Experience
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30 years of playing music.
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20 years playing in band settings
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7 years playing in touring bands and recording in professional studios.
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6 years of private music instruction.
About me
I was born to shred in 1990 in southeast Montana. When I was 4 I started taking piano lessons and in the 5th grade I began playing trombone in band class. When I was 14 I stopped taking piano lessons and taught myself to play bass, and as a way of developing my songwriting, I taught myself guitar the following year. In high school I dropped out of band class to make time to play in a rock band, where I would learn to play drums. Upon graduation I moved to Arizona and learned about audio engineering and music production, and in 2011 I relocated to Austin, TX to pursue a career in music.
Methodology
I believe in teaching my students the music theory necessary to have a strong enough vocabulary to express themselves clearly through their instrument of choice. I won't be teaching you to be the next great virtuoso, but I will give you the tools necessary to take whatever emotion you're feeling on the inside and get it on the outside. Through repetition and refinement we will learn where all the notes of your instrument are, the relationship between notes and what their degrees of separation say about them, the patterns they create and how we organize them, how to read sheet music and ultimately the art of improvisation and how to play by ear.
This involves a combination of traditional and non-traditional methods. I believe that anyone can learn how to play and create music, but not everyone learns the same way. With that said, I teach all my students the same fundamentals of music theory, but with personalized approaches to the material that makes it accessible to anyone.