Blues Guitar with Will H.

I began playing music at a very early age without formal training, sheet music, or any kind of theoretical knowledge. Casual playing became professional during high school when I landed gigs at venues like The Green Music Center for Performing Arts in Sonoma, The Roxy Theatre in LA, Humphreys Concerts By The Bay in San Diego and The Mountain Winery in Saratoga. Since then I have spent four years earning a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Music at the University of California at Santa Cruz, establishing a strong theoretical foundation for music while teaching private lessons, performing with a variety of groups regularly, and eventually tutoring music theory and ear-training for other music majors at the university level. In my experience with teaching guitar, bass and drum set, I have encountered students with strong foundations in musicianship and some with no musical experience whatsoever. My students have expressed appreciation for my ability to accommodate different levels of musical maturity, choosing particular terms and frameworks based on their unique background and current level of musical knowledge. Drawing from what I've learned about cognition and critical pedagogy as an Education Minor at UCSC, I deliberately organize my hour-long lessons in a format which maintains and capitalizes on student interest, physically keep log of which concepts are solidified and ready to be expanded upon, and design ways to guide students toward personal and creative discovery rather than cut-and-dried memorization and arbitrary procedure. Chord and interval recognition is a large part of my curriculum as it provides a basis for playing intuitively, and I use a variety of my own mnemonics (charts, symbols, aural queues) to simplify ear training and cultivate musical fluency. My goal is to make students empowered by music. For the classically trained student this may mean learning perceptive skills outside of staff notation and venturing into structured improvisation, and for the student who has learned by ear this may mean building a theoretical framework to support and expand their control of an instrument. As an originally self-taught musician with a strong academic foundation and sense of joy in the practice of music, I work with students to create well-rounded growth and musical freedom.