The Current State of Affairs The more you can do...

After a lesson with a student who has been working with me for nearly 14 years, I took a moment to assess the state of our room as I walked out, letting him tear down his gear. I was inspired to take a quick picture after realizing that this may not be a typical scene to many folks who teach, practice or took lessons at some point in their lives.

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Injecting Music into Music Lessons

All of us who have played, taught, listened to or experienced music in any way know the power it holds. Many people can trace certain important times of their lives to specific recordings. Several musicians, myself included, can trace the reason we play music back to one or two recordings. Many people who play music have often been pulled out of major ruts in their practice/playing after hearing a recording. There are people who don’t have anything to do with playing music who simply can’t function without it.

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Composing a Community Kids Writing Music for Kids

Creating a community of musical peers is something that rarely gets emphasized in the music teaching/learning world. There are many studio events, ensembles, recitals, festivals and competitions that have students cross paths with one another. However, the bonds from these events only scratch the surface of what could potentially be formed between students.

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Books Now Available to Non-Members

I want to thank everyone who took part in the launch of the new method last week. It is greatly appreciated and I hope you’re enjoying the books and membership area of the website.

The books are now available to anyone and everyone – click here to order your copies.

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If you still would like to become a member of the membership website, it’s still available at $30 per month here.

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A New Website for Music Teachers A Tour of a New Membership Site

Here are the details for the membership site:

Access to the membership area is $30 a month. Membership will grant members a 20% discount on all books and teaching materials in the method.

  • Once a membership has been purchased you will receive 20% off all book orders. The first four levels of books are typically $9.95 each.
  • You will have access to 10+ hours of training videos, 5 hours of accompaniment tracks and teacher scores for all the music in the method.
  • There is no minimum – you can cancel the membership anytime.
  • You will be billed $30 per month until you cancel the membership.

If you want to give membership a try – click here to get started.


An in-depth look at the membership site with a video demo:

I’ve always said that there is no better time than now to be teaching kids to play music. The access that students and teachers have to music from all styles, genres and eras makes it nearly impossible for anyone to lose interest in creating something musical. The result may end up sounding like a concert pianist, or it may end up being a kid learning to produce quality dance music on their laptop and becoming a producer. But to have so much music and music-related content at our disposal is a huge benefit to teaching and learning music today.

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Overview of Teacher Accompaniment Tracks How to Use the Teaching Scores and Accompaniment Tracks with My Method

One of the main concepts my favorite teachers hammered home when I was a student and hopefully I’ve continued the tradition; is an emphasis on playing in time, developing a strong time feel and learning how to make musical decisions on the fly. Hence the large library of accompaniment tracks with this method.

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My New Teaching Method An In-Depth Look at the Method and Philosophy Behind It

After years of accepting transfer students who wanted to learn classical, jazz, popular music and composing; I realized that much of the information they wanted to know was in the music they already knew how to play. Somehow the information they had accumulated paralyzed them when it came to “creating” their own sounds – even when playing written music. They were either overwhelmed by all the options or going through their mental checklists of everything they were supposed to do to play “correctly”.

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Announcement Time!

For the last several years I’ve been wrongly thinking that a teaching method I was working on was ready to release. The world certainly didn’t need another collection of music arranged into a method. I have written over 200 pieces for students over the past few years, but I felt that the impact of those on future generations of music makers would be small if I didn’t properly wrap them in the context, methodology, long-term vision and core philosophies that initiated their creation.

Thankfully, current technology has allowed me to build an interactive website for teachers over the past couple of years so that the written music can be part of the bigger whole. Teachers and students will be able to move through their development in a way that is consistent with the intent of the method.

This video covers the background and motivations behind making the method.

I’m really excited about sharing this with everyone. It’s been a lot of blood, sweat and tears but I feel very strongly that this will help a lot of teachers who are frustrated on some level with options available to them as teachers and more importantly – to future generations of music makers.

Click here to start with the method today.

Beginning Jazz Piano Lesson – Swing Scales

Swing Scales

This video lesson covers how I begin with every jazz piano student. Swing scales are great because they enable students to focus on their groove and time-feel from the start. Rather than load students up with harmony and theory information, prioritizing the groove should sustain itself through the whole process of learning to play jazz and modern music. Here’s how we start:

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