I started playing music at a young age and was teaching guitar lessons by the time I started high school. I began to do live event production work nights and weekends while studying for an undergrad in music production at the Hartt School at the University of Hartford.
After college, I moved to Los Angeles, spending a short time as a staff engineer doing preproduction for Aftermath Records, I moved on to engineering for SST Records, where I stayed on as the studio engineer for over a decade. After SST, I moved on to engineer at Charleston Sound in South Carolina for a little over a year before moving on to teach undergraduate classes in music production and film sound design at both the Los Angeles Film School Online and the University of Central Florida.
I have been in higher education since 2016 while continuing to be active in all sorts of production work on the side. I completed a Masters of Science in Instructional Design from Full Sail University in 2021.
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With the exception of students looking to learn theory (music theory, instructional design theory), most skills acquisition is is acquired through practice of practical applications. Practical applications vary widely depending on the skills the mentee is looking to acquire. If it is a guitar student, 2-octave scales run in triplets and thirds using alternate picking while learning different modes is a standard, while if it is sound design for film, setting the student up with a short film and an extensive sound library, and slowly going through different processing that allows them to alter the sound and make what is in their head come out of the speakers are both more effective than talking and reading about it.
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I have taught guitar lessons off and on for the last 30 years, bass for the 25, and music production and software (Pro Tools, Logic, Adobe Audition, Adobe Premiere Pro) for the last 20 years.
- acoustic
- arranger
- artist
- arts advocacy
- audio producer
- author
- band director
- chamber music
- choir director
- choral
- clarinet
- classical
- classroom
- classroom teaching
- clinician
- collaboration
- college education
- composer
- composition
- concert bands
- conducting
- conductor
- curriculum design
- dei
- digital
- diversity
- drummer
- educatior
- educator
- elementary music
- elementary school music
- engineer
- ensemble director
- equity
- experimental
- festival
- festivals
- film score
- flute
- fundraising
- grammy
- guitar
- guitarist
- healer
- high school music
- improvisation
- inclusion
- instrumental music
- international
- jazz
- jazz bands
- jazz music
- live audio production
- live music
- marching bands
- mentoring
- middle school
- modern dance
- music business
- music conferences
- music consultant
- music education
- music educator
- music pedagogy
- music performance
- music teacher
- music technology
- music theory
- musical theater
- musician
- opera
- orchestra
- orchestra director
- pedagogy
- performance
- performer
- piano
- pit orchestras
- popular
- private lessons
- private schools
- producer
- professional development
- program development
- public schools
- R&B
- recording
- rock band
- saxophone
- soloist
- songwriting
- string instruments
- studio
- teaching
- teaching career
- title 1
- trumpet
- violinist
- vocal
- vocal performance