Guitar Lessons in Chatham, PA

Instruments: Piano Guitar Trumpet Trombone Euphonium French Horn Tuba Music Keyboard Acoustic Guitar

My methods vary from student to student. I believe strongly in making sure students are learning what they want to learn and adapting to every students needs! While I will employ different techniques with each student, I do tend to use several concepts universally. I like to use a Kodly based system to teach all styles of music. All music is taught through internalization by listening and analyzing and then emulation of what is heard. Read More

Instruments: Piano Guitar Drums Music Keyboard Electric Guitar

For beginner students, I often begin with the foundations of the instrument. For drums, we would be practice the rhythmic subdivisions (quarter, eighth, sixteenth notes) and slowly work them into grooves that they can easily start to pick out of their favorite songs. When the fundamentals have been established, we can learn more advanced grooves, dissect songs together, and learn how to improvise and write our own drum parts. My biggest focus as a teacher is to help the student discover the music that they want to learn and make so that they can develop their own unique voice. Read More

Instruments: Guitar Drums

My teaching style relies heavily upon training the ear to dissect what it is hearing. Developing the ear is crucial to being a self-reliant musician. In drums, the visualization how a rhythm works in time is essential to being able to perform that rhythm. Dissection and mapping are the key to furthering one's abilities on the drum kit. In guitar or in piano, being able to isolate frequencies with your ear will lead you to a more accurate understanding for chord structures and progressions than simply looking up tabs, which are often deeply flawed. Read More

Instruments: Guitar Bass Guitar Ukulele Mandolin Electric Guitar Acoustic Guitar

Right around age six, I discovered that my hands were finally big enough to fret a guitar! I spent the next decade banging away on my own amongst the redwoods north of San Francisco. Bass, keys, mandolin, and vocals soon slipped into my repertoire, filling the space where a proper social life might otherwise have been. I swore to never go pro, lest it ruin the fun. For most of this time, I had assumed that good music died when The Beatles broke up, but in high school I flung my mind open to the stylistic diversity of the digital age. Read More

Instruments: Piano Guitar Saxophone Organ Double Bass Keyboard

I am also the creator of a unique method called "The Seven Secrets of Jazz and Soul" which emphasizes the importance of using simple/easy-to-understand language, even when teaching the most difficult of concepts. I also believe in the importance of "coaching" as opposed to lecturing and try to minimize reading, writing and one-sided lecturing during the lesson. Instead, I sit next to my students, and calmly guide them through the creative process. Read More

Instruments: Guitar Violin Viola

As I always like to say: if you are already investing your precious time in doing something, why not do it the best way? After many years I still receive expressions of gratitude and warm regards from my former students thats what makes my life worthwhile and brings me so much joy! Why? Because I always create an inclusive and respectful environment that fosters growth, awareness of self and others, and scholastic achievements for students no matter wich ages, levels and learning abilities they have. Read More