Lessons
Private guitar and bass lessons — online over Zoom on a three-camera studio rig, or in person in San Diego. Fretboard mastery through Dead Sea Scales™.
Working a part through in the studio. Fourteen years of this.
Scroll"Don't forget to have fun! That being said, the road to 'fun' does take hard work." — the Book of Dean, 33 rules for music and life.
Lessons run on the Dead Sea Scales™ system — the same material online and in person. Four parts, and you keep all of it between lessons.
Dead Sea Scales™: The 5 Missing Notes is the foundation of everything I teach — the whole fretboard as one connected, color-coded system. 400+ original diagrams. Five more volumes in the works.
Four wall charts — the decoder, the 35 modes, the Else World inversions, and the octave frequency map. They go up where you practice, so the map is in front of you on the days we don't meet. Free to download and print.
Just Play and Decoder+, on deadseascales.com. The fretboard on a screen when you want to check yourself away from the books.
Two per key — one fast, one slow. Twenty-four in all. We run them in lessons so you hear what every note actually does against a fixed root instead of reading it off a page. Going up on YouTube shortly.
Backstage on the Nita Strauss tour. Photo: Ana Massard.
I was the go-to Rock 101 beginner instructor across seven School of Rock locations in New Jersey and California — the program where a school either keeps a student for years or loses them in a month. On my own roster I taught 25 weekly students and kept them: five studied with me for roughly a decade, ten more for five years or longer. One went on to Berklee College of Music after three years of lessons and plays professionally today — better than I do, which is the point.
Online lessons run on a three-camera studio I built — you see the fretting hand, the picking hand, and the whole picture at once, in 1080p. In-person lessons happen in San Diego. Either way you learn on the Dead Sea Scales™ system: scales, modes, and chords as one connected map instead of shapes you memorize and forget, plus technique, tone, and how this works as a job.
If your instrument needs work, I handle it during the lesson. Setups, intonation, and repairs are included, so you don't need a separate trip to a shop.
“Dean is the best guitar teacher any kid or family could wish for. He is knowledgable, patient and kind. He comes prepared with an enormous repertoire of guitar playing skills and takes cues from the student. He wants the student to find his inner musical self and he accomplishes this by having the young person find songs he/she loves and teaches them to make these songs their own.”
“You may think that you are just getting a guitar expert teacher — and you are — but what you don't know is that you are also getting a personal life coach and guide for your child. Whether you like it or not, Dean will impart his Dean Wisdom of doing good and being grateful in your child's sessions, and he will continue to share amazing life lessons of doing the right thing and being good to those around you.”
“If you are lucky enough for your child to have Dean as a guitar teacher, your child will have enormous guitar success and show great improvement in all areas of musical talent and growth. Dean is AMAZING — his guitar playing is above all superb, and the care that he offers your child will be a gift that lasts a lifetime.”
More student and parent reviews are on the Dead Sea Scales site.
