I’ve been teaching music almost as long as I’ve been playing it. I started giving guitar lessons when I was 16, just a few years into learning the instrument myself.

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Although I went on to earn a degree in Ethnomusicology from UCLA, much of my musical education has come from learning how to listen. Training my ear gave me a way to answer my own questions: if I wanted to understand how something worked, I could go to a recording, listen closely, and figure out what the musicians were doing in a real musical setting.

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That experience still shapes the way I teach.

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I believe curiosity is one of the best engines for learning. My first goal is usually to find something that genuinely excites a student - a sound, a song, a player, a musical idea - and use that excitement as a way into the work. I’m also not afraid of difficult material. If there’s something ambitious you want to learn, we can break it into smaller pieces, spend the time each piece requires, and gradually put the whole thing together.

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Over the years, I’ve taught students ranging from young children to adults in their 70s and 80s, and have given classes, workshops and masterclasses at institutions including UCLA, USC, CalArts, CSUN, the Herbie Hancock Institute, LACSA and the University of New Mexico, as well as programs internationally.

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These days, I teach privately and work with students one-on-one. Lessons can focus on guitar, songwriting, composition, arranging, orchestration, music theory, or some combination of these depending on where you want to go.

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My hope is not simply to teach you what I know, but to help you develop the tools to keep discovering things for yourself.