Jose Valdez
About
My name is Jose Valdez (people also call me Pepe) and I am a professional guitarist with tons of teaching experience as well as live performance experience. I love playing and teaching music and I love a lot of different music. I am a very easy going and relaxed person that really tries to enjoy life to the fullest. I love doing sports as well as eating food from all over the world as well as travelling and learning about different cultures.
Teaching Style
I try to teach students by style. Off course I cover all of the basics and theory in depth but I really want my students to be playing music from day one, not just reading or doing guitar gymnastics and theory. I focus on learning songs and learning how what we learn functions and works. I believe that listening is a big part of learning so we will learn how to use our ears to learn music and how to recognize different elements of music by ear. I teach my students with passion and I encourage them to dream big and to follow their dreams! I have taught a lot of private students and most recently I teach at a high school where I have over 90 students that do private lessons as well as guitar ensembles.
Curriculum
This will depend on student to student. Since we are working on learning popular music we will work with mostly individualized material as well as with material that is suitable for each student.
Credentials & Affiliations
I have been teaching for more than 10 years and I currently teach full time at a high school so I have limited amount of time for great students. I perform extensively doing around 150 shows a year playing different styles of music like rock, pop, jazz, funk, ccm, latin etc. I went to school for music at the prestigious University of North Texas where I got my Bachelors and Masters in Jazz Guitar Performance and learned from some of the greatest players in the world. At UNT I had the opportunity to perform in different festivals around the U.S as well as the chance to tour with ensembles that represented the university. I also won 3 DonwBeat student awards in my time there. As a performer I play with various artists and bands as a freelance musician and I also lead a couple of original groups of mine. I have performed all over the U.S as well as in Mexico, Perú and Brazil.