Rosalind Hayes
About
Hello! My name is Rosalind Hayes and I am a vocal, piano, guitar, ukulele and composition instructor from Pennsylvania.. I have been teaching since 2013 and have a four times awardwinning music business in the center of Downingtown. Currently I teach over 100 students a week, as well as hosting virtual masterclasses and workshops with guest speakers that are industry leaders. I have collaborated with other business owners to aid my current students with getting headshots and professional recording for their lessons. We perform throughout the community on a regular basis. I teach students from all over the world and opened my first commercial location in 2020. I also moderate and wrote content for a 6 month vocal course through Tonara, a multimillion dollar music app, and I was selected out of 500 vocal teachers for this project. My students have gone on to master performances in their community, college auditions and even careers! I even helped one write a song which won a competition and was performed in front of the cast of Hamilton. I love what I do, it is so empowering to help students explore their emotions and identity through music, that's my purpose and that's why I'm here.
My experience and achievements include:
1. completing my undergraduate vocal degree from the world recognized and highly selective westminster choir college and graduating magna cum laude from their honors program
2. Performing at Carneguie Hall
3. Completing my bachleor's thesis with independent research about literacy and music
4. Completing my masters degree in music therapy and going on to get my certification, graduating with honors and on time
5. Completing my master's thesis on the transfer effects of music
6. Working with students who are behaviorally challenged and have learning differences at AIM academy in conshohocken teaching music
7. Being awarded three times as the "Best Music Instructor" in Downingtown
8. Being awarded Best Business in Downingtown by Alignable, a business networking app.
9. Being selected to write Tonara's learning group course content out of 500 teachers
10. Completing the content including 150 assignments of video, audio, pdf, and text files, all totally original work.
11. Keeping my business afloat through covid and going on to high three new teachers.
12. Organizing community performances, workshops and masterclasses
My teaching style is highly structured but balanced to meet the needs of the individual student. I believe in having a clear framework and breaking things down into small steps to really see clear change and effectively correlate it with the strategies I use. When teaching my students I take into account their strengths, and learning style and build a program that meets them where they are, that acts as a bridge to help them in challenging areas.
MASS member, Alingable Best Business of 2020, NATS member, masters degree teacher, MTBC, thumbtack top pro, best of lessons.com 2017, Tonara learning groups course mentor and content creator, best of downingtown music instructor 2019, 2020, 2021
My teaching method varies depending upon the student. With every student, lessons are audio recorded and we come up with goals to keep in their lesson profile that we can visit at any time. I also make sure that the experience is an easy one outside of lessons, using online scheduling, newsletters, reward systems and practice tracking apps to help them remain focused and achieve their goals
Kids instrument lessons are play oriented and we use music listening, toys, imaginative play, crafts, movement and curated video and audio content to give them a full multimedia, montessori-esque lesson experience. Many young children have difficulty focusing for long stretches of time on one activity. So I find that switching activities quickly but keeping the activities focused around one concept (for example a certain note) is the best way to engage them and ascertain that the knowledge is absorbed. Sometimes we do movement at the beginning of lessons and/or use a schedule on the whiteboard to help keep their focus. I have a database of google slides that are essentially syllabi activites that I use for young students. We also use fun apps such as "flashnote derby" to learn pitch, "rhythm swing" for rhythmic practice and "blob chorus" to work on ear training.
Kids Voice lessons are also playful. We theme our vocal warmups around certain stories like disney princesses ordinosaurs or pirates and use different sounds from the warmup "story" to help the voice to learn how to produce sound that is healthy, vibrant, strong and agile. We use pictures, background music and video content to support the "story" and keep their interest. The second half of the lesson is focused on learning a song of their choice. We also use "blob chorus' and use solfege to work on ear training, harmonization and sightsinging.
In adult voice lessons, we focus on the vocal anatomy and I diagnose the strengths and challenges of the student's voice. Using this knowledge I build a customized set of warmups to address the student's vocal needs. These include syllables, pitch patterns, vibration tracking and massage to help loosen the muscles, develop self awareness of the sound and begin to manage the breath. We may also work on diction using the "phonetics" app, pitch matching using "singtrue", sightreading using "sightreading factory" and ear training using "tenuto".
In adult instrument lessons (over age 10) we use the book series as a framework for lessons and also various apps to help with music reading including tenuto, sightreading factory and flashnote derby. We typically also work on a song of the student's choice, and emphasize technique, theory and sightreading.
Composition lessons are comprised of theory, improvisation, sightreading and dictation, as well as learning about different composer techniques and recieving feedback on original scores.
With younger kids I sometimes also work on music of their choice with them, if I can find a simplified version online, or write it myself.
Books:
Kids (3-6) piano-my first piano adventure series
kids (6-10) piano-piano adventures
adults (10 and up) piano-alfreds adult book
adult voice-inside your voice
kids guitar- Hal leonard kids guitar book series
adult guitar-hal leonard guitar series
kids uke-hal leonard kids uke series
adult uke-hal leonard adult series
intermediate and advanced piano-master theory books series, scales and chords are fun series
Composition-master theory book series