Music Theory Lessons in Westfield, NJ. Amazing Teachers.

I am available to tutor in music theory. Hour sessions are available but count as two 30 minute sessions back to back.

READING IS NOT REQUIRED BUT IS ENCOURAGED

In Music Theory specific lessons, we'll focus on digging deep into music to understand it's parts (melody, harmony and rhythm) and how those parts work together to create the music we all love to listen to and play!

These lessons are ideal for:
- Lead players looking to develop more captivating ideas
- Chordal instrumentalists like guitarists and pianists looking to expand their harmonic options and voicings
- Improvisers of all levels
- Songwriters looking to increase the impact of their songs
- Producers struggling to create interesting chord progressions and hooks
- Aspiring composers and arrangers

What to expect based on level:
- Beginner: We'll focus on absolute fundamentals like musical alphabet, accidentals, major scales, pentatonics, intervals, triads, simple rhythms and simple meters, intro to functional harmony and basic chord progressions.

-Intermediates: For those comfortable with the materials in the beginner ...

Music Theory is the Core of Understanding how ALL Music works anywhere in the world and applies to all Instruments. It's the insight into why we use certain Notes, Chords, & Scales and what makes them work. To have the knowledge is to be a Musician, which is to Understand that when writing a Song, or Improvising all thinks can work as long as you can make it work. It's the Musician who can figure out why it works so he or she will know where to go or what to play.

My goal as a teacher is to give you the facility to express yourself through music. The key parts to developing this facility are:

1. theory -- if you know your theory, you know the best way to express your idea without having to think about it
2. technique -- the last thing you want is for your technique to hinder your ability to express your idea. Having good technique lets your ideas flow naturally

When you take lessons with me, you get out of it what you put in. Your job as student is to be honest with what you expect to achieve and my job as teacher is to give you the tools to achieve it

20 years I've been including music theory in my lessons and many times giving private lessons just on the subject to Singers, Percussionists and instrumentalists outside of guitar. I have some fantastic sight singing books but I start with your memory, the melodies that have touched you. We explore your personal contact with music to find that you actually know the intervals, the building blocks of music. My understanding of chord function and harmonic colour gets clearly categorized and explained for the student so she/he can use for her/his self to develop a better ear and the right tools to analyze how any song works.

I have studied music theory at the college level and have been writing and composing for over a decade, both alone and in a number of successful bands. I believe in theory as a creative tool rather than simply as an intellectual exercise, and I put strong emphasis on putting knowledge to use.