Discover essentially the most skilled individual in no matter you’re involved in and turn out to be their good friend. If music is your curiosity, then you could befriend Erick Quintanilla. And even higher, have him as your trainer, which is the case for the fortunate music college students at Roosevelt Excessive College within the Los Angeles Unified College District (LAUSD).
Music has outlined Quintanilla’s life since a younger age, however it’s been the relationships and mentorships that he has shaped over time that haven’t solely outlined him as a musician however have given him the knowledge and skill to encourage, form, and information younger college students, from being a trainer to reviving an getting old music program, to at present working to ascertain a brand new Musical Manufacturing Academy to serve the group of Los Angeles’ Eastside.
Mr. Erick Quintanilla together with his college students
Dangle Out with the Greats (And You’ll Be Nice, Too!)
The pure capability to be taught one thing new and excel is only one part of changing into influential in your craft. The opposite half is surrounding your self with like-minded people. Solely then can you actually begin to use your skills to make a distinction.
And although music for Quintanilla was very a lot his personal factor in his youth, it was knowledge from his father that paved the best way for him to make the most of his abilities for the higher. “My dad had stated discover whoever is nice at no matter it’s that you just’re doing. If that man is nice at eradicating nuts and bolts, hang around with that man, so it turned intuitive; ‘I’m going to hang around with him as a result of he’s on the high.’”
The primary mentor for Quintanilla was a trainer. He defined, “I attended Alexander Hamilton Excessive College Academy of Music, and Greg Robinson was one among my lecturers and really influential.” Influential and spectacular. Past being the director at Hamilton, Robinson is the Director of the Wind Ensemble at California State College Dominguez Hills. Beforehand he was Music Director of the All-Metropolis Honors Marching Band and a coach to the Pasadena Match of Roses Band. He’s a Grasp Sergeant within the Air Nationwide Guard, the place he’s Affiliate Conductor of the Air Nationwide Guard Band of the Southwest.
Robinson was extra than simply influential in Quintanilla’s music profession. He shared, “It was due to him that I joined the Air Power. After which in 2008, I made a decision to return to varsity to complete and return to this profession of instructing, which is one thing that I all the time wished to do.”
Then there was Tony White, knowledgeable jazz musician, musical director, trainer, and philanthropist. With an extended record of music accomplishments, from establishing the primary music program at his highschool alma mater to changing into Director of LAUSD All-Metropolis Marching Band, Quintanilla knew this was the man he wanted to hang around with.
“I referred to as Tony White, and I stated, ‘Hey, that is the trail I’m heading. Can I work with you?’ As a result of I’m like, if anyone is aware of his stuff, it’s going to be him,” defined Quintanilla. “And that’s actually what led me on this monitor right here to the place I’m at now was that he’s been an incredible mentor. Mentors don’t simply occur. You’ve received to seek out your mentor. You must discover the folks in your life that you just say, ‘That individual there’s doing nice; I need to go hang around with that individual.’”
From Mentee to Mentor to Music Recreation-Changer
Earlier than lengthy, Quintanilla established himself as that one that is doing nice. That individual whom different musicians need to hang around with.
It started when he took his musical abilities and management abilities to Hollenbeck Center College on Los Angeles’ Higher East Facet, the place he taught for seven years. “Once I began there, there wasn’t a robust music program. There was no band, and the devices had been in disrepair. It was uncared for and didn’t have any person to carry it collectively. They’d gone by a number of lecturers over time, so it simply wanted some TLC,” defined Quintanilla.
He was the one to carry that TLC by securing grants to buy shiny, new devices. “That was an enormous turning level in this system. I all the time thought if I may mannequin our program like all of the opposite robust music packages, then to me, that’s fairness. If we may go to a pageant and compete, or exceed the expectations of the folks there, then that’s equitable. I’m offering fairness for the scholars,” defined Quintanilla.
Identical to the day Quintanilla had acquired his shiny, new saxophone when his college students got the instruments to achieve success, they had been additionally given the chance to shine. “If I can improve the gear, then we are able to go and show if you happen to work arduous, you are able to do something. Getting devices for them allowed us to develop and develop a extremely complete program,” defined Quintanilla.
His efforts didn’t go unnoticed, and in 2016, Quintanilla acquired Rookie Trainer of the Yr for LAUSD. “I believe that folks all the time believed in me there. They had been all the time actually supportive, however as soon as that occurred, it was like, ‘Whoa, this man is like … he’s doing one thing completely totally different.’ After which there was extra consideration on what we had been doing when it comes to the music program, which was the place I wished it directed,” Quintanilla humbly said.
