Hi, I’m Aaron

I teach music because I think most music education has it backwards. Hand someone a book, point at the page, call it a lesson. Then they quit a year later and spend the rest of their life saying "I'm just not musical." I've spent my whole life watching that be completely untrue.

I started on clarinet in 5th grade, playing classical pieces. Then rhythm grabbed me and never let go — competitive marching band, a local drum line, private lessons with Michael DeRosier (the drummer from Heart) at the legendary Donn Bennett Drum Studio. My favorite part of those lessons was never anything written down. It was trading fours with Michael, back and forth, each of us pushing the other to answer with something better — listening, reacting, creating on the spot. Looking back, that's where I actually learned what music is. It's the core of how I teach now.

After high school I started teaching drums at Moore Brothers Music in Sammamish, picked up electric guitar and started teaching that too, and spent years teaching at School of Rock in Bellevue and Seattle. In 2008 I opened my own recording studio in Bellevue and produced records for bands all over the Northwest. In 2010 I toured the country as a drummer with The Scene Aesthetic, which is where I fell hard for electronic production and Ableton — a skill I still use constantly, both on my own music and in the studio with students who want to write, produce, and record, not just play. I still perform around Seattle at spots like The Showbox, El Corazon, and The High Dive.

Notice the pattern? Clarinet, drums, guitar, keys, bass, production. Every instrument I picked up made the others better. Drums gave my guitar its groove. Keys gave my ear its map. That's not because I'm some kind of prodigy — it's because instruments teach each other, and I've built my whole studio around that idea.

What it's actually like to learn with me

I've taught hundreds of students, from age 2 to 72, and no two have had the same path. We start with music you already love. You play by ear from the first lesson. We treat "wrong" notes like raw material instead of failures. And through all of it, I'm not trying to make lessons feel like school — I want them to feel like the best hour of your week. My real goal is to make myself unnecessary. I want to hand you the ear, the confidence, and the tools to teach yourself anything, forever. That's what I think a music teacher is actually for.

Come play.

Your first lesson is real music — not a placement test.