Promotional Photography for Fever Pitch, associated with North Main Music

NASHUA – While people have been more isolated during the pandemic, for many, music has been a stress-relieving distraction or a great way to have some homegrown fun.

North Main Music, located at 28 Charon Ave., Suite 1 has been striking the right chord since 2003. The music instruction school offers lessons in guitar, piano, drums, voice, bass, violin, saxophone and ukulele.

Owner and instructor Mike McAdam said that when he first started, he was the only guitar teacher, with more than 50 students.

“In ’03, I was an upper semester student at Berklee in Boston,” he said. “I was taking a class on how to run a private music studio. And I wound up just taking students at that point. I didn’t have any wild aspirations – it just kind of took off. And by ’07, I had to bring other teachers on.”

McAdam really enjoyed what he was doing, and with a waitlist for students, expanded even further.

“After I had brought another instructor in, we started getting calls about adding piano and drums,” he said. “It happened very organically. I didn’t have any master plan at the time.”

The time has flown by, McAdam said, but added that he has students that he has worked with for 15 years who are now adults. Some are starting their own families, who in turn, may be the next new music student.

With the regard to the pandemic, McAdam calls it “interesting.”

“Things are starting to perceptively change right now,” he said.

“I think one of the things that we tried to do is really try to add value to our services. The good thing about the last year with the pandemic, if you can call it good, is that it has been a shared experience. There might be a situation that I’m going through personally, or you’re going through personally, but everyone understands, this is how we’re handling this.”

NMM transitioned students to online instruction, but once the state started lifting restrictions last June, McAdam said some students came back into the studio.

“Even right now, we’re still probably doing about 70 percent of our lessons online,” he said. “It’s done via Zoom or Google Duo. I hate to say it, but 54 weeks ago, I didn’t even know what Zoom was.”

There was that obvious “tech” set-up for some people and the goal, according to McAdam, was to keep things rolling and make instructional lessons as easy for people as possible. Students responded fairly well, but nothing can replace the real deal.

“I’ve taken online lessons and given online lessons” he shared. “And I think because of the pandemic and understanding where we’re at, people have been a lot more tolerant of that. We’re making the best of it. And one of the positives of it is it’s been a situation for some people where it has created some normalcy.

McAdam said he has seen some students greatly improve over the last year of remote lessons and “that ain’t half bad.”

“Part of it is, we are a music community,” he said, “We do group programs, we do bands, we do other things that really try to bring people together. I always joke that I want to be the YMCA of music schools, where it’s kind of a social thing that happens on top of that.”

The pandemic has definitely impacted that, while some students have thrown themselves into their music. NMM held a contest last year where students did a video recording of their best version of a “cover song.” There were prizes for the winners and because of the isolation, McAdam said many students brought their “A” game to the table because they had the time or the mental energy to do it at that point.

McAdam estimated that the ratio between under 18-year-old students, and above, it’s about 80/20.

“That’s really where it’s at,” he said. “One of the worst things with adult students that we have to be careful of, is, hey, we all lead busy lives. And as an adult, this is a commitment and it’s a commitment that can be easily sideswiped by something else like work.”

McAdam acknowledged that there are many healing properties of music and with kids, that’s perhaps less the case than with adults.

“Kids try different things,” he said. “They’re doing karate and math club and music. It’s a combination of things and some stick and some don’t. We’ve been fortunate to have some students who have been here for a really long time.”

The numbers at NMM are “definitely down,” McAdam said, like most places, from a year ago.

“I have some teachers who have really stepped up and made themselves really valuable,” he stated. “They have done some great things here in the last year. Right now, I’m just trying to guess what the future looks like.”

McAdam surmises that more students may enroll shortly, but also can guess it might take longer, closer to the fall.

Originally from NYC, McAdam began playing the drums when he was nine. He started playing guitar at age 16, which he called, “really late.”

“In a weird way, that helped me to become a better instructor,” hew said. “I struggled at the beginning so it made me understand where certain students were at, as far as them getting started as well.”

He said he always knew he would end up playing guitar. He doesn’t think most kids will pursue music professionally, and McAdam said his school doesn’t push students in that direction.

“As a matter of fact, when a lot of people call us, they sort of apologetically say, ‘We’re not looking to do this professionally,'” he explained. “I get it. I understand that 99 percent of the people who come into our school are just going to be casual musicians. And that’s okay.”

If students plan on pursuing music at the collegiate level, that’s fine, too, and the school can offer those students different plans and programs to suit that degree of learning.

McAdam said the big thing is that students develop a skill that they can keep for the rest of their life.

“That’s the win for us if we’re able to do that,” he said.

The three most popular classes at NMM right now are guitar, piano and voice. A strange statistic: the school had a much larger percentage of guitarists ten years ago than now.

“I don’t think guitar is as in the mainstream as it was a decade ago,” McAdam said. “Certainly 30 years ago when I started playing. Voice has been much more in the mainstream and of course, piano is always popular.”

NMM was lucky enough to purchase their building six years ago and set up the studio space permanently. They have 2,400 sq. feet of space and an in-house recording studio. They also use that room for student concerts, though they normally would be held at Nashua High North or at Hollis-Brookline High.

“We have had students perform before 25 people, which is what we can hold,” McAdam said. “We have a theatre group in here as well. We’re lucky enough to have that and set this up as ours.”

In normal times, students can be part of bigger, better-produced shows, McAdam added.

“I think there is a different dynamic to doing shows that way,” he said. “A way that is educational, and it’s hard to do that here in the studio. And part of what we’re trying to teach students is performance skills.”

Again, McAdam hopes that the school can go back to doing shows like that in the fall, but that may not happen until the spring of ’22. Many students have formed bands inside the school, and have had students form bands and friendships outside the school.

Now, looking at getting through the pandemic, with case numbers going down, McAdam said he hopes students return.

“Believe it or not, it’s been more about safety and less about financial concerns,” he said. “We did have some people who lost their job or their work situation had changed. No one has a compass for this because we’ve never been through this before. The best line I heard: ‘Some people think it’s science, and some people think it’s science fiction.'”

For more info, visit www.northmainmusic.com.

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