TEACHING STATEMENT
I have two overriding goals in teaching lessons - one is that music become a deeply intuitive, natural activity, and the other that it be highly individual, reflecting and cultivating each students' personality and way of expressing oneself. On the first point, regardless of what styles we work in or whether the goal is to play professionally or just for fun, all courses of study eventually point to an intuitive grasp of music that allows students to pick up songs on their own quickly from recordings, written music, or other musicians, and to play what they hear in their heads. Developing a strong musical ear and understanding the underlying structure of melody, chords, and rhythm reduces dependence over time on formal training or written music and helps making music become a more natural, spontaneous, and enjoyable. Research has shown that music processing takes place in the same part of the brain as does language, and indeed the two modes of expression bear many similarities. For instance, for language to become useful, it needs to be absorbed and understood on a deep level. Children who are brought with a language have no problem with this. Adults often don't pick up languages as quickly as do children, but immersion situations help commit speaking it to a more naturally. Music, too needs to become intuitive in order for it to be truly useful mode of expression. Like language, there is a grammar and order to music which is helpful to understand, but proper grammar is not necessary to express something profound or meaningful. In music, one need not be highly trained to make great music, but to the degree to which the analytical understanding of music is fully internalized, it too becomes useful in expression. My method of teaching attempts to address at every turn the intuitive understanding of the material, whether it be reading music, using music theory to improvise, or learning a tune by ear. On my second goal, musical individuality, every student is different, having varying goals, experiences, and learning styles. My lessons provide an alternative to the cookie-cutter approach found in many method books, academic music programs, and internet instructional resources. I work with each student to craft a unique course of study that springs from who they are, how they learn, and whatever unique talents arise from the learning process. Whereas we will often work in set traditions, the end goal is to bring an informed and personal interpretation and to the music we play, and to develop the skills and understanding to go on to create our own music.

DEVELOPING THE MUSICAL EAR
Committing music to the intuitive level can take many forms. One I often use is teaching by rote, where instead of learning a song primarily from a piece of paper, I present the music in short manageable bits, and the student plays them back by watching and listening to what I do, memorizing each piece of the song as we go. This is the oldest form of learning music, and is used most often in folk traditions, and to some degree jazz. Compared to learning a song by sight reading, it can take longer to get through the piece initially but has the advantages that first of all the student doesn't need to be able to read music, and second that learning this way commits the song to long term memory much more quickly. It's like the difference between cramming for a test and forgetting the information a week later versus learning to ride a bike or drive a car, where once one learns one hardly has to think about it and will never forget how. Often times the lesson time will focus on rote learning but I provide a written copy and a recording of the tune for reference when practicing at home. I do teach music reading whenever appropriate, and have developed an approach that more fully engages the intuitive musical ear than most traditional classical methods. Most people learn to read music by memorizing the correspondence between a dot on the page and the place to put their finger on the instrument, almost like a Pavlovian response. Whereas this can sometimes lead to an intuitive understanding, there are many accomplished classically trained musicians who have no idea how to make music unless someone puts dots on a page in front of them. Rather than emphasizing the mechanical relationship between written notes and finger positions, I show the student how to see the notes on the page as the degrees of the scale a piece is written in. Since all scales of a type (major, minor, etc) are structured in the same way, students learn to perceive the generic pattern for the piece, which has the essential sound of the piece no matter what key it is played in. Once students are reading information about the sound and underlying structure of the music, as opposed to information about where to put one's fingers, they can develop the ability to look at a piece of music and start to hear how it goes before even picking up an instrument. Thus, the style of music reading I teach is closely tied with ear training. When students can hear a musical passage in their heads, and relate it to the underlying scale structure, they are engaging their musical intuition and are closer to being able to play what they hear and hear what they play. So even music reading, which can seem sometimes analytical and stifling, can move us towards playing by ear. With most students I teach some form of improvisation, whether it be jamming on a basic pentatonic blues form or blowing choruses over a bebop standard, improvisation takes at least some knowledge of music theory. I try to present scales and harmonic patterns in a way that combines analytical understanding of what's going on with quick recognition of the sounds that are involved.

CREATING A PERSONALIZED APPROACH
One of the things I find most intriguing about teaching music is the ways in which each student's personality manifests through the learning process. People's quirks come out any time they are learning something new, and since playing music is such a personal endeavor, all sorts of difficult things can arise - doubt of one's ability to learn, insecurity about performing, egotism, confusion about what direction to go, etc. However, I have a strong conviction that the ability to make music - beautiful music - is an innate capacity we all have, and everyone has their own unique talents and ways of expressing themselves through sound. I take interest in the unfolding of students' unique musical voices, and in working with the difficulties and successes that can come up in that process. At times I give support and encouragement, at times a metaphorical kick in the pants, and at other times advice on what musical directions it makes most sense to pursue. At times I marvel at the degree to which students can learn and grow through their musical pursuits. I have seen music open doors in students' lives socially, intellectually, emotionally, and professionally. Learning music can be a positive force in one's life beyond the time spent actually playing an instrument, because music has the power to engage the whole personality - talents, quirks, shortcomings, and all. So in lessons I look for ways that music can be integrated more fully into students' lives. Examples include identifying the best ways to work practicing into one's other commitments, learning how to channeling one's emotions and life experiences into music, helping find settings to play and practice music with other people, or relating the musical learning process to other areas of experiences like sports, careers, or languages.

