Bonnie J. teVelde

About Me

My Purpose in Life

I am passionate about teaching music! I believe that my mission in life, and the reason I was born, is to fundamentally change how and when music is taught in the world. I am developing a method that teaches Absolute Pitch to my students, from ages 2 to Adult!

According to the latest research on Absolute Pitch, almost all babies that are born have AP, and continue to use it until they are 6 months old. At that point, unless it is actively stimulated with listening activities, it's starts to diminish until by age 6, if a child's mind is not stimulated correctly, it becomes more difficult, to get it back.

If you have a child that is under the age of 6, and this is most certainly true about children under the age of 4, and you call a local music teacher to ask for private piano lessons, you will be told that your child is too young to start formal music training, and to call back when your child is 6 or older.

In my opinion, this fatal error in understanding how the human brain works is responsible for our society losing the most important musical gift it has before lessons are even started. The teacher base in the western world is comprised of musicians who also were told to wait to start lessons until age 6 or older, and as a result, a music teacher who has Absolute Pitch is extremely rare. It is almost impossible for a teacher who does not have AP to teach it to a student. The best analogy I can come up with is: How effective would a teacher who is color blind be in teaching a new student to learn to identify and name their colors? If you only see in shades of gray, how can you explain to a child that a tree with new leaves in the spring is a bright green? How can you help a child identify the turquoise water on a tropical beach, when you see it as a sort of dull gray? Even if you were really good at seeing shades of gray, how could you fully explain the beauty of a hot air balloon of rainbow colors against a deep blue sky with white fluffy clouds? This is how fundamentally deep the differences in sounds are to someone with AP versus someone without it.

I have created a method to teach this skill, and have just completed a revolutionary four (4) year study at my school to prove that my method works. It is an amazing journey. The students I have chosen to be in my study are successful beyond my wildest dream. I have designed a set of criteria, including a short, on-line test, that tells me who might have the propensity for AP, and have started working with students from the ages of 3 & up. Even students who have come to me later, from age 6 to some adult music teachers I have worked with, have been extraordinarily receptive to AP training... more than I ever expected. San Francisco State University has been conducting a large study on AP, and they are in the process of looking at whether the origin of this gift is genetic or caused by the child's environment, and the data indicates that the child must have both. Their study concludes that if a child has the genetic predisposition, but does not get formal musical training training before age 6, they will most likely lose the ability for life. My method is proving this concept to be incorrect, if a student gets the right training.

Being the only person with AP that I knew, except for my father, from the time I was very young, I really believed there were very few people born with this ability, and even less that were fully trained to use it. Given the results of my work in the last 2 years, however, I can say, without a doubt, that there are a lot more people out there with the propensity for AP than I ever imagined. The problem is... there are very few, if any, teachers out there who 1) understand what AP is, and 2) have any idea at all on how to teach it, and 3) if they could teach it, would take students young enough to be effective at teaching it.

My goal in life is to change that. I am currently training several teachers, who have the propensity for AP, to recognize pitch. Even though they did not get training before age 6, my method is working with them! I am also working with them on how to recognize the signs of AP in their students, and how to use my method to train them in it. My goal: To bring the method I have developed and successfully tested for the last four (4) years to the public. I am currently having a program written to supplement my method at home, both for students of my school, and for on-line students who do not have access to a music teacher in their area that teaches AP. I have put together a teacher training program to teach all of the teachers at TSM AP, and to teach them how to teach it to their students. This method will be released later this year! If you would like to receive an email when we lauch our new AP training course/product, please contace me ASAP so I can add you to our mailing list.

About Me

I think that in order to understand who I am, and how passionate I am about music education, you need to know where I come from, and why I love teaching music so much! I really believe that I was not only born with a genetic gift, Perfect Absolute Pitch (AP), but I was blessed to have parents that instinctively gave me the absolutely perfect environment to foster my gift. Without my parents, and other events that happened in my life that acted as catalysts, awaking and refining my natural talents and abilities.

