Drum Instruction @ The Music Factory OC

Friendly place. Good instructors.
Jun 7th, 2019

We had multiple children participating in individual lessons and the band program for 2 years. I am an ex-pro musician with a degree in music from USC and was looking for a school operated by like-minded professionals to help me with the music education of my kids that would provide the kids with an opportunity to collaborate with other talented young musicians and learn performance skills. The Music Factory was convenient because it’s quite close to where I live, but it didn’t work out and the primary reason is school owner Danny Thompson. We tried hard to make it work. We showed up on time for everything, made sure our kids practiced, participated in every performance opportunity, and always paid our bill. But there were shortcomings in the program. The individual lessons were Ok. Good individual instruction is widely available elsewhere. It was the band program that attracted us to TMF in the 1st place, but that program turned out to be a mess. We had 3 different band instructors during 3 rotations in a row, and none of them really knew what they were doing. They really didn’t know how to teach a band class or even how to architect a band to play music. Plus they were flaky. One of them missed 2 rehearsals in a row with zero advance warning and had no reasonable explanation. A scheduled performance was imminent so we reacted by running some rehearsals ourselves but school owner Danny Thompson didn’t like that. He also didn’t like it if we tried to help the kids pick songs to learn, communicate with other parents, or help our daughter use her own little keyboard instead of the school’s dinosaur. We didn’t feel welcome at the school. Danny seemed to just want us to drop our kids there and leave. I think that’s because we wanted to know what was going on and sometimes asked questions. But we never demanded anything from Danny or the school. We showed up on time for everything, participated in everything, and always paid our bill. We did try to discuss our concerns about the band program with Danny and I even offered to volunteer at the school to help out. But Danny wasn’t open to hearing our concerns and repaid our loyalty with a tantrum about “his way or the highway” and told us “no parent input allowed”. Then without warning he just deleted my kids’ accounts in the school’s online system sending THEM a message that they were “out”! He didn’t discuss options with us, give us the opportunity to withdraw from the school, or care about the effect his actions would have on our kids or other kids at TMF. He just deleted their accounts and notified them that they were out without even giving us a chance to tell them what was happening. They’re just kids they didn’t deserve that! Danny Thompson is an insecure, unprofessional, over-controlling individual who only really seems to understand one style of music. He brags about his “world tours” playing drums for an obscure punk rock band and apparently thinks that gives him the skill to dictate the nuances of providing a music education for children. Apparently it doesn’t. He certainly can’t keep band instructors around there very long and it’s easy to see why. Danny is too petty, volatile, and musically limited to be allowed to be responsible for your child’s musical education let alone their wellbeing. Hurting a child by establishing a permanent memory for them that they were "kicked out" of a school even though the child did nothing to deserve that doesn't faze Danny because he is a narcissist who lacks the compassion to understand that his actions and behavior will affect them, maybe permanently. If you are a parent who cares about what your child will learn and who they will learn it from look elsewhere. There are other music schools with better professional governance and a more flexible and competent approach for educating your child.
Aug 18th, 2018