About Jordan Watson

Hello! My name is Jordan and I have over 25 years of experience playing, composing, producing, recording, studying, and improvising music. With more than 15 years of experience teaching music and music technology to people of all ages, I offer personalized lessons that WILL help you grow as a musician in ways that WILL excite and motivate you! To find out more about me, please keep reading.

Ever since I can remember, music has brought enormous amounts of joy and curiosity to my life. I spent my younger years in the Pacific Northwest singing and learning the violin in school while also starting a few of my own rock bands shortly after I began to teach myself to play the guitar (with a few pointers along the way from friends and my Dad). By my senior year in high school I was playing in the Jazz Band, two school orchestras, and participated in an independent study class with my bandmates where we learned about the art of group improvisation. At this point, music had become so entangled with my life that I decided I had to pursue a career in music.

I earned a Bachelor’s degree in music composition from Western Washington University where I studied composition with Dr. Roger Briggs, Dr. Bruce Hamilton, and Dr. Lesley Sommer. During my time at Western, I immersed myself in the conventions of Western art music and discovered a new passion for electronic and electroacoustic musics. In addition to my compositional studies, I actively pursued many other facets of music, including three years of classical guitar instruction under David Feingold and two years of audio engineering courses.

After my undergraduate studies, I moved to Los Angeles. While in Los Angeles I spent two years as an intern at three Hollywood recording studios, formed a new band, and worked at an Apple Retail store teaching people how to use their Apple products. This is when I realized that I enjoyed the challenge of helping students achieve their goals with music and technology. Further combining my interests in music and technology, I earned a Master’s of Fine Arts degree in music through a program called Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology at the University of California, Irvine. There I studied with Kojiro Umezaki, Dr. Christopher Dobrian, Lukas Ligeti, Nicole Mitchell, and Dr. Michael Dessen. This program allowed me to hone my composition, performance, and improvisation skills, while also significantly advancing my knowledge of computer music, music programming, and other music technologies.

Ever since then, I have been working as a freelance teacher, musician, and audio engineer. I also spent a year and a half as an instructor at an Apple reseller and I developed an introductory online course in electronic music and technology that I have been teaching through Western Washington University since 2017. I moved to the Dallas area in August 2018, and I have thoroughly enjoyed working with the many Dallasites I’ve met in addition to the many other people located elsewhere via the internet!