Make A Riff: Empowering Kids with Guitars

Courtesy of Make A Riff

Music has been described as theraputic by many people, but the truth is that music is life changing for millions around the world. Not just listening, but playing it for yourself can have a huge impact on a person's life.

Too often these days we hear about the Arts suffering from a lack of funding especially in public schools where, let's be honest, sports takes the vast majority of funds allocated to the district/campus. We can even remember being in college when the chair of the music department had all students meet just to inform them that he was doing everything in his power to get the department more funding.

GoFundMe - Link at bottom of article

The chair of the music department also hit us with an unspoken truth. He told us that when the yearly funds were announced and departments put forward their requests, that Athletics was going to request 100% of the funds.

"Although they won't get all of it, make no mistake, they are going to get most of it." This was something that we all knew, but never really spoke about aside from the random complaints here and there.

Have you ever driven by a public school and seen the marching band practicing in a parking lot? That's because they aren't allowed to practice on the football field or practice field due to concerns that the grass may get damaged..... meanwhile the team wears cleats and tackles each other.

In short, this isn't fair to young musicians and they should have access to all school facilities as students.

Now that is just the traditional band, what about students who pursue music outside of band? Most schools don't have the resources to provide students with access to guitars, basses, drums, or amps even if there is an extracurricular program for it.

Generally students have to get their own instrument and that is assuming parents can afford one. We know from first hand experience that even if parents can get their kids a guitar or bass, it is usually going to be a pretty low quality one.

Now, there's nothing wrong with a beat up starter instrument, but if the kid sticks with it and progresses, they're going to need something a little better. That's where the real struggle starts.

It's always great to see a kid save up money and get that upgraded instrument, but it's going to be several years before they can get that dream axe depending on what they have their sights set on. It could even be decades depending on their taste.

Some of you may remember that we work with young musicians, exposing them to music and instruments through our local middle school. In that time we were fortunate enough to be able to raffle off a Paul Stanley Ibanez to help young musicians in our area, but sadly we hit a brick wall in the years following.

Getting funds for instruments, and the red tape attached to raffles in this state made the project unsustainable. Recently however, we came across a musician in Minnesota making an impact by putting guitars and amps into the hands of kids across the country and even in other countries.

Nathan Pehler

Meet Nathan Pehler. a musician who has created and maintained the Make A Riff program, via GoFundMe, for 10 years. So what is Make A Riff?

Well let's ask the man himself:

"It's my passion project. I started this back in 2017 when my old man passed away in 2015 and he was my biggest supporter, biggest fan and biggest supporter. No matter what he'd always make sure I had the best gear and we weren't made of money by any means. So for me to get a guitar, a really nice guitar, and a really nice amp, was you know, we're going easy on the groceries this month."

So the Make A Riff program started with the inspiration of Nathan's father who was a great support in the musicians life. Young musician's need not only supporters behind them, but to have older musicians behind them as well can have an even greater impact in this reporter's opinion.

Parent support is always the best support a kid can have, hands down the greatest support there is. If a parent isn't a musician, it definitely helps having a grown musician there to encourage you and expose you to music and gear you might otherwise not have discovered.

That is where programs like Make A Riff really matter. Programs like these can have such a huge impact on the next generation of musicians regardless of their backgrounds or where they come from.

Leaving a Legacy

"Due to him(my father) being my biggest supporter, when he passed I wanted to kind of pass on that legacy and honor him in that way so I started raising donations officially and when this started it was going to be just to help kids that were getting into guitar. So originally it was the package, you get a guitar and amp and 3 months of guitar lessons. It was fun. I have given away about 10 packages. Then I kinda wanted to branch out to do what I am doing now like the half stack giveaways with the guitars and the wish list guitars which are like you know peoples dream guitars and stuff like that."

Courtesy of Make A Riff

Make A Riff in 3 Tiers

"Now we have 3 tiers, we have the beginners, we have gear upgrade and then we have the wish list. It's been going great. I literally just gave away the 30th piece of gear with a cabinet to a kid. Things are going strong and I can't thank everyone enough for all of the help and support. There's plenty more to go, we're not done yet, we're just getting started."

At the time of this interview Nathan had 2 guitars in the mail including an Epiphone SG on its way to Ohio for a 9 year old girl and a Schecter Avenger headed to Michigan for a 15 year old. The Avenger is the wish list guitar of a 15 year old.

As if that wasn't enough just for this month Nathan told us he also has a Shecter and half stack going to a 15 year old in Minneapolis and an acoustic going to a 12 year old in Oregon and there are 5 other people he needs to start working on.

A big part of programs like Make A Riff is getting the word out so people who want to get involved know how. That is why we felt it was important to write this article and hopefully get more people involved.

Aside from donating to the GoFundMe which is linked below, people can also donate gear. Nathan has a goal of putting 100 guitars into the hands of kids through this passion project and he is well on his way.

We plan on making a contribution and hopefully becoming more involved down the line. We encourage everyone who is able to pitch in and help the next generation of guitarists get their start.