Brian D.

I took several years of music theory and guitar lessons before attending Berklee College of Music as a Guitar Major. I have played in many bands and have stage and studio experience for you to draw from. I teach all levels of guitar from beginner to advanced, and many different styles such as rock, jazz, and classical. My aim is to make a student a complete musician that reads music proficiently and has some of the essential skills a professional musician will need to survive in the real world.

I am an avid believer that you cannot be a musician without learning to read music, as you couldn't learn English without first learning the alphabet. I am not a teacher that just shows you some cool licks and you never progress past your initial starting point, as there are enough of those already out there. I teach as I was taught by several excellent teachers, and that's through using a method book, such as Mel Bay or Hal Leonard, learning to read all six strings with basic melodies and learn all your basic chords both of which combined should take around 3 months, then progressing onto more advanced reading, playing blues and rock songs and learning to improvise your own leads by six months or so, then after finishing the method book series, move on to reading position studies and advanced scales which the student will then know the entire fingerboard and be able to play in all keys by nine to twelve months, as well as improvise over complex chord changes. The goal is to prepare the student to be able to spontaneously be able to play any style both by reading or by ear whichever is appropriate, as well as writing and recording their own original material, which we work on developing a repertoire of in addition to a repertoire of popular material.

No specialty

Westfield High School - general diploma - 82-87
Berklee College of Music - Guitar - 87-89

music, Guitar
All levels