Guitar Lessons in Salfordville, PA

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

My performance and education career began as early as my freshman year of college. I have been fortunate to perform over 1,800 professional commitments in my career as well as teaching roughly 25 students. Some performance highlights of my career have been performing on four national tours, playing two contracts with the Hershey Park band, recording with different artists, and of course performing with the Marine Corps and the Air Force bands. Read More

Instruments: Piano Guitar Voice Ukulele

For beginning students on instruments, I begin with a method book, usually Hal Leonard Essential Elements for Guitar and Ukulele, and Piano Discoveries for young beginning pianists, and Piano Adventures for older beginning pianists. From there, I follow my students' interests. For voice, we begin with breathing techniques and vocalizing, and then follow the student's interests from there. Read More

Instruments: Guitar Bass Guitar Ukulele Mandolin Electric Guitar Acoustic Guitar

Solitary strumming gave way to manic collaboration. I entered Swarthmore College with delusions of becoming some sort of academic, but quickly switched to a music major, finding it impossible to concentrate on anything else. Swarthmore only taught western classical music, and I was immediately out of my depth, cramming the fundamentals of music reading two weeks before my first theory course. Fortunately, this educational twist was a blessing in disguise; traditions collided and sparks flew. Read More

Instruments: Guitar Synthesizer Music Electric Guitar Acoustic Guitar

I like to set realistic goals for students to achieve. The most important thing is that they develop a love and passion for the language of music and learn to communicate through it! This takes a lot of time and can be frustrating at first so I often have students focus more on completing tasks than on how long they're playing every day. This helps them maintain a healthy relationship with music where they feel like they're achieving something right from the beginning! Read More

Instruments: Piano Guitar Drums Music Keyboard Electric Guitar

As I said above, my biggest priority is to guide the student on their journey to discovering the music that they would like to play and create. When I was first learning, it was a struggle to unlock my own creativity and become daring enough to play my own music in front of others. Luckily, I had amazing instructors who helped me break out of my shell and find my confidence. Read More

Instruments: Guitar Drums

My methods are in service of the cultivation of interest. Mainly I want the student to focus on learning how to play the music they want to play. The key to cultivating interest is to nurture the social, communicative and fun elements of playing music; associating the laughter and exhilaration with learning. I'm a self taught musician - I know that music is intuitive enough to learn without getting overly text-book about it, and I think focusing too much on the book at an early age can turn away potential musicians. Read More

Instruments: Guitar Bass Guitar Ukulele Lute Electric Guitar Classical Guitar Acoustic Guitar

I don't think there is any one method book or instructional DVD that will give you everything you need. Even if an educational resource is extremely well done, it will still need to be tailored and digested in a certain way for each student. I generally use Mel Bay's Guitar 1 - expanded edition. While working with this book, there are additional materials such as exercises, concepts, and musical ideas often inserted at key moments. Read More