What to Bring to Music Camp

Guitars, keyboards, bass, drums, and more … oh my! Those are just a few examples of music instruments you’ll find at our Pali Adventures music camp.

And if you’ve never sent your child to music camp, especially overnight summer camp in California, you probably have some questions.

We provide a camp-wide packing list, and we also have a convenient order-online camp store that you can get basics from, but that list doesn’t include things like instruments, or guitar straps.

To make your packing process more manageable, we’re addressing your “what to bring to music camp” essentials below.

Your Instrument

If your child is a musician already, as in they’ve picked an instrument or two that they specialize in, they may like to bring those with them to camp. Most of the time, airlines will let you check instrument-travel bags for an additional fee, or let you carry them on. We also have a variety of instruments for those who do not have their own.

If your child plays something a little harder to travel with, like a piano or a drumset, don’t worry about figuring out how to travel with those. Imagine having to pack a drum set and get it on a plane – that would be a nightmare! We have pianos and drum sets that your camper can use on our campus.

While your child doesn’t need to worry about anyone stealing their instrument (but label it anyway), they will be traveling with it. If your child has an antique instrument or a “performance,” leave that at home. Kids aren’t necessarily the gentlest on their belongings, and they’ll be carrying them back and forth during camp. You also don’t want to risk the airline losing or damaging something priceless. They’ll only pay so much when it comes to replacement, and you can’t replace sentiment!

Music Accessories

Different instruments need different amounts of accessories – the least being something like the guitar (if you fingerpick) and the most being woodwinds.

If your child has one set of accessories (a cadence, a tuner, reeds), etc, it may be worth it to send them with another. While we may have a few extras lying around, we can’t promise they’ll be the right fit for your child’s specific instrument. Since we don’t have a music supply store on campus, something breaking could put a damper on your campers’ experience – and we don’t want that!

Potential accessories to bring include:

Guitar Strings
Tuner
Cables
Picks
Headphones (that can plug into an amp)
Cleaning Supplies
Extra Sticks
Music Sheets
Pencils
Extra Strap

A Team Spirit

We have all levels of musicians at our camps from the I’ve-never-touched-an-instrument camper to one who performs at their school’s assemblies. We expect campers to be welcoming and encouraging no matter their level of experience. A band, orchestra, or song is made up of different musicians for a reason – everyone’s sound contributes something different!

If your child is nervous and is a true beginner, enroll them in our “Rockstar” camp. It’s our beginning-most music camp, and they’ll be around other people with similar knowledge.

We don’t tolerate any teasing or negative interactions between students in any case camp-wide or in the music program.

A Great Attitude

Do us a favor, teach your child the phrase, “It’s not hard; it’s just new.” That will get them through a lot of the unknowns and nerves of starting camp.

Even as adults, this is a helpful phrase. Think about the last time you started a new job. You knew how to do the tasks you were hired to do – but not in the way your new job wanted them done.

Or maybe you had to learn new skills – and they weren’t tricky level-wise, but they were new. You knew you were capable, but there was still a learning curve.

That’s the difference between hard and new: the actual difficulty of the task, minus the learning period.

Some things are hard, we’re not trying to undercut that, but teaching your child the difference between new and hard will help them for the rest of their life!

A Willingness to Collaborate

Part of the fun of music camp is that your camper will work together with other campers. It just makes sense to have these individuals interact. Otherwise, what fun is having a bunch of musically minded people together if no one makes a band?

Who knows? Maybe the next Beatles or Rolling Stones will be founded this summer, at our camp! We can discuss royalties later.

Our Pali-Packing Basics

This list is in addition to our camp packing list, which includes things like socks, underwear, shorts and t-shirts, and the all-important (and always forgotten) toothbrush.

Don’t forget to look all the way through the list – accessories, and specialty-specific items (not the ones in this post) are at the end.