Twenty-one years ago, Smolover and his wife, Barbara, founded National Guitar Workshop, a Litchfield-based summer music education program.
Over the decades, National Guitar?s success skyrocketed to become the country?s largest music education program with campuses in Austin, Chicago, Los Angeles, Nashville, New Orleans, San Francisco, Seattle, and at New Milford?s Canterbury School. Now the business is planning a $5 million investment in an Internet-based guitar instruction program.
The venture is so large that Smolover is looking to move into a larger, Torrington-based facility.
"We?re looking for something between 40,000 and 80,000 square feet," said Smolover, who anticipates creating 700 new jobs as a result of the program.
"This is a good thing for our region," Smolover said. "Unlike manufacturing firms, we?re not going to move off-shore. We?re here to stay."
With National Guitar students as far-ranging as the cities that host the nationally-acclaimed program - participants have included young teens up to an 80-year old nun - traditional course curriculum needs to be designed to meet far-ranging musical goals.
"It?s a real challenge teaching that incredibly wide range of students," Smolover said. "I realized that if I didn?t make them happy, I wasn?t going to make much of a success."
Smolover?s approach to instruction is an obvious, albeit rarely utilized, one. By examining each student?s individual needs - some enroll with National Guitar to play an instrument, read music or write lyrics - instructors can better tailor their teaching approach.
This educational concept, Smolover said, stems from his own experiences in the fifth grade. Diagnosed as dyslexic, Smolover?s teacher taught him in a way specifically geared towards his own special needs.
Smolover is about to deliver an online music instruction program he believes will change the face of Internet education as we know it.
Gone are the days of shaky live video feeds, Smolover said. With the advent of cable and DSL Internet connections, Smolover?s latest venture, WorkshopLive, will afford the world with easy but thorough on-line music instruction.
"Nine million Americans take private music lessons," Smolover said. "Forty-two million consider themselves ?active? musicians. This prototype is going to break the bounds of music education everywhere."
Still in the patent phase and not yet available to the public, WorkshopLive?s student-teacher matching concept looks at each student individually. A blues student can interact with a completely different screen design than a classical student. Students can also slow down the tempo of musical examples without changing the pitch. "Distance learning is a hot sector," Smolover said. "For $24.99 a month, students around the globe will be given 24-hour access to the WorkshopLive Web site."
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