My Parents

Frederik Boessenkool and Anna Jantina teVelde emigrated to the United States from The Netherlands about 2 years before I was born. They were married in New York, and came to California in 1959. I was born shortly after that, in 1960. The first piece of furniture they bought, when they got to California in a car they bought for $90, was an organ. That tells me how much of a priority it was, to them, to have music in their lives.

(When I hear people tell me they don't have room for a piano, in a house that has TV's, gaming systems, and tons of other furniture, I have to think, "hmmm... why is music simply not a priority for them?" After that, I ask myself, "what can I do to help these people get that music is as important to a gifted child as a bed to sleep in, or air to breathe!" In my opinion, music is so much more important than a big screen TV, or a new computer.)

When my mother was pregnant with me, she would listen to hours and hours of classical music, and she even went as far as to put headphones on her stomach so I could hear the music more clearly. What a gift she gave me, just by doing that one thing!

My father, Frederik, was born with Perfect Absolute Pitch... a trait he often exhibited by playing any song I would come home from school singing. I was always amazed at how he could play anything by ear, even though he was dutch and had never heard most of the songs I came home with before.

As a baby, my parents often played organ with me on their lap in front of them. My mother could read music, and played rather slowly and methodically. My father would jubilantly play his own tunes, and improvise different melodies for hours. I remember my mother telling my father "honey, get off of the freeway", when my father would get stuck improvising on a particular theme for too long. He would always play joyful tunes, mostly in the key of G-flat, or as he called it "6 molls", which, in Dutch, means "6 flats". My mother and father would dance with me around the living room, singing religious songs from the church hymnal with each other, in harmony.

When I was a toddler, I remember listening to hours of different classical LP records. I would sit on the floor, with my eyes closed, just imagining different scenarios and stories to go with the music.

At 2 1/2, I was starting to reach up to the organ on my tip-toes. I can't remember a time that I didn't want to play and sing. I would stand in the center of the isle at church, and conduct the choir from there every chance I could get.

I took my first "official" organ lesson when I was 3 1/2. The teacher was a strict church lady, who picked a method I would now choose for a 6 year old, for me. I was expected to learn to read the 10 notes of "C-position" in my first week. Since I couldn't read English yet, (I spoke Dutch at home, and didn't learn to speak English until Kindergarten.) it was an incredibly difficult experience for me, and I still remember feeling totally overwhelmed. I learned on a 3 manual organ (3 rows of keys with different sounds on each), but I was not permitted to touch the top 2 rows, with the pretty sounds, because I was not good enough.

Even though I wanted to play so badly, and had begged for lessons, I quickly got very discouraged. I heard my mother get the news, every week, that I wasn't good enough and I probably didn't have any natural talent, unlike her daughters, who were doing really well. After 1 1/2 years of getting more and more disappointed, my mother finally put an end to the pain and took me out of lessons.

I was sick a lot at a young child, with high fevers, convulsions, and several hospitalizations. Even though I had "failed" in lessons, I continued to play the songs in that same lesson book, over and over, and eventually taught myself to read music quite well. My father had a master's degree in horticulture from The Netherlands, and he was building his own landscape company in the greater Los Angeles area.

The Accident that Changed Everything

My mother, sister, brother, and I would go to the job site, wherever my father was working, and bring him lunch during the summer. We would play on the job site while all of the workers were gone getting lunch. One day, my sister and I were playing a game of hide & seek, and a worker came back from lunch early. He had been drinking beer, probably all morning, and was drunk at the time. He jumped on a tractor, and put it in reverse instead of forward gear. The bucket of the tractor hit and knocked over the wall I was hiding behind, and the tractor ended up crushing me.

I don't remember much of that event, except that I woke up in the back of my parent's station wagon on the way to the hospital. My mother was a Registered Nurse, and she was telling me I would be ok. I remember telling her I was ok with dying, and that I was sure I would see her in heaven someday. I don't remember feeling any pain, and I felt very calm.

