Piano Lessons in Laguna Niguel, CA

Instruments: Bass Guitar

What advice do you have about practicing effectively?
When practicing, become one with the metronome. Use it to your advantage and you will be able to play anything, no matter how difficult it may be. Begin by slowing down the passage that is giving you trouble to 50 BPM for example and learn in at that speed to perfection. When you feel comfortable, begin speeding it up BPMs at a time until you reach the speed that it is meant to be played in. A little secret that I use is to actually play the passage 5-10 BPMs faster than it is meant to be played in, that way when you slow it back down to the actual speed you will sound and feel very comfortable because your mind knows that you can play it faster.

How do I know if my child is ready to start lessons?
You will know your child is ready to start lessons when he or she begin asking for you to buy them an instrument. If you see your child with the drive to begin playing, nurture it. Once they have the instrument, you'll notice that they want to learn how to play their favorite songs but are not ready to play a whole song from top to bottom. At this point, the child is ready to start lessons because that is the time for the teacher to show the student the fundamentals so that the child has the correct technique right at the beginning. Without lessons, the child might develop wrong finger positions and technique because they are on their own without the right guidance. The sooner this is addressed the more rewarding it will be for them on the long run.

When will I start to see results?
The student should begin seeing results right after the first class. The whole point of the first class is to assess at what level the student is in their musical journey and instrument, find out what the student wants to learn and what type of music he or she likes the most. I will ask the student to play something for me and I will determine if there are any areas that the student needs to improve on, or if the student is starting from the beginning, teach them the basic finger positions on the bass on both hands. I will carefully choose the homework and by the second meeting the student see and notice the improvements.

What musical accomplishments are you most proud of?
I know that the best musical accomplishments are yet to come but if I can name one, it would be graduating from Berklee College of Music with a double major. I come from a humble background from a small country called Venezuela. The road and challenges that I faced along the way were not easy to say the least, but they made me grow both musically and personally. Looking back, I can see that I was very brave and had the drive, vision, perseverance and a great and loving family that helped me through this great feat. Hard work and discipline paid off when I received the Berklee Scholarship on my second audition and was actually able to study in that prestigious institution.

If you have a Music Degree, what is it in (Performance, Education, Musicology, Theory, Composition, etc) and why did you choose that degree?
I actually chose two music degrees at Berklee College of Music. One was Music Production and Engineering and the other one was Electronic Production and Design. The first one I chose because every time I was in a band growing up, when the time came to record our music, we did not have the budget to get in the studio, get the songs recorded, mixed and mastered so I decided to cut the middle man and be able to record the music my self. I figured out that I could continue getting bass lessons at Berklee from world class bass teachers while at the same time acquiring a skill set that I could only get there considering the fact that Berklee is the college with the best audio engineering teachers and is actually the institution with the most recording studios on the east coast and these were my classrooms. The second major showed me how to produce electronic music in all the DAWs (Ableton, Logic, Reason, Pro Tools) and showed me how to create sounds with synthesizers from scratch (Sound Design). I was already producing electronic music before Berklee and this major took my productions to the next level.

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