For Elliot Roth, music comes almost as naturally as taking a breath of air.

The 33-year-old Butler native and vocalist plays piano by ear, and was composing songs by age 6.

“I developed really quick,” Roth said. “I could hear something and play, and I was just encouraged to play it.”

Roth took that encouragement and ran with it, finely tuning his skills to become a vocal teacher to the children of celebrities Jerry Seinfeld and Tina Fey, perform on off-Broadway musicals, and prepare the release of his debut EP.

He credits much of his success to his musical background. His father, Randy Roth, is a professional drummer and drum teacher, while his mother, Eileen Roth, helped teach him the piano.

“That made me become the musician I am today,” he said. “I had a lot of great opportunities.”

His father curated an eclectic taste in music, something that was cultivated in Roth’s ear. R&B, rock and soul were just as welcome in the Roth household as jazz and classical music.

“There were the standards, the Beatles and things like that, but that was part of the whole,” Roth said.

Roth started lessons at age 3. A few years later, he was not only composing his own music on the piano, but also the lyrics to go with it.

“I was just obsessed with big world things,” he said. “I was trying to lyrically acclimate to the world.”

Randy Roth remembers how his son’s talent manifested at such a tender age.

“He went to see ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and he came home and played all the songs (from the movie),” he said. “He just had such a good ear.”

Roth enjoyed putting on a show for friends of his parents, and took to playing piano for whoever visited the house.

“Some kids shy away from that, but he loved it,” Randy Roth said.

Roth’s parents continued to nurture his remarkable talent, and Roth was identified gifted at Emily Brittain Elementary School.

At only 11 years old, Roth was allowed to write a musical for the school. “Searching For Prince Garian” featured traditional musical ballads performed on the piano by Roth. He wrote the script and taught it to his castmates. It was the first of two musicals written by Roth at Emily Brittain.

It was around that time that Roth knew he wanted to pursue a career in music.

“I never once questioned whether I could do it or not,” he said. “I knew I had a knack for it.”

Roth wasn’t worried about making a living in such a competitive field, as he benefitted from having a father who taught him the business aspect of the music industry.

“A lot of people come (to New York City) and they’re looking for their big break, but they don’t have an entrepreneurial approach,” he said. “I saw it as a self-employment thing. (My dad) helped me set rates, hourly. He was like my manager, basically.”

Roth picked up gigs at restaurants in the Butler area as a teenager. His mother helped him with his set list while his father schooled him on decorum.

“He told me how it’s poor taste not to take a break (during a gig),” Roth said.

Roth attended Butler High School, where he advanced his musical knowledge. By the time he graduated in 2002, he had learned how to write music for various musical instruments, including the drums.

He enrolled in Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, initially as a sound recording major. However, he quickly switched to voice performance — music education.

While Roth earned his degree, he picked up gigs around Pittsburgh, mostly at the CLO Cabaret and the now closed Tuscany Cafe, which was located on Pittsburgh’s South Side.

“That was the place where it kind of all changed,” Roth said of the cafe.

Roth and students from Point Park University and Carnegie Mellon University congregated to the Tuscany Cafe to perform a vibrant mesh of music and dance.

“We would do anything from Bon Jovi to Annie Lennox to Charlie Parker,” Roth said. “We didn’t care. We wanted everybody to have a good time.”

More than just some dance moves and musical notes, Tuscany Cafe offered Roth confidence in his showmanship.

“I realized that part of the reason people were coming was the way I was behind the microphone,” he said.

Roth graduated from Duquesne University in 2006. He worked for several months at Act One Theatre School, which teaches music and various arts to high school-aged students in the Pittsburgh area.

---- That was until Kim Nazarian, a member of Grammy-winning vocalists group New York Voices whom Roth had met during college, helped Roth on his way to New York City.

---- “She made sure that my audition tape was sent to the right people (at the Manhattan School of Music),” he said. “But there was no shoo-in. It was very difficult to get into.”

---- Roth was accepted, and studied with Grammy-winning jazz vocalist Peter Eldridge. Just as Roth learned how to be himself on stage in Pittsburgh, he found a singing voice that was all his own in New York.

---- “What makes you stand out is, I don’t want to say imperfections, but your own idiosyncrasies,” he said.

---- He also starred in his first off-Broadway production during that time, a three-man show about the life of Frank Sinatra.

---- Roth got the gig through a career service that calls music schools seeking performers for various gigs. He played one of three friends who were telling the story of Sinatra’s life.

---- “That was sort of like a false sense of comfort, and I had only been there like half a year when I got that show,” he said. “So I was doing a bigger-than-Broadway schedule, because it was during the Broadway strike.”

---- Though Roth has not been interested in pursuing musicals full time, he has since starred in two other off-Broadway shows. He played the lead role of Jesus in “Jesus Christ Superstar,” in 2010, and he was in “A Christmas Carol, each holiday season from 2011 to 2015.

---- Roth graduated from the Manhattan School of Music in 2008, and became a vocal and piano teacher, while playing gigs around New York City.

---- He has taught the children of comedians Jerry Seinfeld and Tina Fey. Regardless of who he’s teaching, he is not fazed.

---- “I’m not one of those people,” he said. “We’re all people, and the second you don’t act like a person, that’s your karma you have to deal with later in life.”

---- Roth still returns to Act One Theatre School each year for its summer camp. He wants to help institute a non-conservatory setting of music education that would be accessible to all students in New York City.

---- “(It would be) a really specialized program that teaches real-world music business, and things like microphone technique performance and things like that,” he said.

---- Roth also is working on a debut EP, which stands for “extended player” and contains fewer songs than a full-length album.The EP will be titled “By Your Love,” and Roth expects to release it sometime in 2017. He credits his influences to be Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell and Chet Baker, and said he often listens to modern-day jazz singer Gregory Porter.

----

“By Your Love” will delve into Roth’s innermost feelings.

---- “I have all the feels,” he said. “Relationships, not just love but also friends. My relationships with the world, how I perceive the world. Things that I see that other people don’t seem to get or things that everyone seems to get that I don’t seem to get, whether it’s social media or the political climate.”

---- While Roth describes his music as a piano-fueled blend of soul, jazz, and singer-songwriter music, “By Your Love,” adds a twist that he said may catch people off-guard.

---- “I think that what’s going to be most surprising is this is going to have a side to it that’s a lot funkier,” he said. “I’m looking forward to that.”