Jenny Sandoval opened Curious Chords Music Studio as a home-based music studio in 2007 with 20 students and a love for music.

Now 13 years later, Curious Chords has music lessons for almost every music instrument, employs 15 music teachers and teaches more than 300 students.

Sandoval along with her mother, Kathy Brown who took ownership of Curious Chords in 2010 and joined business owners around the country who were forced to innovate their business model as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

The music studio has taken in-person music lessons online to help keep students and teachers safe from the virus.

“We’ve had a learning curve; it has not been without challenges, but at the same time it’s definitely opened new doors for us to provide music education to families in a different way,” Sandoval said.

As the coronavirus closed down schools, offices and businesses, “everything started to hit,” Sandoval said. That is when she started researching best practices to continue providing one-on-one music lessons from a distance, which she learned would be possible through Zoom, a video conferencing platform.

Some of the music lessons offered at Curious Chords include piano, trombone, drums and saxophone. In addition, the music studio offers songwriting lessons as well as music theory and composition classes.

Zoom will now be a tool that Sandoval plans to continue using beyond the pandemic as it has “opened new avenues” to teach students who are sick, traveling or moving out of town.

Though Sandoval, Brown and the rest of the teachers miss the face-to-face interaction with their students, “the priority is to keep everyone safe,” Brown said.

“We’re really blessed to have the opportunity that we have—that we’ve been given—to be able to teach the gift of music to the families in Hays County,” Brown said.

Curious Chords Music Studio