INTRODUCTION

In addition to being an acclaimed, nationally and internationally recognized songwriter and musician, Jason also maintains a very successful, growing career as a private guitar, voice and bass instructor for students of all ages, backgrounds and musical interests. Jason is currently based in the New York Metropolitan area and is now accepting inquiries from prospective new students, however, please be advised that Jason is in extremely high demand and has very limited space available on his current student roster.

** If you happen to live outside of the New York Metropolitan area but would still be interested in working with Jason, he tours on a regular basis and works hard to find time to work with eager, interested musicians while he’s on the road. If you would be interested in working with Jason the next time he comes to your city/town, please go to the contact page and send an email with your name, location, playing and/or lesson experience and Jason will get back to you as soon as possible.

TEACHING BACKGROUND

In addition to a youth spent studying classical guitar in his hometown of Long Island, NY at The Stecher and Horowitz School of Music, then one of New York’s preeminent musical conservatory programs, Jason has had the wonderful opportunity to continue his own study of the guitar, bass and voice with a wide range of decorated guitarists, vocalists and musicians from all over the world. They have helped him find and define his own voice as a player and teacher and have inspired him to work with eager musicians young and old to help them do the same. For a full education and private study resume, and/or for any teaching references, please go to the contact page and send an email requesting this information. A reply will be sent your way immediately!

LOOKING TOWARDS THE FUTURE

And last but not least, it’s worth noting that Jason is currently in the design stage of what is expected to be a cutting-edge, content-heavy, interactive tutorial website designed to give students a comprehensive online guide to learning how to play guitar. Everything from foundational right hand and left hand warm up exercises to complex chord-scale theory and songwriting workshops and online lessons on how to develop your sight reading skills and understanding of proper sheet music as well as tablature and how they work together will be covered...and then some!

Inquire now and don’t miss out on the chance to study with this eager and exciting young instructor!

 

COURSE OUTLINES AND WHAT TO EXPECT FROM YOUR LESSONS 

Guitar and Bass Students Will Cover:

• Proper posture and technique: From the very first lesson, we will talk about how you are going to develop a positive physical working relationship with your guitar/bass.  From how you position your hands to how you hold your pick, you always want to be putting yourself in a position get the most out of the work you put into practicing and playing the instrument.
  
• Fretboard vocabulary:  As any string instrument player will tell you, you need to know where the notes and chords are on your instrument.  That starts with being able to locate the notes on your fretboard.  If you’re a new student, we’ll work right from the get-go to make sure you’re developing a strong visual vocabulary.  For veteran students who still need to work on this, I employ a number of teaching tools that will make this process easy for you.
  
• Basic and more advanced sight reading/music theory:  It is my firm belief that the only way to become a truly well-rounded musician, no matter what instrument you play, is to have, AT THE VERY LEAST, some basic sight reading skill and understanding of chord-scale theory.  It helps you establish a dialogue with other musicians and, for all your prospective songwriters out there, helps you communicate to the other musicians you’re working with exactly what you’re looking for.  The great fear for most young musicians – especially guitarists – is that this process isn’t going to be fun.  My hope is that, with my modern, youthful approach, we’ll be able to find the fun in it and turn it into an element of your musicianship that you can be proud of and enjoy using.
  
• Left/Right hand technique: The backbone of guitar/bass playing is the coordination between your left and right hand.  It doesn’t matter if you’re a lefty or a righty, if you play flat pick style or fingerstyle, you have to have your left hand and right hand working together. We’ll employ exercises that work with position studies, sequence playing, scale playing, arpeggio playing and playing with a metronome to help you get both hands working together to their utmost capability.
• Lead playing/Improvisation:  An extension of the techniques you develop working with right and left hand exercises is the application of those techniques to the concepts of playing “lead guitar” and improvisation or “soloing.”  From the staple riffs like ACDC’s “Back In Black” and Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine” to Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie standards and Bach cello inventions arranged for guitar, we’ll constantly be finding fun and exciting tools to apply the soloing techniques you’re learning to. 
  
• Rhythm playing:  I’m very big on working with guitar players to develop their strumming and chord-playing techniques.  We’ll cover classic strum patters for everything from pop and dance music to heavy metal and Brazilian jazz.  Remember that rhythm is a fundamental backbone of all music.  If you can’t keep and play to the beat, you can’t be in the band!!!  Especially you bass players!
  
• Songwriting workshops/improvisation:  One of the things that I think sets me apart from many other teachers is my experience as an accomplished songwriter in various genres ranging from Pop to Rock to Blues, Country, Latin, etc. and my ability and desire to work with musicians young and old to take their songwriting to the next level.  We’ll employ what we learn through the songs we work on and the pieces we play to help us better understand chord progressions and song structures and to help us develop a more refined understanding of melodic phrasing.  It doesn’t matter if your heroes are Bach and Beethoven, Bob Dylan and The Beatles, Miles Davis and John Coltrane or Metallica and Green Day, your guitar and bass can be phenomenal compositional and writing tools and I want to help you find your voice in them!

 

Voice Students will cover:

• Proper Breathing Techniques:  What I find so interesting about the voice is that unlike guitar, bass, piano, drums, etc., when you’re a vocalist, YOU are the instrument!  Everything about the way you sing; your posture, your muscle tension and especially your breathing, help you create the acoustics of a full, healthy singing voice.  We’ll work on exercises meant to get you breathing instinctively with your diaphragm.
  
• Loft and Mask Placement:  Once you’ve got proper breathing technique at your disposal, the next thing you need to understand is that a full, vibrant, healthy singing tone comes from a warm, resonant mix of what we refer to as “mask” and “loft” placement.  In order to help you discover how to influence these elements in your own voice, we’ll employ a litany of exercises including flutters, scales and arpeggios using open and closed vowel sounds, staccato and legato (short and long) tone exercises, crescendo and diminuendo (getting louder and getting softer) exercises and much more.
  
• Chest Voice/Head Voice:  These are also very often referred to as your “upper” and “lower” register and each register, no matter if you’re an alto, soprano, bass or tenor, is necessary to develop so that they can then be combined to help you create a full, resonant tone.  Just like with mask and loft placement, we’ll employ exercises that work with scales and individual tones, as well as long and short vowel sounds, to help you navigate each register successfully and be able to flow from one to the other seamlessly like an operatic pro.
  
• Song Study:  I don’t care if you’re a Broadway fan, opera fan, Robert Plant and Freddie Mercury fan or Slipknot and Marilyn Manson fan, we’re going to work on the songs that you’re interested in working on and we’re going to apply all the tools we learn to help you get the most out of every note you sing!  We’ll talk about practice singing vs. live performance singing and how to be consistent from one to the other.
  
• Healthy Voice Care:  An often overlooked element of voice study, one of the most important things I can talk about with you is how to properly maintain your voice and how to keep those vocal chords functioning at 100% no matter if you’re a hobbyist or a professional singer doing 5 gigs a week.  Having once gone under the knife for polyp surgery on my own vocal chords and having worked so hard and so long to get all the way back, there may be no one out there better suited to help you understand how to keep yourself functioning at the highest level.