Local Guitarist and Evia Music Teacher Doing Virtual Program for Sanger Library
BY AUDREY TOLLE
Nik Woods moved to Sanger when he was twelve years old and began taking guitar lessons from Victor Gann when he was thirteen. He continued to study with him until the age of 20, when he moved to California to attend the Musicians Institute in Hollywood. Returning to Texas in 2014, he began teaching at Victor’s newly named business, Evia Music, a year later.
All of those years of music study paid off, as demonstrated by his versatility, from “shredding” in his rock band Spank to playing solo Jazz at a wedding. He also enjoys teaching now more than ever. Reflecting on his experiences, he said, “Many musicians like myself don’t attend music school to become a teacher, but it is something that I’ve grown to love over the last five years. I look forward to meeting anyone in the community of Sanger that is curious about learning guitar, or would like to improve their current skills.”
His upcoming virtual program for the Sanger Public Library will be streamed on their Facebook page on Saturday, July 11th at 2:00, and will be available for viewing for a month. Nik will demonstrate a few different aspects of guitar playing, including the basics of how strings make a sound and how fingers should be placed on the fret board. He will then demonstrate how to play a simple song, “Smoke on the Water.” Chords and scales will also be discussed, and how they are the building blocks of music. He applies all of these musical aspects when practicing and performing, and he stresses their importance in a student’s growth as a musician.
Sanger is fortunate to have the Evia Music School in the heart of its downtown square. Its owner, Victor Gann, is an internationally known guitarist whose songs have been used on many television shows, commercials, and professional leagues such as the NFL, NASCAR, and the NBA. All instructors have either a degree in music or have performed, toured, or recorded professionally. The school currently offers lessons for guitar, bass, ukulele, theory, songwriting, recording, drums, percussion, voice, piano, flute, and clarinet. Like Nik, many of their students have gone on to further pursue their music education in college and/or worked on their own original material in their own bands, among them Melissa Ratley, Dieselbeast, and Mobile Commotion.
The library’s Summer Reading program will continue through July and the first week in August. It’s open to all ages and registered readers can earn cool prizes, so be sure to sign up through their READSquared program at http://sangerlibrary.readsquared.com/ !