Lessons & Services
🎹 Piano • 🎸 Guitar & Ukulele • 𝄢 Bass • 🎤 Voice • 🎼 Composition • 🎧 Recording • ♟ Chess Coaching
For rates and policies, please see the FAQ page
Piano & Keyboards
“He picked songs that really resonated with my kids and made them want to practice and learn. They were so excited, they’d play songs for their friends and ask them to sing along.” —Doug I.
“Für Elise” and “Clair de Lune;” “Round Midnight” and “Rocket Man;” “Imagine” and “Someone You Loved.” The piano has driven some of the world’s most recognizable & beloved compositions for three centuries, and is more popular than ever in the digital age! Its use knows no stylistic boundaries: whether you want to pursue a career in classical concert halls, shred 80’s synth lines, or create your own hooks and beats in a DAW, confidence and comfortability at the keyboard will take you there.
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PVM’s approach to beginning piano emphasizes simple shapes and patterns. The key words are recognizable and replicable—students often find they’ve already internalized many of these sounds & shapes, just from day-to-day listening. With these fundamentals under our fingers, we combine the basic elements into structures of increasing complexity, using songs as reference and inspiration. It’s all about building blocks: in language, chemistry, Legos®, and music. Big things come from little things.
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For students with substantial prior experience on piano, the initial focus will be on shoring up any gaps in technique, aural skills, and conceptual understanding. From playing and studying with musicians of many backgrounds—classical, jazz, rock, formally trained and self-taught alike—I believe developing understanding in multiple ways of reading, writing, and thinking about music is vital to deepening how one hears, internalizes and plays music.
We will always build from the student’s existing skillset—previous learning is valuable, whether it took place two years ago or twenty. As always, the music you love will provide the foundation for our study.
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With solid technique, proficient aural skills, and reading capability in both staff and charts, topics for advanced students are driven by their repertoire & stylistic focus. Frequent subjects include improv, comping, and the nuances of different keyboard instruments and performance settings (piano vs. organ vs. synth, solo vs. accompanying vs. band, etc.)
The Curriculum
Click for a live example!
Guitars & Ukulele
“As a self-taught adult player, I wasn't sure where lessons would lead me. Hunter provided me with great work plans...I really do remember the light switch clicked on.” —Carmen M.
Whether you’re a parent to a young rockstar looking to hone their talent, or an adult player wishing to expand your comfort zone of chords and scale patterns, our studio has the gear and knowledge to help aspiring guitarists achieve their goals!
If portability is a factor, or you’re seeking lessons for a very young student (~6 and under), consider giving ukulele a try: it’s light, inexpensive, and friendly to growing fingers.
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Beginning guitar is all about hand synchronization. Because they require coordinating minuscule adjustments in both hands at once, fretted string instruments can have a steep initial learning curve. Peak Valley Music’s beginning guitar curriculum employs songs and exercises that emphasize alternating hands while always keeping both involved, allowing the student to focus their conscious attention on one at a time. This helps to quickly develop the synchronous muscle memory needed for the next level.
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An intermediate guitarist’s rite of passage is discovering that a fretboard is just a long, narrow piece of graph paper: graph paper upon which we can trace the shapes & patterns that molded 20th-century music. And once we’ve traced them in one spot, we’ll move, rotate, and fragment them all across the instrument. Intermediate guitar is where my one-word definition of music—”patterns”—comes most vividly to life.
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With solid technique and reading proficiency in staff, tab, and charts, topics for advanced guitar students are driven by their repertoire & stylistic focus. Frequent subjects include improv, guitar tech and tone sculpting (for electric guitarists), and the nuances of different performance settings (e.g. singer-songwriter vs. jazz combo vs. rock band).
The Curriculum
Electric Bass
“Hunter was excellent at building upon my prior musical knowledge and demystifying a lot of music theory…I highly recommend him to anyone looking to learn more about music!” —Fernando R.
From rock n’ roll legends (Geddy Lee, John Paul Jones) to educators and innovators (Larry Graham, Carol Kaye) to genre-bending modern virtuosos (Charles Berthoud, Thundercat), the electric bass has a proud history and a bright future. Bass holds everything together, both rhythmically and harmonically, and studying it yields a profound understanding of how music moves. Not for nothing is the bassist often called ‘the heartbeat of the band.’
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I like to begin bass with the two most popular song forms of the 20th and 21st centuries: the Axis progressions & its variations, and the 12-bar blues. The innumerable songs written with these forms will help train your eyes and ears to anticipate the next chord(s) with astonishing accuracy—even in totally unfamiliar tunes! (It’s no exaggeration to say that nearly every Western pop song of the 21st century can trace its artistic lineage back to the blues.)
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The keyword for intermediate bass is ‘arpeggiation.’ Bass is generally not played as a chording instrument (multiple notes at once) because of its low register, but understanding harmonic structure is vital to complementing a chording instrument (ex. piano, guitar, or string/horn section). Exploring the rhythmic patterns of various styles will help develop musical sensibility: when to play and when to lay out; when to keep things simple and when to let your prowess shine.
