ZACH PYKE
About
Hi there! I've been performing on bass and other instruments around the U.S. and internationally for the last 15 years. Originally from Catalina Island, I spent years working at sea as a cruise ship music director and touring with national acts like Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox and The B Side Players, and have backed up a number of performers from Broadway and T.V. including: ,Cyndi Lauper, Titus Burgess, Cheyenne Jackson, Ariana Debose, Vincent Rodriguez III, Carlie Craig, Andy Bell, and James Byous to name a few! When I'm home from tours, I love teaching and sharing my love of music to anyone who wants to start learning!
Teaching Style
I prefer to take a practical, pragmatic approach to my teaching style! I like to discuss what your situation and immediate goals are: are you looking to start playing an instrument as a hobby? Are you someone who wants to study music in school in hopes of playing professionally someday? Are you just wanting to start a punk band with your friends in your garage??.. Depending on the answers I'll cater my lessons to most efficiently get you to where you want to be, and match the difficulty level and intensity of practice assignments with your level of commitment and strive to keep things fun!
Curriculum
For Electric Bass, I use a mix of Hal Leonards Beginner books and my own exercises I've created, along with supplemental tabs for quickly learning tunes if folks don't want to learn to read or want all the theory stuff. For Double Bass I teach a mixed method of Simandl and Rabbath fingering Methods.
For Piano I work mostly from the Alfred Books, and for Jazz Studies use a mix of Mark Levine's "Jazz Piano Book" and do work and Jazz theory training using standards from the Real Books.
Guitar we work of off chord charts and learning scales and licks from a number of different resources I'll be provding.