Bob Bushnell
About
I have been teaching music for over 60 years and studying it even longer. Over that time, I developed a way of teaching that makes music far clearer, more practical, and much easier to understand than traditional rule-heavy methods.
I teach students how music actually works — how to create it, understand it, and play it — from the very beginning. Instead of drowning students in endless rules, exceptions, and scale memorization, I show them the underlying structure that makes melody, harmony, rhythm, improvisation, and composition make sense.
In order to understand music deeply, I believed I had to understand how it applies to all instruments, not just one or two. If musical principles are true, they should work everywhere. That led me to learn to play and even repair all band and orchestra instruments and as many world/folk instruments as I could find.
My students do not just learn songs. They learn how to recreate music, create their own music, improvise, arrange, and understand what they are doing.
Music study has also been linked to broad brain engagement and lifelong cognitive benefits, which is one reason it can be so valuable for both young and older students.
If you want to do more than copy notes and memorize patterns — if you want to truly understand music — I can help you get there.