A New Form of Shiny Instrument
To Quintanilla, music had turn out to be in regards to the relationships, creating welcoming environments, and permitting for mentorships to type. Nonetheless, when the COVID-19 pandemic closed colleges and halted music packages, that shininess that Quintanilla fell in love with virtually misplaced its luster, however as an alternative of letting it tarnish, Quintanilla found a more moderen, shinier instrument.
Know-how.
“I’m old skool,” admitted Quintanilla. “Earlier than the pandemic, I used to be skeptical of expertise in music as a result of there was a worry of digital music supplementing or fully eliminating musicianship- the human part of it.”
However Quintanilla is aware of that relationships with gifted folks result in nice issues, so when Lawrence Gray from the Younger Producers Group launched him to Soundtrap, Quintanilla determined to run with it. “With Soundtrap, we had been capable of train the youngsters concept and musicianship whereas they had been at residence, and so they began to show in these cool initiatives. That’s how that relationship was actually constructed, the place the old-fashioned actually needed to merge with the brand new college, and I don’t assume we are able to pull it aside anymore. Proper now, it’s intertwined, and I believe it’s good.”
Music and Know-how: A Put up-Pandemic Love Match
Quintanilla has definitely given his blessing to this new relationship between conventional music and fashionable expertise and is spreading the love round in his new position at Roosevelt Excessive College, which sits throughout the road from Hollenbeck.
“Now we have a full digital manufacturing line now, and we’re really instructing digital manufacturing. We’re utilizing it in a number of methods, comparable to college students asking their English and Historical past lecturers to complement one written project with a podcast,” shared Quintanilla.
“The opposite one is clearly instructing them easy methods to incorporate music concept into the digital realm and use the keyboard features. We will both train youngsters concept like they might be taught in faculty from the bottom up. After which there are the musician college students who can use it that very same method, and we are able to complement their studying. The children have to be taught scales, so we are able to train them easy methods to construction a scale. Then they’ll do it there in Soundtrap and get prompt outcomes.”
Essentially the most rewarding a part of instructing is when college students make the most of taught abilities past the classroom, and Quintanilla first noticed this together with his center college college students and now together with his highschool ones. For instance, he shared, “In my second interval, there’s a younger man that sits proper in entrance who’s all the time engaged on issues. He really discovered easy methods to pattern issues out from YouTube or recordings, and he cuts the samples up, and he does these things all on his personal. There are fairly just a few college students that can try this now, utilizing it only for enjoyable at residence, utilizing Soundtrap to entertain themselves or be inventive musically.”
The beat is spreading to different lecturers as properly, who’re gaining concepts about easy methods to use Soundtrap. “We’re not the music division that’s doing their factor. We’re offering virtually a service at this level the place we assist lecturers who ask if we are able to are available in and train a category easy methods to use Soundtrap for podcasts,” stated Quintanilla.
Taking the Relationship to the Subsequent Step with The Academy of Music and Digital Manufacturing
“I believe the pandemic took an enormous toll on our psychological well being, and packages like this at Roosevelt with the robust music lecturers assist uplift and convey that a part of humanity again. I believe now we’d like it greater than ever,” stated Quintanilla.
With the best way music helps our psychological well being and now the best way expertise is engrained in our each day existence, the union of the 2 is considerably finite and absolute. And this energy, that’s music and expertise has allowed Quintanilla to assume on a good grander scale.
“We’re within the strategy of growing a music academy right here,” stated Quintanilla. “It’s titled The Academy of Music and Digital Manufacturing. We wish to have the ability to host a music academy type magnet college right here within the native east space. LAUSD has an incredible music academy referred to as Hamilton Excessive College, however it’s on the alternative finish of the town, so it’s fairly a distance or our college students to attend. We’re going to start out with opening up a pathway, which is a type of a spotlight group of scholars that can be capable to research music. With that, they’ll be capable to be taught concept and actually put together for school auditions or juries.”
He continued, “We’ll even have a profession technical schooling part. That’s the place the digital manufacturing facet was going to be highlighted. So, college students will be capable to come right here and be taught the profession technical parts of digital manufacturing, whether or not or not it’s sound engineering or music manufacturing. These are a number of the issues that we’re within the subsequent three to 4 years.”
This marriage. This union. This basis of humanity has been constructed upon relationships and mentorships. “I’m a member of an unimaginable workforce right here. I’ve Ireneo Yanez, who’s our Mariachi strings trainer, Dr. Thomas McDonald, our choir trainer, and clearly our companion, younger producer Lawrence Gray, and our trainer, Trent Durazo. It was troublesome after I was throughout the road on my own, and I knew that I wouldn’t survive all on my own, and that’s why I might come go to the trainer right here at Roosevelt and say, ‘Hey, can we do stuff collectively?’ We went from me and him to now two lecturers at Hollenbeck and three lecturers right here with Younger Producers as our companions.”
“That partnership, that collaboration, that’s the important thing to human survival,” stated Quintanilla.