The short of it is that I lived. I had severe crush injuries in my lower body, internal injuries, and a broken leg. I ended up being in the hospital for 3 months, in traction, and in a body cast for another 3 months. The man that was driving the tractor thought he had killed me, and drove my father's work truck off of a cliff on Angeles Crest Highway. His drinking and subsequent guilt cost him his life, and his 6 children, their father. (This is one of many reasons I am so passionate about helping kids that are affected by someone else's drug use and drinking.)

Unexpected Consequences

As a result of the accident, I received a small settlement from the insurance company. My father had been destroyed financially, because of the accident repercussions and my injuries, so there was no way my parents could afford music lessons for me. My parents petitioned the court to allow them to have access to some of my settlement funds, so that I could have music lessons. The judge granted their request, with a few requirements as to how the money was to be used:

1. They could only purchase a new, high quality instrument.
2. They could only enroll me in an accredited school with the best, certified instructors.

All of a sudden, instead of a grumpy, mean teacher who taught out of her house, I got the best that money could buy in Los Angeles... which was a mecca of wonderful teachers! I chose to play accordion, and got a brand new accordion! I was enrolled in an incredibly fun school, that actually had a float for the accordion students to sit on in local parades! They had an accordion band, and events, like guild, where I could perform and win trophies!

I got so good at accordion, I auditioned to play for a professional square dancing troupe, at the age of 12. I got the job, and played at the Hollywood Palladium, on TV for the first time! These were the days of Lawrence Welk, and accordion was pretty cool... well, maybe a little old fashioned. I was a little older than Weird Al was when he learned accordion!

My mother had a very bad heart, and was experiencing severe chest pain in the pollution of Los Angeles, so our family moved to Santa Rosa. I had added flute to my repertoire of instruments, and then piccolo and oboe. I loved to play organ, and was again teaching myself songs. But there was nothing I wanted to play more than the piano. Because good, Dutch Reformed Church members only played organ, not piano, it had not been an option to play piano when I was younger. Now that my parents had changed churches, and piano was allowed...even encouraged, I was obsessed with learning how to play it. I would go into the band practice rooms at lunch time, and play and play and play. I would listen to other students and teachers play, and try to figure out popular songs on my own by getting the sheet music, and figuring it out.

My First Competition

I found out about a church music competition, and I decided that I wanted to enter. I was such a quiet kid, that when I tried out for choir in 5th grade, the teacher couldn't believe that a child who never spoke more than 5 words all year, could actually sing. But... I decided to learn a popular song by Barry Manilow, which I could eventually play and sing. I never told my parents that I was entering the contest, and I got a ride from my friend to get there. I ended up winning 1st place, and I was told that I had to represent the area in a county-wide competition in a month. I practiced another song like crazy, and got myself to the second level of competition. When I won 1st place again, I was told that, in six months, I would be competing at the State level for an audience of 5,400 people! Talk about motivation!

At that point, I realized this was really serious, and I should probably tell my parents about it. I didn't realize how proud of me they would be... My mother took me to the piano store, and bought me a new Mason & Hamlin console piano. (My sister still has that piano). They got me an amazing teacher, and I spent the next six months, including my whole summer vacation at age 15, preparing a solo (Bela Bartok's Allegro barbaro (1911) Sz. 49, BB 63) for the competition!

It was the most fun and the most purpose I have ever had in my life. For someone who was absolutely the quietest person, anywhere, to play at this level was an unbelievably, almost out-of-body, experience. I ended up not winning the competition, but it took me to a level of playing that I never dreamed I would be able to do.

Although I didn't win at the State Level, I had prepared my first truly advanced piano solo, and I absolutely loved the experience of performing it on stage for thousands of people (6,500 people, to be exact)! I knew that I loved every bit of the experience, from the hours of practice, to the final product. People have asked me if I dreaded the long hours of practice time, (sometimes up to 8 hours a day), and I have to say that I never loved anything more. I knew, from that point on, that I would find my life's purpose in music.

