PJR String School
Guitar & Ukulele Instructor
Offering private lessons in the comfort of your own home! Life is busy enough. Let me come to you.
(Virtual Lessons Available)
Contact me for a FREE 30-minute consultation.
Ages 7 and up.
Lessons vary for students under the age of 7.
About Me
My name is Preston Reeves and I have been playing guitar for over 15 years. I picked up ukulele in 2016, a couple years after my best friend and his father started building custom ukuleles. I fell in love with the uke and soon discovered it was an extremely versatile instrument. In 2018, I was encouraged by a fellow music educator to start teaching others. I quickly found that my passion for music went well beyond just learning, studying, listening and playing. Watching my students grow and develop into confident players has been more rewarding than anything I have learned myself.
Over the years, I have compiled all I have learned into a fun and encouraging system that will promote and nurture growth and a love for music. We all have musical ability, despite what we might tell ourselves. I'm here to prove that to you! For more information on my background, lessons, or advice in your musical journey, please contact me.
PJR String School Mission
My Goal
My end goal is for every student to find their own voice, learn to speak and understand music, and become self-sufficient players on their own. We are all lifetime students and the work will never be done, but I do believe we can all get to a place where we are confident enough to venture out on the learning paths that best suit our interests. I am a mentor and coach, helping you get to where you want to go, but I am also your peer, honing my skills right along with you.
​
I am a firm believer that there is no one "right" way to learn an instrument and that we should never limit ourself by learning from just one teacher or by one method. We live in one of the greatest times for learning an instrument. There is a wealth of knowledge at our fingertips at any given moment. This is a beautiful thing, but it can be quite overwhelming and potentially damaging to our progress without guidance. My desire is to instill productive habits through an effective and focused practice routine. We will learn how to sift through all the noise, which is the information overload, and master navigating through all the resources available to us.
My Approach
This is All About You
We learn the songs and styles YOU want to learn and I offer you a roadmap on how to get there. My approach comes from a place of passion, fun, patience and encouragement. We all have different reasons and motivations for picking up an instrument. These motivations drive our interests and students will have different goals and be striving to learn different genres and have unique repertoires. This is why I cater lessons to each students specific interests and learning style. I provide a comprehensive learning experience through a diverse set of modes that stimulates individual creativity and confidence.
Course Overview
No matter where you are in your musical journey, there is a course catered to you.
Beginner: The Fundamentals & Defining Goals
When beginning our musical journey, we must have a blueprint and foundation to build upon. This is where we declare our short-and long-term goals and build the foundation that shapes us into musicians. These courses are chocked full of songs, riffs, rhythms, melodies and fun along the way. The beginner courses are broken up into sections, with a series of bite-sized lessons within them. It is best to learn in small portions, learn them well and apply them to our instruments. We will also receive an introduction to ear training and PRACTICAL music theory. All of these lessons are continuously evolving and catered to nurture the students strengths and encourage students to push out of their comfort zone.
Intermediate: Advancing Techniques & Skills
So the foundation is laid and we are ready to begin building on what we already know. Much like the beginner courses, the intermediate courses are a foundation that are broken into sections with a series of bite-sized lessons within them. We will take a deeper dive into ear training, music theory and how our fretboard is laid out; more complex rhythms, chords and picking techniques, learn scales so we can play and make up solos in any key, and much more!
Ukulele Lessons
Much like the guitar courses, in this ukulele course we will form a foundation and build upon it as our skills develop. This course will cover ukulele basics as well as intermediate level techniques and songs. To start we will learn about strumming basics and common chords. We will also learn about dynamics, accented strums, chord drills, essential left and right hand techniques and how to get the best tone out of our instrument.
​
As we progress, we will learn some fingerstyle ukulele, scales, position soloing, and more advanced techniques used by the likes of Jake Shimabukuro, Aldrine Guerrero, Taimane Gardner, Roy Smeck, James Hill and others! Whether you're interested in learning how to strum the Hawaiian-style, play current pop songs, or just increase your knowledge and techniques on the ukulele, this course will have something for you!
