Curriculum Survey

Meet the designer Richard Cooke with wife and business partner Christy Cooke, CEO

As a life long musician and Grammy award winner, Richard's life work has concentrated on making music accessible to everyone by designing instruments that people can play immediately and deliver the highest quality sound.  Richard studied piano, voice, and trumpet during his early years; but it was not until he discovered playing by ear that music really came alive in him. Richard taught himself to play the flute in college and eventually joined the Paul Winter Consort, one of America’s premier jazz ensembles. With Paul, he designed an adult music camp and set himself to the task of building instruments that make music easy and fun for anyone to play.
Since then, Richard has been building these creations of his own design for fifteen years. Richard has traveled widely and studied the music of many cultures. Freenotes instruments are related to the beautiful gamelan instruments of Java and Bali, where nearly all people play music. Richard designs his instruments to enable the beginner and expert musician to experience the joys of music making in a new way. By simplifying instrument designs to require no difficult muscular coordination and by using harmony-based scales, Freenotes have opened a way for anyone to experience the deep pleasure of playing music. Freenotes instruments go together effortlessly so everyone can be a vital part of making music.

Robert Cooke, Vice President of Production

Mike Giehl, General Manager

Chad Oltmanns,  Senior Production Assistant

Donna Codd, Office Manager

Mike Torres, Website maestro and IT Guru

Chris Cooke,  Production Assistant