Previous to this, beginning at the 5th grade, I had started playing flute in the elementary school band. I continued to play flute, adding piccolo, during junior high school. When I got to Senior High School, at Montgomery High in Santa Rosa, the band director, Mr. Morgan, asked me if I would switch to oboe. Oboe is a double reed instrument that is incredibly difficult to play, but I just loved the challenge! Mr. Morgan was the most amazing teacher I had in school, period. In addition to teaching band, he was also a licensed pilot, and he convinced the school to let him teach an aviation class. This class prepared us for taking the FAA written exam, and I fell in love with flying. If we got an A in the class, Mr. Morgan promised to take us up in his Cessna 310, a twin engine, sleek, amazing plane! I ended up taking band, aviation, and being the student assistant in his classroom. He took me to my first "Powder Puff Derby", a women's only flying competition in Sacramento, California. What an experience! I was hooked. My 15th year was not only filled with music, but all my extra time was spent at the airport just watching the planes take off and land. (I couldn't afford actual flying lessons, but I dreamed of the day that I could take them.)

My mother was an accomplished opera singer, with a beautiful voice. She first introduced me to her voice teacher, and I found that I absolutely loved to sing, as well. Over the next fifteen (15) years of my life, I had the opportunity to sing in an amazing mixed quartet with my sister, Mike Koontz, and Matthew Hickock. The four (4) of us prepared and performed many Baroque pieces, acappella, for many events with audiences from 500-7,000 people in attendance! What a blast! During that period, my mom became very ill, and passed away of breast cancer in 1975 (when I was 25). This was a huge blow to me, personally, and I went into a very depressed stage of my life.

The one thing that I still had to comfort me was my music. I wrote many songs during that period of time... songs about my mother, songs about God, songs about angels... songs I would record years later on my first CD.

After a devastating divorce, my children and I I went on to use my accounting background to start an accounting firm in Newport Beach. I found that although I loved creating a business, and working one-on-one with clients to show them how to become smart about managing their money and their businesses, I hated the actual work of accounting and tax preparation. I knew it was not my life's purpose, and that there was a higher purpose for me out there. I listened to that inner voice, sold my company, and moved to the Central Coast of CA where my sister, Janet Crabb, was also living.

I really started playing piano and singing, seriously, again. I copyrighted and recorded all of the original songs I had written since I was 18. I was fortunate to work with Mike Coho, from 1994-98, at Zion Recording Studios.

This was back in the days when everything was recorded onto studio 8-track machines, transferred to DAT, sent out to a second studio to master, sent to a third company for duplication, etc. (I still shake my head every time I do this entire process for my students inside of an hour... it literally took months from the time I finished recording to the time I had a CD in my hand!) The recording process for 10 songs took me over 4 years to complete. At the time, I thought this was remarkably fast, as it had taken me over 10 years to write them!

Although I had taught private music lessons to individual students, from time to time, since I was 16 years old, in 1996 I started teaching a few piano and voice students at my home in Arroyo Grande. In 1997, I started a children's choir called "The Little Angels". I remember printing out the letters "The teVelde School of Music" in a really large font, printing them out, and taping them up on the wall in my bedroom. I knew that somehow I was going to start a school, and it was going to change my life and the lives of every student in it.

Bonnie :)

Honors, Awards, and Certifications:

2010: Cofounder of "The International Conservatory of Musician Educators" (ICME) with Karen Foreman. ICME is an international adjudication program promoting excellence in music pedagogy. We have designed the first national adjudication program for a combination of many instruments and voice. The most important goal of ICME is to document the progress, in 30 areas of study, of every music student. These adjudications take place at TM twice per year. This program includes an extensive teacher training and certification program, including the first ever training program for teachers who want to learn to teach students with Absolute Pitch (AP). For the first time, in 2011, many of our students were independently evaluated for AP abilities, and their skill was documented!

