Julien R.

Students can expect to learn a broad range of knowledge to help them write songs. I teach which melodies, harmonies, and rhythms are common to each style, allowing the student to better analyze works from all time periods. I teach musical analysis to allow students to compose more strongly influenced music while simultaneously support students finding their own natural rhythm and create something new and unique of their own. For jazz songwriting I focus on the topics of the chord progressions, reharmonization, good voice leading, musical structure, melodicism, and tone color. Understanding the basic technique and interface of the instrument is essential for any Song Writing students.

Students will expect a focus on musicality, dexterity, technique, reading music, and improvisation. I often work written pieces that a student is working on or to teach how to play piano from the start. For beginner classical musicians, I can teach how to read music and improve one's playing ability with short pieces to build up to harder and more advanced music. For a beginner interested in improvisation or jazz I would add teaching scales the improvisational palette and the basic 12 bar blues. For all piano students, going back to basics and building a great foundation while pushing ahead in more advanced topics is important.

Students can expect to develop great technique that is relaxed and feel natural, as well as learning a strong foundation of good time keeping, practicing properly, grooves and exercises that will help the student reach their goal. As a teacher I focus on balancing the serious practice with having fun and being inspired to widen the scope of what a musician can do today and in their long-term goals. I work with beginner drum set players but would be a great help to intermediate self-taught drummers with my background in classical percussion. I also teach 4 mallets on keyboard percussion with Stephens grip, I am the student of a Cadet alumni who previously lead the Cadets to 1st place at DCI world championships.