Teacher of composition and music theory, happy to help with any musical project, portfolio, exam preparation or other conundrum

I have a BMus degree in Composition from the Royal Academy of Music and have been tutoring on and off for the past twenty years. I particularly enjoy teaching composition, music theory and generally helping out with music-related problems. I'm happy to teach online or at my home studio.

I work full-time as a software developer on music notation software, so I have a lot of experience in breaking down musical concepts into a series of clear, defined steps that even a soulless computer without a musical transistor in its body can understand. This is reflected in the way I teach. For example, I don’t really see the point in teaching the notes of a D major scale so they can be recalled parrot-fashion (besides which, this should happen naturally in time, plus this is the kind of information a student could find on their own without the need for a teacher), but rather the method you can use to work out the notes of *any* major scale. Students tend to grimace at the thought of questions regarding a C sharp major or an A flat minor scale, but my aim is ultimately to get rid of that fear: seven sharps or flats should be just as simple as no sharps or flats!

I feel it’s very important to explain not only what something is, but *why* it is what it is. This gives students a deeper understanding and appreciation of concepts that can otherwise appear quite abstract. I try to make things as practical as possible too. Simply going page-by-page through a stuffy music theory book can be quite monotonous and draining for a lot of students (unless you’re strange like me and enjoy that kind of thing), so I always try to come up with more fun, practical tasks that can help students to envisage how the topic they’re learning can and will be put to use in the real world in their capacity as a musician.

Professionally, I’ve done quite a lot of work as an orchestrator, composer of additional music and copyist on various film scores. I’ve also done a lot of transcription work, written for a number of music production libraries and taught music technology and piano both privately and at a number of schools.

Here's an example of the results of a writing-to-picture course I organised locally in 2018. Seven students attended the three-day course and did a fantastic job of scoring this lovely animation: