Our Mission
To inspire a lasting love of making music, instill confidence, teach creativity, and have fun doing it all
Our Story
Big Frequency Music is the creation of composer, guitarist and audio engineer Cory Peterson. He founded the project out of necessity when his child entered school for the first time and he offered to produce the type of music education he envisioned for his own family: programming that not only provides exposure, appreciation and fun, but also yields real musical ability. Cory has seen that when you present big, joyful opportunities to young humans, they respond with excitement and growth.
After establishing a set of curricula, Cory began receiving interest in his classes and lessons from friends and realized he could help fill the same music education gap in the broader community. Thus Big Frequency was born.
The name Big Frequency references the feeling of at-oneness with the world that creating music provides, as well as music’s power to form community and bring us together. Through our teaching, we seek to share the opportunity of experiencing the singular feeling of peace and connection that music-making provides.
Good Memories: Founder of Big Frequency, Cory Peterson, teaches his first guitar workshop in Brooklyn
Who We Are
Cory Peterson
Founder & Executive Director
Cory is a dad, guitarist, and music educator living in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. He delights in sharing his passion and knowledge to learners young and old. Raised by a working guitarist and school teacher, he picked up guitar and piano at an early age and, after spending a decade in the advertising industry working on data analytics, production and audio engineering, also caught the bug for teaching,
When Cory’s son reached school age and his family was seeking quality music education, he realized he had much musical knowledge to share with young people. Combining skills acquired from disparate components of his upbringing, schooling and professional life, he sought to take what he’d learned through a lifetime of exploring musicianship and song writing, as well as working in music technology, and package it into inspiring learning experiences not available elsewhere.
It is this background that has enabled Cory to build courses around guitar, song writing and recording technology, combining all of these skills into cohesive and exciting opportunities. Since he began teaching music programs in Brooklyn schools, Cory feels he has truly found the best way to share his talents and make a difference in people’s lives.
Cole Birmingham
Programming Director
Cole is a musician, songwriter, and educator based in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn. A multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, he is fluent in a variety of musical styles and performs regularly in the New York City music scene as a guitarist, bassist, and saxophonist. His time on the stage enriches his perspectives on pedagogy, and he strives to deliver an engaging and fun experience for students both through his work designing curricula and teaching. He believes that an education in music develops skills such as leadership, emotional regulation, and communication in young learners, and builds lessons and curricula that explore these concepts.
Cole is an alumnus of Arkansas Tech University and the University of Arkansas, earning his bachelor’s degree in music education and his master's degree in guitar performance. He serves as Youth Chorus Director at Brooklyn Music School. Outside of the classroom, Cole has experience as Production Coordinator for National Concerts where he formulated events for choir and orchestra performances at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center.
Why We Do This
We truly love two things: making music and, even more importantly, the fun and fulfillment of inspiring young minds. It is deeply important to us that we provide enriching and transformative experiences to our students. Bonus points if we learn something ourselves during the process too. We think great educators are consistently on the lookout for lessons they can learn from their interactions with students and that they can apply to future lessons. Here’s a teaching artist journal entry that demonstrates this two-way learning:
“Today I witnessed an amazing and unplanned feat of unity and creativity while teaching a song writing class. During the lesson, we decided to explore what would happen if we skipped the science and embraced intuition in creating a melody. I played chords on the guitar and asked for a volunteer from a five student pod to sing an improvised melody. Each of them was apprehensive about doing this by themselves, so the group all joined hands impromptu and began singing a spontaneous and beautiful melody in unison. It was a joyous human moment that touched me and a revelatory lesson the kids taught me about creative collaboration.”
Check out a recording that captures the above moment in action: