You can’t always judge a music academy by its cover.

From the outside, Carolyn’s Keyboard Corner, in the Market Street Shopping Center, 11121 N. Rodney Parham Road, is a nice little store, selling sheet music, beginner instruments and music themed tchotchkes.

Once you penetrate beyond the front, however, you’ll find Central Arkansas Music Academy, where more than a dozen teachers give lessons to about 350 students each week in keyboard, voice, accordion, guitar, banjo, bass, mandolin, percussion, violin/fiddle and harp.

Carolyn Hamm owns the store, teaches piano to about 80 students and is the academy’s mother abbess, keeping track of who’s in which of the dozen-plus cubicles in the H-shaped arrangement that occupies most of the 3,000-square-foot facility.

In one cubicle, piano instructor Yvonne Koehler is showing off prize pupil Matthew Mears, 10, “one of the tops,” who plays “Rockin’ Robin” for a visitor on the rhythm-assisted keyboard.

In another, 43-year teaching veteran Bob Lincoln is giving a guitar lesson to 21-year-old Michelle Jean. Nearby, guitar teacher Mike Robinson is working with three-year student Walker Page, 17.

 And across the hall, drummer Rocco Blake is giving what appears to be a silent lesson to Daniel Doucet, just shy of his 11th birthday, on electronic drums. Blake and his pupil are both wearing headphones; not a sound penetrates to the outside world.

The cubicles are sufficiently sound-proofed so a piano lesson in one room won’t impinge on a guitar lesson next door.

The bridge of the “H” is a waiting area for students and their parents.

  Most of the academy’s 16 teachers are “refugees” from the November closing of Sigler Music on West Markham Street. “They were thrilled to have a home,” Hamm says. “All of them are really nice people and devoted teachers.” The faculty lineup includes:

Piano/keyboard teachers Hamm, Koehler, Bob Boyd (who also teaches accordion and tenor banjo) and Lena Cheatham.

Guitar instructors Lincoln (who also teaches electric bass and designed Hamm’s Web site, www.carolynskeyboard
corner.com), Robinson, Paul Brock, Jeff Swain (who also teaches banjo), David Mead (also bass) and Joe Kuykendall (also bass and mandolin).

Drummers Blake, Pat Lindsey and Marty Fussell .

Harp and voice teacher Andrea Kielpinski Sadler.

Violin and fiddle instructor Bill Thurman.

  Want instruction on woodwind or brass instruments? The academy doesn’t teach disciplines — too loud for her facility, Hamm explains — but she’ll be glad to refer you to an instructor.

  And most of the students moved over as well. “If we lost more than two or three students, we didn’t lose many more.”

  At the time, Carolyn’s Keyboard Corner was in 1,000 square feet two doors down in the same strip center.

  “I bought a lady out with printed music,” Hamm says. “At the time we had maybe two tables of music. Now we’re the largest retailer of [sheet] music in the state. And outside of the table they set up at the [Arkansas Symphony] concerts, we’re the only place in Little Rock where you can buy gifts with a musical theme.”

  The store also sells beginner guitars and harps and will soon start selling beginner keyboards.

As Sigler was going under, “Ms. Koehler came over and talked to us,” Hamm says. “It was an opportunity worth looking into.

“The transition was hard and expensive,” including moving into what was at the time “3,000 feet of nothing.” Remodeling started in November and Hamm and her husband, Jimmy, a retired Sheridan history and social studies teacher who agreed to help out, moved in the first week of January.

The teachers are independent contractors who pay Hamm a small percentage of what they take in, which “helps us pay our rent, over $4,000 a month,” Hamm says.

Students can contact an individual teacher through the Web site, www.carolynskey boardcorner.com/CAMA. html, which lists instructors’ photos, biographies and phone numbers, or through Hamm at (501) 217-0275, “and we’ll pair them up with the teacher we think will work the best,” Hamm says.

The store and academy are open from 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday.

  The students are mostly youngsters, starting about age 5, but there are adults as well. One of Koehler’s students is 72.
   
   Each teacher gets to do “his own thing,” Hamm says.

  Boyd has pride of place as the music educator of longest standing; his career as a pianist, bandleader and teacher has spanned more than 50 years.

  His Web site biography says he’s seeking “piano students who wish to ‘take the next step’ in their playing and explore the world of improvisation, interpretation and styling of popular and gospel songs. He will be teaching chord structure and progression and will help his students develop the ability to play ‘by ear’ and improvise their own musical ideas.”

Cheatham is the academy’s youngest instructor, just completing her bachelor’s degree in piano performance at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where she has been studying with Linda Holzer.

But she has been teaching longer at Carolyn’s Keyboard Corner than her colleagues — she started in 2006.

Her specialty, according to the Web site: “Lena is familiar with many styles of music and teaches her students using the music they enjoy. Her stage experience allows [her] to teach her students the mechanics of performing and the skills needed to be a success on stage.”

Hamm has the academy’s biggest student load, about 80; most teach 30-40 students. She rotates young children in and out of her studio every 15 minutes, sending them out to a music theory computer for 15 minutes, and then another 15 minutes of theory at the keyboard. Older students get keyboard and theory in 30-minute chunks.

Koehler, who taught with Boyd at Boyd Music Center on 12th Street before both of them ended up at Sigler, takes a much different approach.

“I operate an incentivebased program,” she says. “If you look behind you, you’ll see trophies, teddy bears, fancy watches.” She teaches theory through games and recreational piano using chords. Charts on the wall mark students’ progress with stars.

“Basically, I want children to have fun. I say they’re playing the piano, not working it.”

“We realize not every student is going to end up in the concert hall,” Hamm says. “All we’re trying to do is make the world a better place through music.”

Photo captions, from top to bottom:

Teacher Yvonne Koehler (top hands) and student Marissa Pacheco, 12, play a duet in Koehler’s studio at Central Arkansas Music Academy, inside Carolyn’s Keyboard Corner on Rodney Parham Road in Little Rock.

Matt Tulley, 13, pays close attention to guitar teacher Paul Brock.

Instructor Rocco Blake supervises Bethany Webb’s lesson on the electronic drums at Central Arkansas Music Academy.

Instructor Mike Robinson points out a tricky spot in the music for guitar student Anna Black, 8.

All Photos by Chris Dean/Arkansas Democrat-Gazette