Dr. Gaines received her bachelor's degree in percussion performance from the Lawrence Conservatory of Music in Appleton, Wisconsin, her master of music degree and a performer's certificate from Eastman School of Music, and her doctor of musical arts degree from the University of Oklahoma. Her primary instructors were Dan Bukvich, Dane Richeson, John Beck, and Richard Gipson. At OU, Dr Gaines won the Graduate Concerto Competition, and was a soloist with the OU Wind Ensemble. She won the Young Artist Concerto Competition sponsored by the Oklahoma City Orchestra League and toured with the University of Oklahoma Percussion Ensemble. As a member of the Percussive Arts Society, Dr. Gaines toured the Soviet Union, and was selected as a member of the Eastman Wind Ensemble for a tour of Japan.

Dr. Gaines was a member of the Marauders Drum & Bugle Corps and the Santa Clara Vanguard Drum & Bugle Corps. Her orchestral experience began with the Idaho/Washington Symphony and continued with the Green Bay Symphony, the Fox River Valley Symphony, and finally the Oklahoma City Philharmonic. She has performed on steel drums with The Panhandlers, a professional steel drum trio, and as a steel drum soloist with the Oklahoma City Philharmonic. She recently published her first four-mallet marimba arrangement, The Lord's Prayer, with C. Alan Publications and has completed an arrangement (originally composed by James Faulconer) for percussion ensemble and bassoon and oboe soloists entitled Double Wind Concerto with Percussion Ensemble. She is a teacher/endorser for Promark Inc. and serves on their Educational Advisory Committee, and is a member of the Missouri PAS Advisory Board and the PAS College Pedagogy Committee. Locally, she performs with several jazz groups, her own steel drum quartet, and with the Missouri Chamber Orchestra.

Dr. Gaines currently directs the University Percussion Ensemble, the World Percussion Ensemble, teaches private lessons and the percussion techniques class, and serves as the Faculty Adviser to the MU Percussion Society--a student organization devoted to promoting percussion events on the MU campus and within the Columbia community. She also serves as a consultant for the Marching Mizzou Drumline and recently became the Director of the Columbia Handbell Ensemble, an auditioned community handbell group that performs advanced literature locally and around the state. In 2000, Dr. Gaines received a Faculty Development Project Grant to accompany the MU Symphonic Wind Ensemble to Australia, where she did in-depth study of aboriginal music, in particular, Australian percussion instruments and rhythms native to the region, and where she learned to play the didgeridoo.