Moshe B  
Instruments: Piano, Guitar, Voice, Keyboard, Electric Guitar, Classical Guitar, Acoustic Guitar
Styles: Classical, Jazz, Pop, Rock, Blues, Folk, Country, R&B, Musical Theater, Latin, Flamenco, Salsa, Showtunes, Reggae, Latin Jazz, Swing, New Age, Samba, Bossa Nova, Soul, Marching Band, Mariachi, Avant-garde

I have been teaching professionally for over 30 years now. As an intern in Cuba's conservatoires and privately as guitar teacher. Later in Jamaica at the Cultural arts center in Montego Bay where I became familiar with the system used by the associated board of the royal schools of music ABRSM, based in the UK but for sure the most used system in the world by a majority of countries around the world. I taught children and adults from beginners to advanced intermediate. There I coached choirs of beginners to sing classical and folk music of high quality and did outstanding concerts around the island. All along I never ceased to teach myself new disciplines. I self taught counterpoint Renaissance style and some time ago while in Toronto Canada I was able to coach a university student there on Counterpoint when she was having trouble for her test in which she finally excelled after our lessons. Later in Buffalo NY ,I taught at the Jewish Community center and privately for approximately four years where I also had some nice successes with children in piano and guitar, and where I coached a band specialized in music of the 60's and beyond from scratch to great concert performances in important venues. So I have experience in teaching piano, guitar, voice, ear training, harmony ,counterpoint, choir singing and ensemble and making the arrangements necessaries for their coordination as a group in many different styles from classical to folk and jazz and world music.

I subscribe to the method that works with nature, the most natural method as a principle. To teach the student to develop their musical ear and to express the music as a profound experience of the intellect and the emotions. From the scientific basis of music , the vibrations that produce the sounds to the psychological effects both internal and external. The all rounded musician is my ideal. From Hong Kong in Asia to Africa to Canada and Australia and throughout the English speaking Caribbean and all the former British colonies , more people in the world have learned and are learning music with the ABRSM curriculum . It is by far the most friendly user and skills building program out there, for reading music to aural development to repertoire. Their strength consists in that they have chapters all over the world and gather feedbacks from teachers in every country about what are the new issues experienced by them and their students and how to better address them. They keep updating their program accordingly every ten years approximately making it the most fluctuate ,adaptable and informed system of teaching music. It is an ambulant conservatoire like no other in the history of the world, and a very thorough and complete one too. Here in The US , I identified Alfred as the method that closest resembles the ABRSM . Alfred's books are even easier and more straightforward. They work very nicely with the British ABRSM. So I use Alfred Theory book for American terms and Aural training and Musicianship in Practice and matched them by the order of the ABRSM curriculum to a great success. You learn to sing from the score, develop your ear and to write music and transcribe. Later on I drill the student in "A new approach to ear training" by Leo Craft ,where transcribing music to paper is in addition to the aural training exercises from the ABRSM the most extensive and effective program for beginners to advanced.

For Piano , my philosophy is that of the technique based on the symmetrical shape of the hand as explained by Chick Corea. I use Beyer's Elementary Instruction tutor for beginners, another extensively used tutor that is inexpensive and pretty thorough. Bayer is all classicist but very easy to follow. It has technique and repertoire that is priceless for any beginner and for a good refresher too. Together with Bayer I introduce the student to an array of other books in order to spice up the course. "Harmony at the Keyboard" by R.O.Morris, where you learn harmony playing the piano and end up playing Bach's Chorales and composing melodies and harmonies to thorough basses from some of the best classical composers, a discipline that is key to arrangement and composition. I also introduce "Piano Improvisation" by Frank Caruso, a top Jazz book where you start playing blues and continue with jazz. I also introduce the Jazz series from the ABRSM , a graded program with five books from beginner to advanced. For Jazz repertoire I use "Hearing the changes" by Coker knapp and Vincent, where you learn to memorize close to 500 tunes by ear , classified by their chord changes. After lesson 99 of the Bayer method I introduce "Preparatory exercises in score reading" by R.O.Morris where a more Baroque repertoire is introduced along with reading in the C clefs, a rather challenging book for those who aspire to climb the higher grades of learning to read from an orchestral score. This last one is a book that I myself have mastered only partially as it is so difficult. If you are an organist or an aspiring classical composer or simply a music savant, the two books by Morris are a must for you.

For the more focused on just classical , I use the repertoire from the Suzuki piano books. Once Bayer is finished the student is ready for advanced piano studies. The "Contemporary piano technique" by Stephany Tiernan from Berklee is a nice guide where you also combine Jazz with classical and every thing else. Tiernan's concept of using the ear more than the score works beautifully with "Hearing the changes" book and her technique for relaxation and breathing is a gift from Madame Chaloff from Boston ,through Madame Vengerova all the way to Leschetizky, arguably the greatest piano teacher of all time. And for real technique there is no better book than the piano exercises by Rudolph Ganz , A book that works on the principle of the symmetry of the hands as explained by Chick Corea. Ganz's method is superior. He was the teacher of great pianists in America and to testify to his success , one of his students ,Dorothy Donegan, who became a Jazz pianist, was referred to by Art Tatum as "The only woman who can make me practice". That says it all.

For guitar for children , none can top "Alfred's Children Guitar book For Classical guitar I love the Charles Duncan's books "A modern approach to classical guitar" plus the repertoire books which are a gem and easy to approach. For technique for beginners there is the "Charles Ramirez" which is also pretty advanced in the end and a good introduction to both classical and flamenco. The advantage of Ramirez's book is that it is relatively brief but nonetheless thorough. A more exhaustive technique book is "Kitharologous" by R. Iznaola which can be challenging but very effective. Ramirez's technique book hints to the ideas shared by many that flamenco is to guitar technique what jazz is to that of the piano. A natural , easy and sure path to virtuosity of the instrument through it's most popular art form which forms a link to the classical tradition. The practice of jazz and boogie-woogie basses in the left hand is at the heart of piano artistry to strengthen the left hand and prepare to fill in with melodies in the right hand as much as the Rasgueado is in Flamenco to strengthen the extensor muscles of the right hand set the rhythm for the eventual filling in of melodies and falsetas. Both Jazz and Flamenco developed around the same time and have interacted healthily with classical musicians who need to express that improvisational style inside of us.

After all the technical detour, we return full circle to what is most natural: Music developed to enjoy, express ,feel and have fun, whether by singing and accompanying, making others happy through dance and joy , composing and improvising or arranging other's music or music as a discipline of knowledge that interacts with almost every other field of human intellect, from mathematics to science to psychology The method may vary but the goals are the same.