Applied Creative Mentorships
About
My name is Shane McQuerry. I have 20 years under my belt and the experience of going to music school for guitar, bass, piano, and electronic music. I went to AIMM in Duluth and completed 52 classes in one year with ADHD and learned as a musician how to work through my own learning strengths and weaknesses, as well as working through significant tendon injuries and enduring the years to reclaim my ability to play my instruments and keep striving. Through group lessons, class settings, years of personal study, very expensive private lessons - I've had to assess where I am slower with learning in order to adapt and stay independent and DIY on my music journey. Throughout my journey as a musician I have been able to use hindsight to apply those experiences to how I wish I tackled my education, and by sharing my education with other people by strategizing around the ways I struggled.
I extensively personalize lessons by taking immense consideration of my student's unique cognitive mapping using principles of neuroscience and self-directed growth that go hand in hand with music. As I get to know my students, I accommodate how they learn and process information, so that I am able to cultivate an environment and constant feedback system to assess how I am communicating, how my student is learning, and providing lesson content each session. With my journey to help others, I also have helped many students work through chronic tendinitis, sciatica, scoliosis, and other torso and neuromuscular-related setbacks and misfortune -through mobility science, anatomical knowledge, and how the neuromuscular system and each chain of muscles facilitates articulate motor control to play an instrument. I am preparing to back to school for an orthopedic physical therapy degree as well as other innovatory mobility science certifications so that I can also help people buy time with playing an instrument despite enduring more tragic neurological conditions and injuries.
As a teacher, I strive to give my students the means and systems-thinking to be entirely independent with their endeavors, and set them up so that they won't need me at all when money is tight. With that endeavor, I am extensively available and accessible in between lessons as a part of the $40 per hour rate, I go over on time to ensure students are set for success with what they're bringing to the next lesson, and I try to be a mentor that my students can genuinely talk to as a person. Additionally for a $50/hr rate, I help students write, compose, and produce their own music without asking for a split sheet and songwriting credits (unless you want to).
In addition, to accommodate how every person learns individually, I provide documents reiterating lesson notes, I provide visuals and diagrams for music theory, use screen capture applications to create digital assets for visualizing concepts for music production by demonstrating how to use a particular audio tool or software by creating something to go through all its possible use-cases, and I also provide first-person and third-person videos of the fretboard and piano to help students remember and execute articulations. I believe in the power of self-directed plasticity and cognitive restructuring to dismantle limiting beliefs and get out of your own way and chase a dream and horizon that has no possible finish line.
My students challenge me through advanced compositions and advanced harmony, so I typically have students create a playlist of songs they want to learn either through available sheet music mediums, or from scratch using my ears to get the music on paper. I have found from experience and my formal education that one of the fastest ways to tackle the craft and improve is through music that is a part of who you are, whether through deconstructing music theory, composition, production, and layering, as well as demonstrating all the tools and ways to achieve how the music was produced itself.
Again, as an instructor and mentor, I love to be challenged to adapt to students' needs, whether that is transcribing music, consolidated videos and documents of lesson content, finding other ways to communicate ideas, studying in my free time, or accommodating based on personal learning advantages and disadvantages.
Feel free to reach out to me on any social media if I can potentially help you with your music endeavors, with working through a desk-life or musically-related health adaptation, your desire to have music as a tool for soothing your nervous system, or having a medium to give yourself therapy and self-care through hard times.
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Frequently asked questions
What is your typical process for working with a new student?
When sending requests, please leave a short message with your personal goals!
First, I ask students to create playlists for how they intend to practice.
- If you plan to study composition and songwriting, make a playlist of songs that you think are impressive, and we can deconstruct them and remake them from scratch in Ableton.
- If you want to improve your songwriting, I can show you how to rewrite the same melodic idea in ten different ways through rhythm and orchestration/layering. (Rearrangement and Reharmonization)
- If you want to become better at improvising, create a playlist of songs that have space for your instrument.
- If you want to get better at ear training, create a playlist of songs that you can't find sheet music for and that you have to learn by ear.
- If you want to learn performance and technique for an instrument, create a playlist of songs you want to learn.
You apply these constraints to your practice-time in order to strategically improve how your brain is responding to your instrument and the musical situation at hand, to decrease diminishing returns and reduce plateaus in your progression.
