Total Control Music Systems

Specialties

The Art & Science of Music Instruction.

Private lessons in guitar (electric & acoustic), electric bass, bluegrass banjo, bluegrass mandolin, pedal steel, piano & keyboards, ukulele, voice (training & coaching) music theory, improvising, songwriting, recording & music technology.

Lessons are specially developed using the Total Control Music System (our proprietary set of methods & materials) for each individual student, and specifically designed to work with that student’s learning style, current musical skills and areas of interest. The result? Learning to play well very quickly and enjoying each minute along the way.

My mission is to teach you to play well, quickly, because:

Playing music is fun. Playing WELL is MORE fun!

History

Established in 1987.

Twenty years ago, I came to a sad realization: there was a lot of bad music teaching going on. An awful lot of music teachers are primarily performers, who use teaching as a way of making extra $$. Unfortunately, the fact that one can play music, no matter how well one plays, does not mean that one has any idea how one is doing it, let alone that one has any ability to impart that information to someone else. And I kept seeing students who were frustrated and disappointed, because their lessons were not helping them learn to play well.

So, I decided to stop performing, and to devote my full energies toward being the best possible music teacher. Since that day, I have been developing, growing and improving the Total Control Music System to address this problem. I am constantly studying, refining and improving the system always toward the same end — making the absolute best possible music instruction available to my students.

Playing music is fun. Playing WELL is MORE fun!

Meet the Business Owner

Michael W.

Business Owner

I started out taking Classical piano lessons when I was 7. About a year later, I discovered the guitar and folk music. Then the Beatles arrived, and everything changed. Eventually I realized that I didn’t know enough to teach myself, and started taking some lessons. Nobody taught what I wanted to learn, so I studied Jazz & classical guitar, and worked the rest out myself. As I studied the artists I admired, I found my way to Blues, Bluegrass, Country Celtic — any sort of music that starts with the heart.

And I learned a lot of other instruments, and studied voice. I had some great teachers, and some so-​so teachers. (That was my first glimpse of how important the individual teacher is.)

I played in some Rock, Blues, Country, Folk, Irish, etc. bands. I played solo, as a singer-​songwriter. And I LOVED performing. But I kept getting little messages from the universe that said that, as good as I was as a performer, I was much, much better as a teacher.

And so it goes…