Teaching

My teaching connects musical detail with broader questions of history, culture, and meaning. Whether teaching music history, popular music, music theory, or performance, I want students to engage actively with sound: to listen closely, identify musical features, ask productive questions, develop informed interpretations, and understand music within larger historical and cultural contexts.

I work with students at different levels of musical preparation across university, community-college, dual-enrollment, and online settings. My teaching uses listening, analysis, discussion, performance, and creative application to provide multiple points of entry into musical learning while helping students develop greater confidence and independence.

My teaching is informed by an Explain → Try → Refine → Recall (ETRR) cycle. I introduce and clarify new concepts, give students opportunities to work with them actively, use feedback and further practice to refine understanding, and return to important ideas through retrieval and reapplication. Depending on the course, this cycle may take the form of listening, analysis, discussion, performance, written work, or creative application.

I currently teach at Life Pacific University and Mt. San Antonio College in Southern California.

Teaching Areas

Music History, Appreciation & Popular Music

My teaching in music history and appreciation emphasizes close listening alongside historical and cultural interpretation. In courses such as Rock Music History and Appreciation, students examine musical style while considering how music participates in larger questions of identity, technology, cultural change, and meaning.

Selected courses: Rock Music History and Appreciation; Modern Music

Music Theory

In music theory and fundamentals courses, I emphasize practical music literacy by connecting theoretical concepts with listening, analysis, performance, and creative application. Musicianship exercises help students connect written concepts with sound, while analytical and creative activities encourage them to understand not only how musical structures can be identified and labeled, but also how those structures function in actual music.

Selected courses: Music Theory; Music Fundamentals

Composition, Songwriting & Music Technology

My composition and technology teaching encourages students to apply musical concepts creatively while developing practical skills in composition, arranging, songwriting, notation, recording, and digital music production.

Selected courses: Composing and Arranging; Songwriting; Principles of Music Technology; Logic Pro X

Applied & Ensemble Music

As a guitarist and composer, I bring practical musicianship into individual, classroom, and ensemble instruction. My teaching emphasizes technical development, musical interpretation, stylistic awareness, collaborative musicianship, and increasing independence as a performer.

Selected courses and instruction: Applied Guitar; Beginning Guitar; Guitar Ensemble

Teaching in Practice

Rock Music History and Appreciation

My Rock Music History and Appreciation courses use guided listening, discussion, historical context, and short analytical activities to help students move from musical observation toward interpretation. Listening activities frequently follow a Notice → Interpret → Connect framework: students identify what they hear, consider how musical choices create meaning, and connect those observations to broader historical and cultural questions.

Course activities are designed to make active listening central to the study of popular music. Rather than treating musical works simply as illustrations of historical developments, students engage directly with recordings and consider relationships among sound, performers, audiences, technology, and cultural context.

Representative Teaching Materials

Listening and Discussion Questions
A representative set of guided listening and discussion questions illustrating my Notice → Interpret → Connect approach. Students move from identifying musical features toward interpreting their expressive effects and connecting those observations with historical and cultural questions.

Thinking Lab
A student-facing active-learning exercise that moves from close observation and contextual interpretation toward evidence-based claims, discussion, and reflection. The activity asks students to connect musical and performance features with psychedelic rock’s emphasis on altered experience and expanded personal expression.

Music Theory and Fundamentals

In Music Theory and Music Fundamentals, I connect written concepts with listening, performance, analysis, and creative application so that students encounter theory as a means of understanding music rather than simply as a system of labels and rules. Students work with concepts in multiple ways (from written exercises and musicianship activities to analysis and creative projects), reinforcing connections among notation, sound, and musical practice.

The Explain → Try → Refine → Recall cycle is particularly useful in these courses: new concepts are introduced and modeled, practiced in different musical contexts, refined through feedback and correction, and revisited as later topics build upon earlier material.

Representative Teaching Materials

Final Project: Music Theory in Practice
A scaffolded Music Theory I project in which students apply harmony, voice leading, chord progressions, inversions, notation, and arranging skills to a common original melody. Students develop the arrangement in stages, revise their work through feedback, perform their completed arrangement, and reflect on how different theoretical choices shape musical results.

Teaching Statement

My teaching philosophy emphasizes active engagement with sound, intellectual curiosity, accessibility, and the development of students as increasingly independent listeners and thinkers.