2007-2011: Created a program to teach Perfect Absolute Pitch (AP) to children, ages 3mos to age 16. In addition, this program is teaching older teens and adults who have had the propensity for AP, but have never been fully trained. Created a training program to teach music teachers how to teach AP.

Currently writing a method book, computer program, iPhone and Droid Apps, and other supportive materials to teach The teVelde Absolute Pitch Program (TAP).

1997-Present: Founded The teVelde School of Music in Arroyo Grande, CA. Now, known as teVelde Music, Inc. with two (2) locations (Arroyo Grande, CA and San Luis Obispo, CA), including a full digital recording studios. Opening a third location in Atascadero, CA in Jan. 2012. Planned locations for the future include: Morro Bay, Paso Robles, Santa Maria, and Santa Barbara. Developing franchising opportunities that will be fully developed by 2014.

Currently offering lessons in multiple instruments and voice, with 12 certified and highly trained teachers. All lessons are customized to the student's personality type and learning style, and teacher's are chosen for the student based on compatibility in these areas. Specializing in teaching TAP, Gifted Students, as well as students with learning disabilities including ADHD, ADD, Autism, Aspberger's, and a wide variety of learning disorders.

2005: Honored by the Chinese Government for "Contributing to the Welfare of the Chinese People" (The highest award that can be given to a non-Chinese citizen.) This award was given in appreciation for judging and coaching advanced piano students at "The 4th Annual International Piano Competition" in Harbin, China.

1999-2009: Founder and Chairperson of The Arroyo Grande Center of The National Guild of Piano Teachers (NGPT). Hosted Annual Guild Adjudication events for teachers in the South San Luis Obispo and North Santa Barbara County Areas.

1999-2004, 2010-11. Founder of the South County Children's Choir, and The teVelde Children's Choir, with choirs in Arroyo Grande and Santa Maria, CA. Choirs focused on creating a relationship between elderly patients and children.

1999-2009: Awarded Honor Roll for Excellence in Teaching every year, for 10 consecutive years, by The NGPT, & The American College of Musicians.

1999: Received International Award for playing 15 selections at the Advanced "D" Level in NGPT Adjudications.

2004: Certification Completed "Certified Piano Instructor" by The National Guild of Piano Teachers and The American College of Musicians. Requirements for this certification included teaching at least 20 advanced students, annually, for the period of five (5) years within a seven (7) year period. They were required to pass National programs of ten (10) or more songs, and were adjudicated by Certified Judges from many areas of the United States. Students were judged utilizing criteria including: Professional Performance Presentation, Instrumental Technique, Scales/Chords/Arpeggios, Music Theory, Ear Training, Improvisation, and More. Programs were required to be balanced between Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Contemporary Literature. Pieces were judged using 30 criteria in the categories listed above, and students were required to score at 17 or more commendations per program.

1985-1998: Composed and Recorded a CD of 10 original songs, including piano/vocal/flute works in the alternative Christian genres.

1982: Member of Sweet Adelines International Chorus, Mission Viejo Chapter, that won 4th place in the World out of 500 international choruses from 5 continents. This was a 2 year process of winning local, regional, and national competitions that required monthly weekend vocal seminars, 2-3 rehearsals a week, and extensive outside vocal coaching in all area of vocal development, harmonies, blending, and choreography.

1974-1980: Soloist and Accompanist for the Worldwide Church of God. Chosen to perform at worldwide conventions with over 6,500 members in attendance. Featured piano soloist at international, national, regional, and local conventions and meetings. Accompanist for international choirs with 140+ members, and instrumental and vocal soloists. Featured vocal performer, both as a member of a mixed quartet, for international conventions, as a soloist, and as a choir member. Performed original compositions of piano/vocal/flute solos and duets.

1974: Won 1st place in the Northern California Region, and in the Sonoma County District of Youth Opportunities United (Y.O.U.) talent competition.