Today we’d like to introduce you to Rod Contreras.
Hi Rod, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I started playing piano when I was 6 years old, and I also sang and played in percussion ensembles throughout my childhood. I moved to Cupertino, California from Mexico when I was 9, and played classical and pop with Mrs. Moore, a local teacher I worked with through high school. At Monta Vista High School I was fortunate enough to be in multiple ensembles and choirs — we won several first-prize competitions and traveled to perform locally and throughout the USA.
I then decided to focus my studies in music. I studied with Dr. Paul Setziold at De Anza Community College before moving to Iowa to study jazz with Phil Mattson and his Music Vocational Program in the tiny town of Creston. Oh, the things you do when you’re 19! After a year I got accepted to the Music Composition program at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, where I studied with William Brooks and Zach Browning. While I was there, one of my professors, Charles Capwell, received a Ford Foundation grant to study the music of Bali. Balinese teachers were brought over to campus for two semesters, and then I spent that summer at Bob Brown’s center in Ubud. That one really rearranged things for me. Nobody hands you a book in Bali. You sit next to somebody and you play until it’s in your body.
In 1999, I started teaching piano on the side while studying composition. Next thing I knew I had 15 students. Life was saying “Do this.”
But then, in 2001, I moved to North San Diego County with the idea of becoming a monk. After 6 months at a men’s-only ashram, I decided the monk life wasn’t for me. I finished my degree at Cal State San Marcos, got a job at a little music shop in Escondido, and slowly built my student base back up. In 2004, a friend tipped me off about a lady in Encinitas selling her piano business — she was moving to Hawaii and wanted to find the right person to pass her students on to. Next thing I know, I have 35 weekly piano students. I’ve been teaching at AMX Studios in Encinitas ever since!
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Probably the biggest challenge, which I think most people can relate to in these modern times, is the student’s ability to find time to practice. Living in beautiful San Diego, sports gain ann upper hand and I understand why — practice is at a set time, there’s a team, there’s a game on Saturday. Piano asks for something quieter and slower, and it doesn’t hand you a trophy at the end of the season.
That being said, what I’m offering is a language, an art form, and — maybe most of all — a relationship. I’ve had students I’ve worked with for eight, ten years. Many stop only once they’re off to college.
Covid was its own thing. I had about 40 students when it hit. I was lucky in that I’d already been messing around with Zoom before any of us had to, so I wasn’t starting from zero. But 16 months of teaching on Zoom was taxing in a way that’s hard to describe. I stuck it out because I wanted my students to have some form of normalcy, and I think that mattered more than the lessons themselves that year.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Rod Contreras Piano Studio?
Rod Contreras Piano Studio is a one-man operation. Happy to say I’ve been serving families in North County for over two decades at AMX Studios in Encinitas.
What I specialize in is the hidden architecture of music — how it’s built, and why it does what it does. Most students come in wanting to play a song, and we do play songs obviously! But along the way we’re doing ear training, note reading, harmony, rhythm, and eventually even coming up with original arrangements. I’ve got advanced students building their own music projects in Logic Pro with high-end virtual instruments. We go from Bach to the Beatles, and we detour into the Golden Ratio and Fibonacci sequences when the moment calls for it, because those patterns are in the music, in nature and in life.
I’ve built a lot of my own tools over the years — a color and shape system for reading notes, a note-identification app, an interval trainer, custom play-along tracks. There’s a One Minute Club my students try to break into.
Technology is a big part of my studio experience. Every student gets a detailed summary of our weekly lesson, and now with AI, I have Claude create custom multiple-choice quizzes — about 5 minutes each — on the core concepts we covered that week. I also have a multi-camera setup so I can make what I like to call “custom YouTube videos,” where students can literally see me, my hands, and a virtual keyboard that lights up the keys as I play. All of it lives in a shared folder they can get to all week. If they want to send me something mid-week, I answer. Piano is a lonely thing between Tuesdays. I try to make it less so.
Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
I’ve got an Art Night set coming up on August 15th, 6 to 8 pm at the Encinitas Community Center — two hours of playing. Bach’s Prelude in F minor, Philip Glass’s Glassworks, a Brahms Intermezzo, and a lot more. Come say hello.
My original arrangements and compositions are on Spotify:
And there are videos of me and my students on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/encinitaspiano
I got engaged last year to the love of my life Savannah. We are planning to get married next year. Pretty much every morning you’ll find us dancing to one of our vinyl records while making breakfast. Hoping to do a long honeymoon in Greece next year.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.encinitaspiano.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/encinitaspiano
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RodContrerasPianoStudio
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@rodcontreraspianostudio1893
- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5U81R7UEzP9edG0YQMXq9j
