About Ryan Waggoner
Ryan, very simply, loves to play and enjoys helping other people love it. Ryan's main musical love is the bass guitar, followed closely by 6 string acoustic and electric, and he also sings from time to time.
Ryan has been playing bass guitar and guitar for over 20 years. Pretty closely following that, he began taking private bass guitar lessons, and kept with that for about 3 years, obtaining for himself a reasonable knowledge base of technique, music theory and styles. He's been in gigging bands for the last 20 years or so, and still plays out several times per month with a handful of different groups locally, and sometimes out of state. Besides learning to play, lessons with Ryan will also carry insight into the specifics and tricks of live performance for the student who aspires to form a band with his/her buddies.
In the last few years, Ryan has started focusing a lot more on 6 string guitar, acoustic and electric, and building his skills beyond the kind of basic strumming and singing that colored his guitar playing for many years. Through the years, Ryan has developed a sense of good ways to learn techniques and explain concepts through experience with other musicians. Being a new student can be intimidating, and it can be frustrating. Ryan's belief is in building lessons which are at least partially based on the music interests the student has naturally, and reverse engineer the concepts from there. He feels that this improves engagement with the learning process and prevents burnout. Drilling the tough stuff is important, but getting a new student to where they can play something simple and recognizable can create the enjoyment to power through the rest. Ryan believes that when a student is learning effectively, he will likely also learn from them as well.
Outside of the music considerations, Ryan is an effective listener, a clear communicator and is very comfortable with kids and adults of all ages and backgrounds. He looks forward to helping students develop the love for this that he enjoys.
