Susan Mitchell is currently the main “sound” in Sight & Sound Studios. She teaches piano and singing lessons in her home studio in Duchess, Alberta from September to May. Her students are from Duchess and the surrounding area including Brooks, Rosemary, and rural Newell County.
Music has been a passion in Susan’s life from an early age. She started to sing around age 3 and play piano around age 5 and has taught both for over 20 years. Her students have ranged from ages 2 to 70 in individual and group settings. Her musical achievements are Grade 8 piano, Grade 7 voice, and Grade 4 theory certificates with the Western Board of Music (now Conservatory Canada).
Her studies as a child opened up the doors to participate in numerous choirs, festivals, and other group and solo performances in her local community. As an adult, Susan’s love of music has had her involved in churches, various events, and writing her own songs. She has also sung in community choirs and even organized a singing quartet for a time.
Susan’s teaching style is eclectic, mixing classical traditional methodology with a modern contemporary context. This engages each student’s sight and ear abilities in order to create something that they enjoy personally. She teaches contemporary music founded on a strong technical background that dips into multiple genres such as classical, contemporary, jazz, blues, rock, sacred, and modern worship.
I love introducing people to the world of music in a way that captures their own creativity, giving them the ability to create something that they enjoy as well as share with others. I'm thrilled to be teaching in our rural community and can only hope that I am successful in cultivating a love and appreciation for the incredible gift of music that we all participate in together - as listeners or performers. It's equally important!
Click here to contact Susan.
Dave Mitchell has over 35 years of bass guitar playing experience and is currently teaching lessons. He also teaches Christian students. He plays plays live almost every week on either 4-string or 5-string.
His playing style favors hard rock, but he can play any genre except for slap-funk and jazz. His main musical achievement is knowing how to ROCK when tasteful to do so.
He has become an avid drummer in the past several years, plays live on occasion, and has done some teaching. He has also played rhythm guitar for almost 30 years as a hobby (acoustic and electric), which he learned to aid in his interaction with other musicians.
Music has likewise been a passion in Dave’s life from an early age. He sang in school choir and played recorder from grades 1-6, played clarinet and tenor saxophone in grades 7-9, took one year of piano in grade 8, but didn’t pick up the bass guitar until just after the end of high school.
Dave is self-diagnosed as having “Musical A.D.D.” (M.A.D.D.). As a teenager, headphones were practically glued to his ears as he absorbed almost every genre of music, ranging from pop to death metal and everywhere in between.
While Susan’s teaching style focuses on both theory and practical/ improvisational, Dave emphasizes the improvisational. As a listener, then as now, Dave almost always has a song in his head and loves thinking of different ways to play it. As a player, his M.A.D.D. has him playing each song a little bit differently every time.
