Introduction: Are you feeling stuck in your development as a guitarist?
Like you’re always stuck in one part of the fretboard?
Or speed seems impossible to develop?
Or you want to be able to learn music by ear?
Or you look at other guitarists playing all these chords and you have no idea what they are?
Most online guitar pedagogy is designed to keep students at an intermediate stage of their development by obscuring the musical challenges at the root of any piece of music and instead offering endless temporary solutions. Another tab. Another app. These solutions perpetuate these problems.
Here’s the truth:
This is not how professional musicians learn! This is not how your heroes learned to play music!
My teaching method works differently and has consistently gotten results from students, one of whom has said “it is literally changing my life”.
And not only does it work, it gives you a sense of ownership over your music-making, which builds confidence, and can more easily be connected with improvisation and composition!
As a guitar teacher, I work most often with:
• professional musicians, who are trying to develop guitar skills,
• hobbyists, usually aged 25-50, who have some experience either with the guitar or music-making more broadly, and want to take the guitar more seriously. Many of these hobbyist students work in business or technology and have strong problem-solving skills.
• select children/teens who actively enjoy music, are interested in creativity, will come with questions, and will practice.
The physical and technical part of my teaching approach is built around precise strategies for practicing which have allowed my own guitar skills to develop dramatically in the last few years. With these practice strategies, many of my students in the last year have found that they are able to make rapid progress towards their goals. I've taught songs by Nirvana, Big Thief, James Brown, Alex G, Tom Petty, Simon and Garfunkel, Tame Impala, the Eagles, and many others, as well as jazz repertoire.
There is another component to my teaching practice, which is as, or arguably more important than the physical component, and involves *mindset*. To frame the process of practice, growth, the acquisition of skills, and the setting of new goals, I draw upon ideas from neuroscience, existentialist and stoic philosophy, mindfulness, personal development, and daily life.
I have been told that I seem to think about a lot of things that most guitar teachers don’t seem to think about, and I think that’s true!
My own creative work draws on songwriting, jazz and free improvisation, studio production and electronic music, classical composition, as well as narrative ideas from literature and cinema. I have a rock band and have toured the Northeast and Midwest US. My 2023 release “Mundiglossia” was described as “epic” by critic Peter Margasak. I also run a recording studio in Ridgewood, Queens.
A few things I like include the music of Four Tet and the writings of Gilles Deleuze.
Education: Bachelors of Music, Contemporary Improvisation, England Conservatory. Courses in Jazz, Electronic Music, Mathematics, Computer Science, Oberlin College. Studies in guitar with Julian Lage, Bryan Sutton, Joe Morris, Bob Ferrazza, and Bob Thompson. Studies in composition with Trevor Bača, Victoria Cheah, Sivan Cohen-Elias, Anthony Coleman, and Stratis Minakakis.
