Lessons
I used to think teaching was what you did when the touring stopped. I was wrong — it's just a different room. Half my students right now are teenagers riding the new-wave-of-Bay-Area-thrash revival, showing up with questions about my old rig that I haven't thought about in a decade. It keeps me honest, and it keeps the riffs alive in a way a reunion tour never could.
Online, in person, or both
Most weeks I'm running a mix of one-on-one video calls and small in-person sessions out of the studio. Online lessons run over a standard video call — bring your own guitar and amp, I'll bring the riffs and the patience. Group sessions are capped small on purpose: nobody learns picking dynamics in a room of twenty.
Who I teach
Beginners who just want to survive their first barre chord. Intermediate players stuck in a rut. And a growing number of kids — genuinely, mostly teenagers — deep into the current thrash revival, who found Reaper through their older siblings' record collections and want to know how we actually played this stuff. I don't teach note-for-note tab-worship. I teach the mechanics underneath the riff, so you can write your own once you've got mine down.
How I teach
Diagnose the actual problem. Most 'I can't play fast' problems are actually 'my picking hand and fretting hand aren't talking to each other'. We fix the real bottleneck, not the symptom.
Small reps, honest feedback. Short, focused drills beat marathon practice sessions, and I'll tell you straight when something isn't working — that's the whole point of paying a teacher.
Build toward your own riffs. Every technique we cover gets applied to something you're writing, not just something I wrote in 2004. You leave with tools, not just tabs.
Packages
Single lesson — $85 for sixty minutes, one-on-one, online or in the studio, custom-built to what you're stuck on, with follow-up notes and a practice plan.
Monthly (four lessons) — $300 a month: weekly sixty-minute sessions, progress tracked lesson to lesson, direct-message access between sessions. Most booked.
Small group (two to four) — $45 a person, in the studio only, capped at four. Great for bandmates learning together; a shared riff-and-rhythm focus.
How booking works
Pick a package, then send a message from the contact page with a couple of dates that suit — I confirm every booking by email within a day; no automated back-and-forth, just a real reply from me. Studio hours are Tuesday to Friday, 10 to 6 Pacific.
“The best hour I have spent with a guitar in a decade.”
The Pit Report