Lessons involve either dissecting these songs and using the songs as context and application, so that the concepts of music theory and composition can actually be applied to the creative process in between lessons. In addition, I also aproach lessons by showing students how I would execute an idea if I were asked to produce it. Electronic music has taught me the art of resampling, destructive editing, and the art of revision and these mental models and approaches are necessary for compositional decision-making.
Any song that you like is probably the 20th revision of that song. Through revisions and subtle approximations, I also use lesson time for the creative process itself and how I approach writing on guitar, piano, or other instruments. My primary goal is to teach you enough theory and systems that you can tackle any instrument, or write music for any instrument.
Recommended Software & Resources:
Guitar Pro 6 or 7
Musescore (Pro subscription for piano if you plan to download and access many sheets per day)
Finale or Sibelius for XML files
Any device with PDF Accessibility
Production:
Ableton for Production Lessons
mrbillstunes Hardcore Abletoneer subscription
Splice
Ear Training
Musictheory.net (preferable and free)
EarMaster or Tinuto
Your Brain and Music That You Like
What education and/or training do you have that relates to your work?
Notable Education:
AIMM - Guitar Performance Certificate with Focus in Theory, Composition, Songwriting, and Improvisation
Private Lessons with:
Jason Richardson (All That Remains, Solo Project with Luke Holland, Born of Osiris, Chelsea Grin)
Joel Omans (Rings of Saturn, Animation Sequence)
Patrick Somoulay (Reflections)
Charles Cashwell (Berried Alive)
Jake Lowe (Plini)
Per Nilsson (Meshuggah, Scar Symmetry)
Nick Johnston
Jesse Cash (Erra)
Mr. Bill’s Ableton Website & Resources
Do you have a standard pricing system for your lessons? If so, please share the details here.
$30 an hour
$50 for two hours
$120 in advance for four weekly lessons
In person:
$40 an hour
$60
Students who pay in advance have benefit of consistent communication and extensive document access for accelerated progress and specific questions in between lessons.
How did you get started teaching?
I have always tutored for extra money throughout school, and I am always thinking about the music that I am trying to create. Through my journey teaching myself music production and composition, I have had to learn how to talk about the creative process and the inevitable depression and self-assessment that comes out of trying to create what you hear.
Seeing that my expereinces have genuinely helped my students with: progressing with technical ability; understanding music theory; writing more interesting guitar or piano parts; or songs as a whole; and mitigating tendinitis that comes with the dedication to the craft; has really motivated me to share the ideas and learning process I used to push myself in the right direction and find and influence my creative identity.
What types of students have you worked with?
I primarily work with students that are farther along with technical ability but do not know where to start with tackling music theory and composition. Teaching technique is routine and a lot of my students work with me to tackle progressive and percussive guitar, slap and thumping, and tap harmonics/harmonics.
As I am also used to teaching technique on more than one instrument, technique is also how notes are expressed on that instrument - through things such as grace notes, slides, bends, glissandos, etc.
Additionally, in order to mitigate tendinits in your practice, you have to constantly assess technique in order to maintain the neuromuscular mobility necessary to practice your instrument. I teach mobility-focused exercise as well from years of studying the neuromuscular system to prevent tendinitis in my own practice.
What advice would you give a student looking to hire a teacher in your area of expertise?
Find a teacher that will communicate and personalize lessons around how you learn and what your personal goals even are. A teacher or mentor should be able to adapt their teaching approach around your musical journey versus a curriculum with generalized metrics.
What questions should students think through before talking to teachers about their needs?
Do I want to create music? Do I hear things that I want to exist?
Do I want to learn how to play this instrument proficiently?
Do I desire to improve the music that I already make?
Do I want to learn how to make music with a computer?
Will I begin by learning intervals?
Am I open to learning music theory and composition to improve my ability to articulate, structure, and deliver my ideas?
Will I gradually struggle through 7th chords, thier inversions, and the permutational voicings of the chords to study harmony?
Am I open to listening to video game soundtracks and electronic music to understand where music and music technology are going?
Am I open to changing my inputs regarding how I practice?
Do I just want to learn how to play songs on this instrument, or do I want to use this instrument as a medium to make music?
How do I learn best? Visually, aurally, or by doing (procedurally)?
Do I learn faster by reading and taking notes, seeing diagrams and visuals, or do I have to be holding or touching the instrument?
If I already practice my instrument or create music, which parts of my brain am I engaging when I practice or try to write?