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With solid technique and reading proficiency in staff, tab, and charts, topics for advanced bass students are driven by their repertoire & stylistic focus. Frequent subjects include extended harmony, slapping & tapping, and the nuances of different performance settings (e.g. jazz combo vs. rock band vs. orchestra).
The Curriculum
Voice & Performance
“My two kids loved their lessons with Hunter! He really makes an effort to understand what they are interested in and shapes the lessons around that.” —Jamie E.
The innate instrument: unique to you. Peak Valley Music takes a balanced 3-pronged approach to learning voice: performance (emotional), musicianship (mental), and technique (physical). More so than any other instrument, voice study will be guided by a student’s intended style and performance setting: singing in a choir requires different technical skills than a singer-songwriter with a microphone, and an evocative performance will evolve differently when playing a character with scripted lines vs. engaging an audience as oneself.
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How to match pitch quickly? How to sing high without cracking? How to sing low without growling? What to do with my hands? All these questions and more will be addressed in beginning voice. Be prepared to move around: singing is a full-body activity!
Vocal health is always of foremost importance, so we will work carefully around the edges of one’s range, learning how to avoid injury & minimize fatigue.
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We begin exploring the voice in detail: navigating changes in register, how to breathe for full support, and the ways each part of the vocal apparatus (tongue, teeth, sinuses, lips, facial muscles, etc.) work together to shape the overall tone. Intermediate voice students will also undertake more comprehensive ear training & theory study than in the beginning; in any performance setting, vocalists must be able to speak musically with instrumentalists.
Intermediate voice students will also develop their stage presence and performance acuity: acting (whether playing a character or not), methods for preparing a script & score, and how to manage stage nerves.
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With solid vocal technique, proficient aural & music reading skills, and confidence performing in their chosen genres & settings, topics for advanced students are driven by their repertoire & stylistic focus. Frequent subjects include vocal arranging, basic conducting, and idiomatic techniques (e.g. scat singing, beatboxing, etc.)
The Curriculum
Composition & Songwriting
“Hunter not only quickly found the pace she needed to learn the basics, but he focused on the aspects that made her want to come back every week…her confidence and enthusiasm resonate, and we are so grateful for his guidance and commitment to her.” —Brad B.
Although most of my professional career has been in music education, performance, and technology, my formal studies were in classical composition. Whether you’re a young composer seeking guidance on your first pieces, an older composer wanting to transition from paper to engraving software, or a budding songwriter looking for professional edits, Peak Valley Music is here to help.
Composition Clip: “La Luna Salvaje”
Songwriting Sample: “Grains Through the Glass”
Stylistic Specialties: neoclassical, folk, pop/rock, jazz, metal
Recommended Read: This is Your Brain on Music
Recommended Watch: Mr. Holland’s Opus
Recording & Music Technology
“His use of technology makes things like scheduling lessons and accessing materials easy. He's really positive and makes things fun too! Excellent overall!” —Adam D.
In addition to lessons, Peak Valley Music offers recording and basic mixing services. If you have a project with requirements beyond the Voice Memos app, but aren’t looking to spend $500+ per day for studio time, PVM offers high-quality sound at an affordable rate. I can serve solely as engineer or, if desired, help you shape the songs as we record. With an extensive library of samples and VST’s to find exactly the sounds you want, and professional-grade equipment at side-by-side studio desks, you’re involved every step of the way.
All recording projects include a free consultation. Thereafter, sessions can be booked in 2 and 4-hour blocks. Check out our student showcases for an idea of the sounds we can create!
If you are an experienced musician looking to augment your practice routine through music technology, you’ve come to the right place. Technical fluency can form a positive feedback loop with musical, and a lot of the most useful software is free!
Chess Coaching
“…as a student, you get access to [weekly] videos relevant to what you’re currently learning to help guide your home practice - highly recommend!” —Manuel C.
Music and chess share many terms & concepts (variations, lines, transposition, and tempo), and studying them develops similar skills (pattern recognition, foresight, time management, and improvisation). I played in tournaments throughout my youth, and during my year as a classroom music teacher founded a popular K-8 chess club. Currently, I serve on the advisory board of Washington’s Chess Enrichment Association and play regularly at local events and on chess.com.
Chess coaching is open to all ages and includes a free consultation, with weekly personalized study plans thereafter.
The Curriculum
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How do the pieces move? What are pins, forks, skewers, discoveries, and more? How do I counter common early attacks?
We will begin to explore the beauty of this timeless game through a mix of drills, diagrams, and live play.
(for coaching purposes, I define ‘beginning’ as a chess.com blitz rating of <700)
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What opening lines should I focus on? How do I evaluate trades during the middlegame? And how do I determine whether an endgame is winning? Students with a solid grasp of chess’ basic tenets and patterns will begin to develop a repertoire to suit their unique style of play.
(for coaching purposes, I define ‘intermediate’ as a chess.com blitz rating of 700-1100)
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General wisdom holds that for best results, a chess coach should be at least 400 ELO points higher-rated than their students. While I am a very strong player within the general chess-playing populace, I have not developed an advanced curriculum and do not consider my skills comprehensive enough to serve as a coach for players rated above ~1250. There will likely still be value for those on the border of intermediate/advanced (1100—1200), but serious players looking for intensive study should seek a full-time professional chess coach.