Composer. Flutist. Storyteller.
Composition Lessons
Join a private studio with a decade of experience
embracing inspiration and genre fluidity
and celebrating each student's own unique voice
instrumental composition | vocal music, opera, & musical theatre | film scoring
Lessons Starting with Your Interests
Inspiration is the greatest composition teacher. Students arrive with the music they have formally studied on their instruments, or through music theory, and assume that those are the only "appropriate" places to draw inspiration. Through our lessons, we discover their glorious well of inspiration from the pop, rock, Sacred, Broadway, metal, or other types of music from their own personal life and culture. Together, we analyze what exactly about each type of music gives them chills, what moments drive them to listen again and again — and then help them create those same powerful moments in their own creations.
Connections with Live Performers
Play Boot Studios are based in Bloomington, Indiana, practically in the backyard of the world-renowned Jacobs School of Music on the Indiana University Bloomington campus. Through our connections at the university, you have a unique opportunity to benefit from readings, recordings, and consultations with live performers at the top of their craft — an opportunity most developing composers have to wait until their conservatory training to experience.
Vocal Composition
Jamey is uniquely qualified to guide students interested in songwriting, musical theatre, or opera composition. She is an alumna of the renowned Really Spicy Opera Aria Institute for Composers and Librettists, with whom she trained for four years while learning to write opera; she also carries knowledge from her time with the NEO Voice Festival in vocal science-supported, safe, and fun extended vocal and choral technique writing. Her operas, musicals, songs, and choral pieces have been featured across the country and world due to her dedication to performability, idiomatic and health-forward writing, as well as her soaring melodies, chilling interplays with extramusical references hidden in accompaniment lines and character motifs, and fluid command of tonality and the lack thereof.
Teaching Experience
Jamey has been teaching privately for over 10 years, and has built up a resume of individual and group composition teaching experience at all levels from early childhood to post-collegiate. She currently serves as faculty at the Jacobs Composition Academy, holds an Associate Instructor position in the Indiana University Music Scoring for Visual Media department, and is a Teaching Artist with Opera on Tap's Playground Opera and OperaBox curriculums. In past years, she has been a lecturer in composition at the Jupiter Opera Development Foundation and Cazadero Music Camp.
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Learn Film Scoring with Tools of the Trade
Jamey is an Associate Instructor for the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music department for Music Scoring for Visual Media. She has written scores for audio dramas, movies, plays, and video games, and loves learning and teaching the latest in music technology. Whether you're a DAW pro looking for VST, mixing, or plug-in advice, or a beginner looking to get started with your first LABS download on Audacity or Cakewalk, she is excited to share her workflow, tips, and knowledge from the exciting world of music tech, and help students harness its power in their own music and creations.
Rates
Rates are available for 30-minute, 45-minute, and hour-long lesson times.
At Play Boot Studios, we are dedicated to children being able to receive lessons regardless of financial situation. Our scholarship program offsets the cost of lessons on a need-based scale for those under 18 years old. Please contact us for more information!