Fargo rock school

By Jamie Hutchinson

Longtime touring musician and music teacher Bryce Niemiller tells HPR about his inspiration behind Elevate Rock School, the music education school he opened with his wife, Lisa, in 2011.

Inside the keyboard room of the school, Bryce Niemiller is ecstatic, speaking rapidly as he explains where the idea for Elevate Rock School came from and the cons of the standard form of music lessons.

“Sorry I’m talking fast,” he says. “I get passionate about it.” His passion for music started with the desire to play drums, but he instead picked up piano lessons in kindergarten. While he learned plenty, things could have been better.

“As a kid I was kind of being failed by all the lessons that I took,” he says. “They would just do the same old, same old.” A typical lesson for him back then meant waiting for his turn to play while dealing with a lack of interaction. But he stuck with it and eventually learned to play drums, graduating from the University of Mary in 1995 with majors in percussion and secondary music education.

After graduation he began teaching private lessons from home on the very same piano he learned on. About seven years ago, he was teaching a student when a realization hit him — he had become just like his teachers before him.

“I had the pencil in my hand, I was tapping the tempo and just in that moment the student said, ‘This is boring,’ and I’m like, ‘I know. I know.’ I didn’t enjoy it myself.”

While the seed for what was to become Elevate Rock School was planted, getting a business off the ground wasn’t an easy task. Just finding a space where instruments could be played without bothering neighboring businesses was hard enough. But after years on the road with bands, including a stretch as keyboardist for The Johnny Holm Band, Niemiller decided to quit touring and get his business idea rolling.

Elevate Rock School opened up in November 2011, becoming the only school of rock in the immediate area. Niemiller is quick to point out that while they are a school of rock, they aren’t affiliated with School of Rock, the music education company started by Paul Green in Philadelphia over a decade ago.

Elevate teaches guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, drums and vocals — the basic formula for any rock band. While they catered to all ages in the past, their usual range is three to 14-year-olds. Once kids hit 16 or 17 they become busy with jobs or planning for college, Niemiller says.

Students are matched based on age and ability, and, unlike in traditional lessons, students divide their time between individual lessons and performing as a band — a concept that Niemiller has seen create better musicians faster.

While the concept of Elevate is unconventional, they still do some things the traditional way.

“They take piano lessons. They’re learning to read music but they’re also learning that I-IV-V in the key of C is C, F and G,” he says. “Stuff nobody ever told me, and it makes playing by ear a heck of a lot easier when you know how simple the theory is in most pop songs.”

While the word rock is in the title of the school, they don’t focus on strictly rock music. The school allows students to choose the songs they play with music ranging from rock to pop and country. This keeps the students involved and lets them play songs they want to play, not what they’re told to play. “When my daughter’s excited about a choir song, they sound great,” Niemiller says. “Then they sing one they don’t like and it’s night and day.”

Again, Niemiller apologizes for talking so fast and bouncing between ideas. He jumps on the keyboards to make things more interesting, playing a few bars of a lively blues piece before getting back on track by giving a tour of the building.

Aside from the keyboards room there are rooms for guitar, vocals, drums and peeps (what Elevate calls their youngest students), and then a full band room. TVs used for visual aids are mounted to the walls and each room is home to numerous instruments. Niemiller pushes hard to keep students constantly engaged, even keeping a Nintendo Wii in the lobby for kids to play.

Like a typical choir or band, Elevate hosts recitals but in the form of full-on rock concerts complete with lighting. About 50 bands perform one or two songs each, with students choosing their own band names. “We’ve got Minion Starship and Divas and Potatoes,” Niemiller says. “They come up with the strangest names and it’s cool because they’re invested.”

While a lot of parents ask him if the kids are ready for a band, he answers them by saying, “The band is the learning.” When he joined his first band, he wasn’t ready. They were terrible, he says, but they kept with it because that’s how you get better.

Elevate’s next concert is Feb. 21 at the Fargodome, followed by a summer concert at the Red River Valley Fair. “They give us all Saturday,” he says. “It’s just a beautiful relationship because it’s a win for them and our students love it.”

In the four years of its existence, Elevate has grown to having about 240 students, but Niemiller says there is room for well over 400 — a task he sounds ready to take on.

YOU SHOULD KNOW:

http://www.elevaterockschool.com

info@elevaterockschool.com

+1 701-356-5150