Wichita music store was named one of eight finalists for Music School of the Year

Ask Cindy and Michael Houston what makes Garten’s Music successful and they’ll answer with one word: Fun.

“We want to make the learning process fun,” said Cindy, whose parents, Harold and Margaret Garten, started the Wichita music store in 1969.

“What we have discovered is that it doesn’t really matter how old the music student is, if they’re 8 or if they’re 80, if they’re not having fun with the process of learning, they’re not gonna stick with it,” she continued. “And if they don’t stick with it, not only are they not going to be able to have playing skills, they won’t develop that love and passion for music that we want to see everybody enjoy.”

“That’s been our philosophy for a long time,” Michael added. “For kids these days there’s a million things they could be doing, so you have to make it fun. If it’s boring or too repetitive or not fun for them, there’s a million activities they could be doing that are fun.”

That spirit has given the store and studio, 4235 W. Central Ave., some recent national attention.

Garten’s Wichita Music Academy was named as one of eight finalists for Music School of the Year from the Music Academy Success System, a worldwide group of more than 250 educational outlets.

“It’s a small group out of a large organization, so it’s truly an honor,” Cindy said.

All of the finalists were supposed to give live presentations at the group’s convention in April in South Carolina, but COVID-19 precautions kept it to a video display over Zoom. Another music school won the top honor, but the Houstons were pleased with the recognition.

“They really helped us in terms of organization and how to structure things and how to market,” Cindy said of the organization that Garten’s has belonged to for the past seven years. “They’ve really been invaluable.”

Part of the award for finalists is Disney Institute Training for business and customer service principles at Walt Disney World in Orlando, scheduled for September.

Garten’s was initially opened by Cindy’s parents for her father to service electronic organs on site, she said.

“As the business evolved, with market changes and everything, we got more involved with retail and having instruments for sale and more and more involved in education,” she said. “Now we’re doing more education than we are retail.”

At one time, she said, Garten’s had as many as five technicians in five service trucks on the road repairing instruments throughout south central Kansas.

“They kept running into people who were excited about brand new things” rather than their old instruments, she said. “(Many) bought an instrument and never learned how to play it.”

When Garten’s moved into its current building, it was renting space to teachers for one-on-one music lessons.

By 2013 it shifted to a music academy format, where the Houstons were “in charge of running the academy ourselves instead of just collecting rent,” Cindy said.

A prime example of the blend of fun and education, the Houstons say, is Garten’s Goofin’ Around Keyboard Class, designed for beginners 60 years and older, which they began in 1997.

“We don’t put kids in because they learn too fast and make the adults feel kinda dumb,” Michael said.

“It’s a very relaxed, enjoyable atmosphere,” said Cindy, who teaches some of the beginning seniors. “They don’t have to do recitals.”

“They learn the music right away,” Michael said. “We had a student not too long ago who had been studying music for months and they were still working on scales and theory, and she was bored out of her mind. But if you get people playing music right away, things they know and enjoy, they’ll have a good time and be more interested in practicing and learning because they’re having a good time doing it.”

And the students are ready to share their newfound skill.

“After first class, they’re able to go home and play a song,” Cindy said. “Nobody ever believes it, but the students who have been through the class can tell you it’s true.”

Their oldest beginning Goofin’ Around student was age 94, they said.

As time marches on, the Houstons say, their students’ taste in the music they listen to and the music they want to play has changed.

“We tend to remember most fondly the music we listened to as teenagers, so as your students age, you’re going to see those years of youth come forward as well,” Cindy said.

In the 1990s, students wanted to play big band music. Now, it’s more like the Beatles, Eagles and Rolling Stones.

Younger students’ perspectives have changed, too.

“Now they’ve got their phones with them and they’ve heard this song on YouTube and want to learn how to play that,” Michael said. “They already know how the song goes, they just want to learn how to say that.

“It’s not necessarily married to the method book, because kids want to learn a song that they know,” he added.

There are 17 teachers at the Wichita Music Academy, and the Houstons say they’ve been able to find an instructor for every instrument a student is seeking to play, with one exception – bagpipes.

While they have seen some shifts in the music retail world – ukuleles have outsold guitars for several years – they have seen a constant demand for music lessons at the Wichita Music Academy.

The Houstons continue to run Garten’s Music as a family business, with their daughter, Amy, in charge of marketing.

Like everything else in 2020, changes had to be made because of the coronavirus pandemic. Virtual music lessons became the watchword for Garten’s.

“Some of our students were very comfortable with the technology and some of them were scared to death of the technology,” Cindy said. “Our entire staff became IT people. … I think all of our teachers did a phenomenal job teaching online, and that is totally different from teaching in person.”

There was never a thought of canceling lessons, they said.

“We’re very strong believers in the health and emotional benefits of music-making,” Cindy said. “During all this stress our entire world was under, we needed music now more than ever.”

One parent of a high-school student confided to the Houstons that her daughter had “lost everything” when school had closed, and the music lessons were “all that she had left.”

“That was heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time,” Michael said.