Soundscribe was created by Sam Barnes, a multi-instrumentalist, music educator, and curriculum developer with more than sixteen years of teaching experience. A graduate of DePauw University with a B.A. in Violin Performance, Sam is currently completing his M.A. in Music and Music Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. His graduate research explores ways of bringing formal and informal approaches to music education together, with a particular focus on student autonomy, critical thinking, collaboration, improvisation, creativity, and motivation.
Sam’s approach to teaching has evolved through his own experiences as a classical musician, improviser, recording artist, multi-instrumentalist, private instructor, classroom teacher, and collaborative performer. His teaching combines traditional musicianship and notation with ear training, scale degrees, transcription, transposition, improvisation, composition, and playing by ear. Rather than treating these as advanced skills, Sam believes they can be introduced early and developed alongside instrumental technique and musical literacy. His goal is to give students a strong musical foundation while helping them become confident enough to experiment, make their own musical decisions, and eventually continue learning without always relying on a teacher or tutorial.
Sam currently teaches in private, small-group, and large classroom settings. His school-based work has included managing instruction for more than 100 middle school orchestra students, coaching advanced high school string ensembles, and serving as Interim Music Director at CTM Academy, where he developed curriculum for students whose educational needs may not be met in traditional school environments. He has also taught at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music and maintained an independent private teaching practice since 2012. Earlier work in social services supporting individuals with developmental and physical disabilities continues to influence the patience, flexibility, and individual attention he brings to his teaching.
Performance and community have been equally important to Sam’s development as an educator. He co-founded the Brooklyn Bluegrass Collective in 2012, helping build a community of more than fifty musicians that remains active nearly fifteen years later. He has performed and recorded extensively as a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and arranger, toured throughout the United States and Europe, and performed in orchestral, bluegrass, folk, and recording settings. Working with musicians from different backgrounds and traditions taught him the importance of listening, adapting, sharing musical authority, and contributing to a communal effort - values that continue to shape his classroom.
Sam created soundscribe as an extension of this teaching philosophy. The project uses scale degrees and relational pitch as an accessible way to help students recognize musical patterns and develop their ears across instruments, genres, and levels of experience. Its larger purpose is to give students tools for exploring music independently whether they are transcribing a favorite song, improvising, composing, playing with friends, or simply paying closer attention to the music and sounds they encounter at home, online, in nature, and in their communities.
For Sam, music education does not end when a lesson or class is over. Soundscribe is designed to help students carry that learning with them.