Introduction: I'm a professional music instructor with over 16 years of teaching experience. I offer lessons for guitar, bass, elementary piano, composition, and music theory. I've had students as young as 5 and as old as 70 with a variety of different learning styles. While lessons are designed to be fun and accessible for players of all ages and skill levels, they're also tailored to assist each student in achieving their goals. I also prefer to format and administer my curriculum as though music were a language. Thus, a lesson with me would touch on a variety of topics typically encountered in a language class (as well as some additional topics that aren't):
- theory = grammar
- ear training = vocabulary
- sight reading = literacy skills
- composition = speech writing
- repertoire = speech memorization
- technique/articulations = enunciation
- improvisation & collaborative skills = basic conversation skills
- musicianship skills = musical multitasking (singing and playing simultaneously, etc.)
- recording experience, etc.
Regarding my history, I've been a guitarist since 1991. My musical development took place in a highly social environment. I started playing in bands as early as freshman year of high school. By senior year I was fulfilling my fine arts graduation requirement by offering pro bono guitar lessons to my peers at school. While attending Diablo Valley College in 2005, I was one of the MACCC scholarship recipients for one of my orchestral compositions. From 2010 to 2011 I worked for Ubisoft on the ROCKSMITH development team as a note tracker. During that time I was also a keyboardist in a band that landed gigs at major league venues like Slim's in San Francisco. Since moving to Sacramento in 2012, I worked a number of music jobs in addition to teaching: session guitarist for studio recordings and live events, transcriber and arranger of charts for various ensembles, and composer of original music for wedding ceremonies. In the fall of 2017 I graduated Cum Laude from CSUS with a Bachelor of Music degree in theory & composition.
I find it highly rewarding to see a musician develop before my eyes and to know that I participated.
