Fiddle & Violin Lessons

I am taking his lessons online and what a wonderful thing this is. I am an adult and reclaiming my first love, the violin, that was taken from me as a child. I wanted a way to just start playing now and after finding his YouTube channel it’s been a JOY. THANK YOU

Great teacher! Patient, organized, updates lesson plans and your practice lessons — in real time. You can access your learned songs via notes, audio and even self learning through his YouTube channel: Fiddlehed. I’ve never met an artist/​musician that puts so much thought into a students learning and makes it accessible for students to sign in to their page to see their progress.
The lessons are on-​time and parking is available which helps in SF! It’s a very relaxed setting. I went from having violin /​fiddle lessons on my aspiration list to playing over 20 songs. I’ve been going for a year and look forward to starting up with the group lessons to learn to play with others to change the perspective.
Even better that Jason is a proven and professional musician in a gypsy rock band. I’m impressed!

Jason has been teaching my son, now 10, for close to two years. Jason has made the experience consistently positive. He is so even-​keeled, positive, and encouraging. He has a great way of balancing his passion for the music with his enjoyment of the lesson and the interaction with the student, so the music is weaved in to the experience. He is a practicing, performing artist, so he knows and models hard work, but he can attune his demands to the readiness of the student. We are lucky to have him as a teacher for my son!

I took fiddle lessons with Jason for over a year before I had to stop because we moved away. It was heartbreaking to lose such a dedicated, fun, and laid back teacher and I will really, really miss working with Jason on a weekly basis.
I should preface the rest of this by saying that as a childhood trained (basic) pianist, vocalist, and terrible guitar player, I was pretty nervous to begin instrument instruction as a grown adult with a full-​time job, but I am so, so glad that I did. It has been incredibly rewarding, has re-​opened a whole piece of my life that I let fall by the wayside, and has made me happier and more well-​rounded overall. If you’re thinking about going back and learning an instrument as an adult, do it! And sign up with Jason because he makes the experience wonderful.
As a teacher Jason goes above and beyond the basic requirements. He understands that life obligations sometimes get in the way of one’s passion for music, and he is upbeat, encouraging, never disappointed with you and makes learning and exploring the instrument fun.
Even better, he gets sincerely excited when he sees you progress and improve, and he has an endless enthusiasm for taking you music recommendations, creating lesson resources for you, and ensuring you’re learning music you feel a connection to. He is open to helping you explore genres, and has a particular love for untraditional approaches to traditional music, so it’s just a lot of fun to work with him.
In his spare time he has created a really phenomenal website resource for all of his students with notes on their individual lessons, links to mp3s of the songs you’re learning, and so many other invaluable resources for instruction and to help when you’re practicing at home. I don’t know any other teacher who does this– it is completely critical and was a lifesaver to me!
Aside from all this, Jason is an immensely talented musician, playing with a great band, so you get to hear about his latest gigs and go to see his shows and be a part of the community he creates.
I’m going to close this very long review by saying that Jason became not only a teacher but a friend to me, and in addition to the world-​class teaching I received from him, I will miss his friendship and our weekly chats as part of the lesson.
Do not miss out on your opportunity to hire Jason as your teacher– you will never look back, and he will change your life!

My daughter has been working with Jason for almost a year now and we’re both very pleased. She has improved so much and is hooked on the fiddle! She enjoys how Jason teaches, and the wiki pages with recordings have been most helpful.
Jason is a very prepared and thoughtful teacher. Communication is easy as is scheduling lessons. We couldn’t be more pleased. Highly recommend!

I have been attending fiddle lessons with Jason for a year now and started as an absolute beginner.
If you want to learn to play or are unsure if the fiddle/​violin is for you this is a great place to start. The lessons are normally for an hour and generally breakdown into three sections. They begin with warm-​up exercises, move on to review of tunes and then learning a new tune when relevant. Jason teaches by ear and it is a total buzz when you walk into a lesson, hear a tune you haven’t heard before and walk out able to play it and all by just listening. It’s brill and if you feel this could be scary don’t stress, he breaks it down step by step. It is a lot easier than it sounds.
The lessons are in a relaxed environment and can appear to be quite casual but are in fact totally planned. This becomes obvious as the weeks progress when it is clear that the new exercises/​tunes are all the time building to the next step.
After the lesson you have access to his wiki page with recordings of the tunes you are learning and at different tempos for beginners, intermediate, advanced etc.
The lessons are fun and friendly and I highly recommend him as a teacher.

Jason won’t just teach you how to play the fiddle; he’ll instill a joy and passion for the instrument into you. On our first lesson, while I awkwardly bowed a single note, he picked up his own fiddle and played something marvelous in accompaniment. Therefore, from the very beginning I felt like I was «making music,» not just learning scales and drills, and I was hooked!
This is the secret to Jason’s teaching method — to get you playing as quickly as possible so that you will love it and practice your heart out just to get more of it. He’s patient and encouraging and teaches by ear rather than reading music, which makes me feel like I’m making my brain smarter in an altogether new way, too.
Jason’s more than just a fiddle teacher — he’s a spirited and talented musician in his own right, and is active in the SF music scene. If you have any doubts about the kind of fiddle player he’s training you to be, go see him perform live. He’ll blow you away!

Not to be too redundant, but everything everyone has said is true. I’ve played a few instruments and taken lessons from a bunch of different people, and Jason really gets how to teach. He has a plan and the tools to back it up, but he really just meets you where you are at. For me, he knows when to slow me down and keep me sticking to the fundamentals. But I’m sure he’d just as quickly speed me up if he knew that’s what I needed.
A+ teaching all the way through. If you are interested in fiddle, he’s your guy,

I’m an experienced musician (multi-​instrumentalist over 20 years) but a year ago I decided to dust off the fiddle in my closet and learn how to play. How hard could it be? Ha.
My first month was a trial for everybody in the house — I sounded terrible! So I started taking lessons around town in order to rectify the earbleed situation.
Pretty soon I discovered Jason, who finally put me on the right track in terms of posture, violin hold, how to bow, etc., and immediately I was producing a much better tone with better bow control and better intonation. After a few months I sounded many, many times better, and I’ve been improving steadily since then.
Also, Jason has a lesson plan, a series of books that he’s working on, that are interesting and carefully put together. It is really important to have a thoughtful, engaged teacher, and Jason is definitely that. I learned a great deal from him in a very short period of time.
Plus he’s a super-​nice guy.
I had to stop taking lessons in the spring owing to my financial situation, but I’m probably going to take lessons from him again now that I have had a job for a while and my savings doesn’t look quite so decimated anymore!

If you want to learn to play music from the git-​go, and you want to look forward to your lesson each week because it JUST SO FUN, it’s Jason you should sign up with. Lessons are more of a jam session — even for beginners. Jason is an excellent musician but hasn’t forgotten what it’s like to learn an instrument, so he’s patient, upbeat and looks for ways to make his students feel like they’ve made great leaps in playing each week. No dirty looks or knuckle-​rapping if you don’t quite get it or haven’t had a chance to practice enough.
His teaching style is kind of informal and relaxed, but you’ll find yourself mastering songs and new techniques one after the other.
Top notch! Five stars! And if Unilocal had any little bees knees up there, I’d click those too!