I can offer music lesons for instrumentalists and composers of any age, in one-on-one or group formats. If you are interested or would like more information, please do not hesitate to email me at spencer@pepke.site, and I will get back to you as soon as possible. While I can give theory and general music lessons to performers on any instrument, I have three main focuses:
My study of guitar is centered around composition and analysis, but in a more holistic than academic sense. Rather than frontloading with boring and uncontextualized vernacular and math, I work with the student to establish a project and introduce whatever concepts are most applicable to that project. I believe that the most valuable proficiency in music is being able to express one's self effortlessly, and that guitar is a highly versitile tool for doing so. Students will learn how to:
My study can be applied to music from any genre, but is not an approach to virtuosity. While one may become very adept and able to play in a difficult or impressive way, to me that will always take a back seat to self-discovery and originality.
I can offer personal vocal lessons and coaching for beginner through intermediate students. My vocal study is influenced by Pauline Oliveros' Deep Listening techniques and Fitzmaurice Voicework, where the complex act of singing is 'deconstructed' into simple but highly controlled motions, and then reformed in a way that (on a semiconcious level) the vocalist is powerful, versitile and safe in their performance. I also focus deeply on expression, believing that the human voice is the most dynamic tool for expression that we have, and that the study of vocal performance can be expressively limiting. For example, through years of rigid classical vocal lessons one may develop a very well-tuned pitch-sense, but that may lead them to sound like a robot when they try to sing the blues. My study of music in general questions the cultural relativity of practice, and puts everything else behind emotional connection and injury avoidance. Students will learn how to:
My study of drums is inspired by drummer Bernard "Pretty" Purdie, who once stated "Dancing was something I’d been doing all my life, so no matter what I tried to do, I tried to make my music dance music." Everyone has an inate sense of groove that makes them dance, and being a proficient drummer, to me, is having enough control over your movement to influence other peoples movement. To understand groove, I look to understand rhythms from Jazz, Funk, Hip-Hop, Rock, Samba, and Cumbia- What meter do they use; how dense are they; how are rhythms displaced, syncopated and accented to create an effect. Students will learn to:
Today most of the music in the world hardly involves physical instruments at all! The musical capabilities of computers means that a means of creating, recording and performing music can now be obtained for free, anywhere in the world, instantly. The difference between electronic and physical instruments also lets us call into question established systems of music theory, and create our own new systems to allign with our desire to express. I can offer a beginner to advanced course on creating music with computers. Students will learn: