeds of an idea had been planted in the back of my mind over that weekend…the idea of a studio where I could teach everything that I love so much about music without the constraints of the state-mandated school curriculum and testing.

I have always been a very busy person. I like to do everything, and Lawrence was great for that. I had the opportunity to play classical, Ghanaian, Brazilian, Afro-Cuban, Balinese, and body percussion. I played in the opera, the orchestra, the wind ensemble and symphonic band, chamber ensembles, solo recitals, and party bands. I taught music theory, studied composition, analyzed film scores, and learned every band and orchestra instrument. It was certainly a busy four and a half years, full of constant fatigue, but on top of all that stress I had a great time.

The idea that, after graduation, I was supposed to get a job, come home at night, watch some TV, and relax on weekends never really fit into my plans. I still want to do everything. So I got a “regular job” teaching high school music out in California. While there, I joined a local community college orchestra and symphonic band. I started training capoeira. I started a music theory club and a body music club at the high school. I used my music appreciation class as an outlet for all that music I loved so much but couldn’t teach in any other class: my students watched and analyzed the music from Star Wars, danced and sang Ghanaian dances and songs, played some samba, learned how to make music with only their bodies, argued the merits of various styles of music, and were introduced to music they had never heard.

But 12 weeks of that class was not enough. It lit a fire inside me; I want to have that experience all the time. I want to teach all of it, play all of it, all the time. That is what my studio is all about. Music is multi-faceted. I can’t just do one part of it; I have to do it all.

And so, that fire turned into a goal. The seeds that had been planted in 2008 had grown slowly over the years, and had become a full-fledged dream that I knew I wanted to pursue. I moved to Denver and set up shop, and now Slap Happy Music Studio is open, full of instruments just waiting for you to come and hit them. At SHM, you can explore new instruments, dive deeper into ones you already love, and find the inspiration that is hiding in the back of your mind.

Slap Happy…music for students of all ages, all levels, and all ideas.

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