Jake J.

Formally, I got started on the trumpet. Although I was late to entry, I still managed to catch up to all the other trumpets in my class. After elementary school, I joined the middle school guitar class and found myself excelling. I continued playing trumpet and rose to the top of my class in both guitar and trumpet. When I moved on to high school, my band director insisted I stick to one instrument in his class. Even though his discipline allowed me to grow farther on that instrument than I thought I could, having me play it in three of his classes every year got me burned out on it. After high school, I didn t practice trumpet nearly as much but I still devoted myself to my music. I took classes at UC Denver for recording arts and grew in my general knowledge of music and the industry. Post college, I have no formal training.

My private education started with piano. My sister had learned to play and of course as the jealous younger brother, I had to learn as well. So I did. I started learning things by ear that my sister had played and eventually, my mother just put me in lessons. I don t quite remember the age I got started but it helped quite a bit in my path to music. I stopped when I started getting into the trumpet a bit more (I d say 5th grade or so) but kept with it on my own. The next bout of private lessons I had was guitar. I had learned guitar from my sister a bit and just pulling up tabs and learning then and i soon grew well past her in that regard. So far, in fact, that my guitar teacher in school told me to just hang in her office and look up tabs to keep me learning. But I wanted a private experience and to learn so much more about the guitar so I found a teacher and he taught me all about every chord I could ever use and the scale formulas. It was my first experience with theory and I loved it! Due to some scheduling conflicts, I could no longer attend guitar lessons starting in high school but my band director eventually took me on as his private student and continued to grow my musical knowledge. Past high school, I ve had no more private training.

In school bands you get a taste for performance but (especially to begin with) band concerts were just parents with their wall of cameras not judging but still not entirely enjoying. It wasn t until middle school that I was actually "gigging" with a band. We had a few shows around town playing for youth groups and what have you. I got a real sense of the stage when I started jazz band and marching band in high school. With the marching band, we had stadiums full of students and teachers and a private panel of judges but all of them judging our every move and note and accentuation. With the Jazz group, I got to get a feel for the night club sort of thing playing gigs at dazzle and the Mercury cafe. After high school, I have little performance experience besides a couple private gigs.

Besides teaching my brother to play guitar, bass, and drums, I have very little experience teaching.