Kevin is know offering lessons in the Monterey Bay/Carmel/Salinas/Santa Cruz area!

 

You'll get: Indivisual lessons from a professional touring rock guitarist/pianist, composer, award winning songwriter, and audio engineer with years of experience working with and writing alongside pop, funk, hip hop, folk, metal, and rock artists.

 

SCOPE: Not everyone wants to play in the symphony, most of us just want to write songs that mean something and perform live.  The modern music landscape isn’t traditional, and learning can be fun and untraditional!

 

$25/30 min $45/hr

 

You'll get:

- Away from blobs on paper and into a situation where you are writing music and communicating with other musicians

- Writing songs

- No ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ on the first lesson

- Custom materials for that lesson, focusing on one area at a time and not overwhelming amounts of info

- Custom series of lessons based around the goals that you have and the types of songs/material you want to play. 

 

I feel that knowing basic piano/keyboard skills makes it easier to understand the guitar, so thats why I teach these two instruments together.

 

You'll learn:

- The foundation of proper hand technique to prevent injury, how to hold your instrument, holding picks, etc.

- The treble and bass clefs and how to notate basic ideas (1/4 notes, 1/8 notes, rests, rhythm and notes/chords)

- The layout of the instrument and basic open string names/where notes repeat on the piano/guitar

- Ascending and descending chromatic scales (note values and names)

- Tones and semitones, where the half steps and full steps happen

- The major scales of modern western music (and which ones are more common and why)

- Standard notation and musician terms that can communicate ideas or direction in a jam space with other players.  (What terms the guitarist, vocalist, keyboardist, and drummer want to hear, not just words like ‘faster’ ‘bass-ier’ and ‘purple’)

- Order of #’s and b’s - Circle of Fifths - FCGDAEB (Fat Cats Get Drunk At Every Bar) & BEADGCF (BEAD Gypsys Can Fly)

- Via a chord formula how to find the most logical chords in a chosen key instead of stabbing at unlimited options.  Learn how to figure out what to call certain combinations of notes (chords)

- That every rule is made to be broken.  Music is subjective and in specific cases beautifully wrong :)

- Chord triads and 1st/2nd chord chord inversions (piano) and why they apply

- Every key signature’s included chords and common chord progressions (Moods/Feels/Cadences of certain progressions and where else they are used in popular music)

- Minor scales and seventh chords (and their application in a songwriting capacity)

- Exotic modes and how to apply them to the melodies and chords of your music (Ionian, Dorian, Mixolydian, Phrygian, etc)

- How to write a song, and the usual directions and terms you can use to communicate ideas and suggestions to other musicians in a non sheet music way

- How to record basic demos with your phone, computer, iPad, etc.

- About the sexy world of gear, pedals, and instruments.  Learn what these tools do and how you can incorporate them into your music.

 

Although sheet music is a useful tool and is very important, I will get you away from the paper and get you playing your instrument.  I will give you materials, pdf’s, and music to take home with you.