Sharing The Language Of Music

{ OnTheScene }

Sharing the Language of Music

Seguin Music Shed Offers the Ability to Grow Without Restraint

Story by Sarah Maskal

Photos by Victoria Gaytan

The drab and unassuming exterior of the Seguin Music Shed offers no clues as to the wonder that lies within. Upon entering the building, you’re instantly transported to a nostalgic garage band-style setting. The owner and founder of the company, Johnny Villarreal, has a kind, down-toearth attitude that draws you in and a passion for music that makes you want to be a part of it all.

Villarreal doesn’t come from a particularly musical family, but can remember being drawn to it as far back as age 5 or 6 when he started out in dance classes. When he was in second grade, his older sister got into band in school and he found himself interested in playing the drums.

“We talked to the band director and he said if you play piano, if you take piano lessons, you can pretty much pick whatever instrument you want when that time comes in sixth grade when they pass out instruments and kind of test proficiency,” he said. Villarreal took his advice and studied piano for a couple of years to advance his musical proficiency, but he always knew that his real passion lay in drumming. As a sophomore in high school, he got his own drum set and his dream started to take shape. He quickly got a band together and the endless hours spent playing as a group laid the initial groundwork for his desire to establish a different, more cohesive approach to music lessons.

Villarreal studied audio engineering in Phoenix, Arizona, at the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences. But perhaps his greatest musical influence was when he was afforded the opportunity to work with some of the pros at the top of the drumming scene.

Traveling around playing in bands opened the door that led him to receive one-on-one training from musicians such as Ernie Durawa from the Texas Tornados, the innovative Scott

Pellegrom, and legendary Austin drummer Barry “Frosty” Smith. The experience of learning from the masters was musical education at its finest. He then began teaching percussion for Griffin School, a college preparatory high school in Austin. This gave him his first taste of teaching and the joy it brings to encourage and nurture that love of music in students.

Eventually, he started playing in an Austin-based band called Plush, but when the pandemic hit, they stopped getting gigs and he had to find another way to pay the bills.

Villarreal decided to pack up and head back to his hometown of Seguin where he began giving music lessons out of his home. He was disappointed to find that after more than 20 years away, the available music classes had not grown or changed at all. There was no outlet for students to get together and jam as a group in a learning environment.

He recognized a growing disconnect between younger generations and the ability to freely create and express themselves through music. Villarreal knows many people who have played an instrument for years, but when asked to play something, they don’t know what to play.

“They want you to put a piece of music in front of them and that is a very important part of music but it’s a language, and it’s meant to be shared and created with each other and expressed with each other.”

It’s a huge divide that he believes is getting wider with the current state of musical education. His hope is to instill not only the skills but the confidence needed to bridge that gap.

The Seguin Music Shed is not the place for your traditional music lessons. Though his specialty was drums, his musical background made him proficient enough to teach piano, guitar and more.

So when Villarreal moved his lessons to the studio space that he has now, he set it up to be more of an extension of music class. A space for his students to come in and actively participate in learning music as the social activity that it really is and is meant to be.

“I’m trying to break down that mysticism around the instruments and try to make it as casual as I can, like, we played this one today, we play that one tomorrow” Villarreal said.

If a student is feeling stuck on the guitar and would rather come in and sit at a keyboard for the day, or try their hand at drums, he encourages that. He wants students to realize that if you just put in the time and effort, no task is insurmountable. Playing one instrument can easily lead to playing multiple instruments and getting comfortable enough to be able to just pick something up and play. If you take things step by step and allow yourself to just sound bad and accept that you will have to be bad before getting to a point where you can be great, then you can really grow and flourish. And these are lessons that will not only help Villarreal’s students to succeed in their musical aspirations, but that can translate across multiple aspects of their lives as well.

As for Villarreal, his ambitions for the Music Shed are bigger than he can currently fulfill on his own. He is hiring another piano teacher and guitar teacher in August and hopes to expand and offer many more opportunities for his students in the future, including more availability for group jam sessions. Music is meant to be shared, after all.