GUITAR LESSONS

Beginners:

Guitar can be tough to get started on.  When playing guitar, you're using your hands in ways you never have before, and it can feel awkward in the beginning.  But don't get discouraged!  We will literally take you by the hand and lead you through this.  It takes some perseverance, but you'll get there, and we'll celebrate your progress all along the way.  

​

Experienced:

After an evaluation, we will begin to fill in the holes in your musical understanding and how it relates to your instrument and the music you play.  You will be challenged with new styles, techniques and methods as well as pursuing and improving the music you already love to play.  You WILL move off this plateau and it WILL feel good!  

We almost always start our beginner piano students on classical method books.  Building a solid foundation of proper techniques and reading skills is imperative to achieve goals in piano.  Once a student has learned the rudimentary techniques, we usually begin to work on a second song while continuing to progress in the classical method book.  This second song will not be read.  You will learn these pieces by rote and physical example.  Through this method, you will be able to play things that are beyond your reading level but within your level of execution.  This is also the stage where we start harmonic analysis and ear-training.  This will lead to us learning a song "by ear", which will also require harmonic analysis.  

Everyone can sing!  It's true!  The question is, do I sound good?  Lol!  We all ask ourselves this question.  The truth is the greatest singers you've ever heard were born that way.  Some of us are born with an innate ability to sing beautifully, while some of us will never be able to hit and hold pitch.  But most of us have some reasonable degree of natural vocal ability and can greatly improve it with training and effort.  Because singing is so natural, we never think about what's really going on when we make those sounds.  That's just what we'll do, and we'll do it in great detail.  Your voice is capable of producing a spectrum of tones and sounds.  We'll explore this and you will gain control the different aspects of your sound. 

​

My voice lessons are genre nonspecific.  Except to say they are not classical in any way.  My approach to voice has two levels, one is physiological, the other is artistic.  We'll talk about the physiology and how it applies to our singing, and we'll also talk about effectively emoting.  This will all be done in the context of project songs.  The lesson usually starts with 5-10 minutes of warm-ups then the remainder of the time spent singing, critiquing performance and improving execution.     

​

​

The question I hear most often about bass is "isn't bass easier than guitar?".  Well, the answer is a little complicated.  The truth is that bass IS easier to get functional on than guitar but the path from functional or good to great is an elusive one.  There's some magic mojo you'll need to acquire along the way.  But long before that, you need to learn what I call bass vocabulary.  Bassists use this vocabulary to fill a very specific roll in an ensemble and that roll does not change with different genres.  Great bassists know their roll and play it with conviction and consistency.