My approach is to point out to students the simple parts making up songs they already like, and turning that into the way we learn technique, theory, and performance. Scales and exercises become parts of familiar music, and a personalized repertoire of favourite songs makes it so that come playtime there’s always something effortlessly exciting to spend time with.

You don’t need to acquire a taste for instrumental or classical music to be a musician.

A lot of parents I meet have had frustrating experiences with traditional approaches, and the best feedback I’ve received from musicians is that my mine is the way they wish they were taught.

If you love the music you play, practice stops feeling like practice.

If you’d like, I have contact information for parents I’ve worked with who’ve very generously offered to be referrals, as well as some recordings of student jams I can share. They’re really fun—often just a few notes in-key, a beat, and suddenly it sounds like music!