I’m Chase Jamison, a full-time music educator with 9 years experience. I’ve taught everything from 5th grade beginner band to high school band, as well as percussion ensembles, jazz bands, marching bands, drumlines, show choir pits, and musical pit. I’ve even dabbled in high school chorus and elementary general music. Oh yea, and music technology.

Mad Music was originally born to fill a gap in beginner band technique worksheets. After my first year of teaching I realized that the largest hurdle my students were facing wasn’t actually “playing” the instruments at all.
It was note reading and connecting that to fingerings.

I searched for materials to fill in that gap for my kids, and what I wanted didn’t exist. There were plenty of note identification exercises (those are easy to make), but none of them were specific to instruments. It was at this point (after much searching) that I relented and started to create it myself. Once I finished my first version (it was a bit rough), I gave it away on a Facebook band director group for free. People LOVED it but I did receive a lot of feedback, like how apparently some people play oboe and bassoon. Who knew…

With my newfound knowledge I set out to create a full, comprehensive set of the first 5 notes. I created everything from scratch, including the fingering charts, notes, ledger lines, titles, formatting, all me. I got REALLY into design. Not because I wanted to, but because I wanted to do it right. I wanted to create quality worksheets that would be tailored to best educate the person using it. I wanted every worksheet to be playable as a full group. I wanted them to be easy to learn. Easy to teach.

After finishing my the first 5 notes worksheets, I created the Teacher’s Pay Teachers store to justify the time I had spent creating them and to motivate myself to make more like them. The TPT store’s success has lead me to creating more materials (check them out here!), and even this very website. The income generated has not only helped my family through some tough financial times (Thank you all so much!) but it has allowed me the time necessary to keep creating high quality educational resources for music teachers.

Thank you all so much for allowing me to continue doing this. I hope my work makes your life easier, your teaching better, and your students stronger musicians.

Stay Mad,
Chase Jamison