EXAMPLES OF COMMON COURSES OF STUDY
Because my students' goals vary so widely, I have a number of different teaching approaches. Here I will give a general idea of paths we may take, although keep in mind that I design each student's program to particular interests and goals.

For students who want to learn folk or country blues, we may or may not use written music, or make any mention of scales or chord theory. Of course, the folk tradition has been passed down aurally, not on paper, and we can continue that process in lessons, learning by rote. For blues students I usually start with delta tunes by such as "Kindhearted Woman Blues," by Robert Johnson, where the student learns to pick with the thumb independently of the fingers, and to play basic syncopated rhythms. We might then move on to tunes in the Piedmont blues style, which utilize an alternating bass pattern with the thumb, with more heavily syncopated and melodic parts with the fingers. As the student progresses, I usually introduce ragtime and Travis picking tunes such as "Cannonball Rag" or "Sweet Georgia Brown," which use more early jazz harmonies and rhythms. People who want to play folk music often are looking for the skills they need to accompany their voice, or participate in sing-a-longs. In this case I focus on basic backup techniques, and developing the ability to switch quickly between chords. I teach several simple tunes which introduce playing melodic lines within chord strumming, such as "Wildwood Flower" and "Blowing in the Wind," and basic fingerstyle patterns that we can apply to tunes such as "Freight Train." Repertoire may include tunes by Bob Dylan, the Beatles, James Taylor, Cat Stevens, or Neil Young, to name a few. Students with a more modern aesthetic are welcome to bring in recordings of current music for us to learn. I often teach tunes by artists such as Beck, Eliot Smith, and other more contemporary players.

When students want to learn to flatpick traditional tunes (bluegrass, old time, New England), I start with teaching major scales in open position and simple tunes, like Old Joe Clark or Whiskey Before Breakfast. One of the major goals is to develop a consistent picking technique, and I have a number of exercises to this end. We will also focus on developing standard repertoire. I try to choose tunes other players are most likely to know and help students solidify the skills needed to participate more easily in jams, including backup styles. I incorporate music theory as needed, including common fiddle tune modes, learning what chords are available in a given key, and how to transpose tunes to other keys. In bluegrass, many players want to play improvised leads, in which case I introduce many of the same basic scales, arpeggios, and theory I use in teaching jazz.

For students who want to learn jazz, I almost always start by teaching basic blues playing, as this is the historical and musical foundation of jazz and so many other styles. Many students have already learned pentatonic scales, which are useful, but we will work on expanding that to include other notes and ornaments integral to a bluesy sound. We start here learning basic theory by learning the numerical spelling of the blues scale, as well as naming the chords of the blues progression. Improvising in the blues scale is a useful forum for opening one's ear to the character of each note in a scale. Ear training is essential to integrating music theory, which by itself can be rather cerebral, and the practice of music, which is ideally intuitive. After learning and a number of blues melodies such as "Tenor Madness," "Things Ain't What They Used to Be," and "Straight No Chaser" and the next step depends on the student's sensibilities. For someone interested in early jazz and swing, we may focus for a while on chord voicings and backup styles (i.e. Freddy Green, Django Reinhart) and choose older standards to learn such as "Limehouse Blues," "It Don't Mean a Thing," or "Lady Be Good." For someone interested in more modern playing, we might move on to modal jazz. A likely jumping-off point would be "So What," where we start using the dorian mode, exploring the sounds of different intervals found within that scale, and utilizing new ideas for structuring improvisation. From there I introduce the system of chords found within a key, and modulation. We might then work on learning a tune that combines the blues and western harmonic progression, such as "Nostalgia in Times Square" by Charles Mingus. After that, it's is a matter of choosing tunes together and learning as we go, incorporating concepts and techniques as needed. We will work from the Real Book and can cover all of the major styles, like hard bop (i.e. Horace Silver, Art Blakey), Latin jazz (Jobim, Charlie Byrd), fusion ("Bitches Brew"-era Miles Davis, Chick Corea), and more modern topics such as 12-tone technique and exotic scales. Some general skill areas we might cover include scales and arpeggios, chord voicings, chord melody playing, comping styles, walking bass, use of diminished, whole tone and altered scales, and improvisation technique.