Violin Lessons in Austin, TX

Instruments: Piano Violin Trumpet Trombone Saxophone Flute Clarinet Drums Synthesizer Recorder Electric Violin Fiddle Orchestral Percussion Music Keyboard

What does a normal practice session look like for you?
I first address any questions from the previous session. We then will work on various warm-up exercises to build and maintain skills. Depending on the skill level, we will next play selected excerpts from methods books. The main focus of the lesson is on song material - usually prepared by me or a piece brought in by the student. Finally, I will assign what repertoire to work on until we meet again!

If you have a Music Degree, what is it in (Performance, Education, Musicology, Theory, Composition, etc) and why did you choose that degree?
I have both a bachelor's degree in music education (Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey - 2005) as well as a master's degree in music education (University of Texas at San Antonio - 2010). Having a passion to share my knowledge and skills of various musical instruments from a young age, I was inspired by some great music educators to follow their footsteps into the field of teaching!

What is your dream piece to perform and why?
Vangelis was a profoundly amazing composer and performer of many different synthesizers. His music motivated me to learn more about electronic instruments in general as well as challenge myself with utilizing as many features and functions within each machine as I can. Of all his prolific works, my favorite piece by him is "Hymne" (1979, the year I was born). Well, I personally arranged this keyboard piece for my advanced middle school band to play during my first teaching job. I played synthesizer while the band played the melody, harmony, and percussion parts and it was a dream come true to lead and be part of such an incredible group of young musicians!

If you weren't a musician what do you think you'd be doing instead?
If I were not a musician then I'd still be teaching...the passion for education began in elementary for me. One way or another, I'll always be teaching! However, there are other skills I have obtained. As a result of having to pay for college on my own (coming from a large family whose parents have no formal education), I didn't receive my bachelor's degree (in music education) until I was 26 years old. Most of my electives in my undergrad were computer programming courses. When I was an upperclassman in high school, the dot-com boom was in full effect. I learned BASIC of different kinds (e.g., QuickBASIC, etc.) as well as COBOL and Visual Basic (one of my favorite languages!). I even taught Web Page Design w/HTML to continuing education students when I myself was only 19 years old! As a private music instructor today, I design and code my website myself using HTML and JavaScript and no fancy software---just freehand using only Notepad! Also, my investments perform at least as well as I do: I've been investing in stocks since I was 18 years old (1997) and in commodities (futures market) since 2000. Today, half of my income as a private music instructor comes from trading crude oil, gold and soybeans futures contracts on an almost daily basis. Doing what I do for a living provides me with the flexibility to be at home on my computer when regularly scheduled reports are released which provides an incredible amount of volume and opportunity to get in and get out of the market in a short amount of time, usually yielding as much or more as what I earn from lessons in an entire week!

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