Sounds of Carolina Music Academy, Anderson | Fees, Rankings, Address, Admission, Vacancies, Reviews & More

Here’s a brief overview of our 2 years at SOC that warranted this review.
– Our violin teacher was unexpectedly fired mid-semester because the owner wanted to hire a different teacher and give all of his existing students to the new teacher. Never once did the owner actually account for how much this would impact students, mere weeks before a recital. The cherry on top was the owner saying she fired our previous teacher for “being 5 minutes late”, and then for our first lesson with the new teacher who was praised so highly, she was 25 minutes late to a 30 minute lesson. Yikes.
– The Level Up Challenge was so poorly orchestrated. I asked for months for the rubric specifically to prep my child. It was never given, and despite the website claiming every student would “receive a personalized rubric”, I had to request my child’s. It was a violin rubric; yet my child performed piano? The judges didn’t have copies of the sheet music, didn’t even know the pieces the students were playing, yet were judging whether or not they played the correct notes? The studio clearly was not equipped to hold a competition, by the utter lack of planning down to the fact that they couldn’t even put the simple effort of googling a piano rubric to judge the students with. I realized why the rubric wasn’t given when requested beforehand, it never existed. How could teachers properly prep students when they didn’t even know what was being graded? Different instruments were not separated; therefore piano was competing against violin, voice, cello, viola, etc. Just a total lack of preparation into the “competition” that chose which students got to perform at the spring recital which previously was open to everyone. Why would a music school set children up to have their self esteem take a hit and not even put the slightest bit of effort in on their part?
– All in all, I would say the studio is operating under the guise of what “looks” good. Not what is best for the students. The majority of staff we have experience with are primarily performers which does not always equate to good educators. I will say it is brilliant marketing that they utilize their former Black teachers pictures on the website multiple times, despite not actually actively employing a single Black teacher, or any minority for that matter. I’ll leave that for you to decide what it means.
– There are so many little things that also added up, from an adult perspective, the “formal” recitals consist of the majority wearing sweatpants/hoodies. There were multiple over-billing issues that were not fixed until I addressed them, so steadily watch your cards if you enroll. All in all, I simply would not recommend this studio to anyone I know.

My sons teacher retired and she referred me here for my sons violin lessons. I was weary at first since she also taught my older son. I signed my son up for summer lessons. My son was paired with Alex, (who reminds me of a lot of my older son) and he knows what he’s doing. I knew he would be a good teacher for my son and they would get along. He’s really nice and my son likes taking lessons from him. Before my son would sometimes make excuses to try to get out of his lessons, but he doesn’t anymore. The lessons are almost right after school, so we drive straight to them. Their building is in downtown Anderson in the Arts building, so it’s not too far from our house. Yes, I would recommend bringing your child here for lessons ???? I heard my son playing the other night and his playing is improving. ?? I’m glad his teacher recommended them.