Jerry Ga

I started playing trombone at school in the 4th grade, and got a ukelele the next year; I moved to guitar in the seventh grade when my hands were big enough. I have taken a few lessons, but have been mostly self-taught. I have studied music theory and vocal arranging in high school and first year of college, and started playing in bands in 1972 (after high school). I have played professionally on stage and in the studio with folk, country, original,bluegrass, funk, rock, jazz and swing bands. I learned bass when the  bass player didn't show up for a studio gig (and have gotten the most gigs as a bass player). I started playing dobro, then pedal steel, single neck E9 for fifteen years 'till I went to Nashville and had a private week with Doug Jernigan, who launched me into swing and jazz on "the back neck.

I started doing carpentry/construction and stopped playing full time when my son was born thirty some years ago, but I taught lessons on banjo, mandolin, guitar & dobro, and played with a band on weekends. I had a wedding jazz band in Washington, D.C. for twenty years before my wife and I moved to Oregon.

I am married, with three teenage children, and have taught a few lessons, but am ready to start up again. I usually try to get people to start playing rhythm and chords right from the start, and I like them to learn their favorite music (if I can arrange it for their instrument). I teach with tablature and the Nashville number syste; I can write and read music, but have never sight-read very well, and do not try to teach classical written music.

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