Joshua Carlton began playing music when he was eight years old when he started piano lessons. He then taught himself clarinet, moved on to saxophone, and then various brass instruments during elementary school. In 8th grade he sold his saxophone to buy his first guitar, and has been playing ever since. Josh grew up playing electric and acoustic guitar at church and with rock bands, and then started playing bass guitar with those same groups. In more recent years he has played guitar onstage during several musicals, and he has played bass as part of the pit orchestra for multiple shows as well. In addition to guitar and bass, Josh has experience filling in on drums as needed for some groups and has been playing piano/keyboards since he first started those lessons as an eight-year-old. He was also in choir throughout middle and high school and was fortunate to get quite a bit of training and practice sight-reading music.
Josh is a licensed secondary teacher and has 15 years of combined experience as a substitute and full time classroom teacher, including 9 years teaching high school math. He has worked with students from many cultures and socioeconomic groups, and loves the opportunity to build meaningful connections and see them grow as people and in their knowledge and understanding of whatever it is they are studying. He also has multiple years of coaching experience, and sees many connections between coaching soccer/basketball and teaching.
In addition to all of this, Josh is passionate about theatre and has been in numerous shows as an actor and singer. He has done professional theatre in upstate New York, performed in a staged reading and the ancient Greek tragedy Hecuba in New York City, auditioned for Broadway shows, and been in numerous community theatre productions in Oregon.
Teaching music allows Josh to do more of what he would love to do in all his math classrooms: build his lessons around the passions and goals of his students. His background performing popular/rock music, musical theatre, church music, and serious band/choir pieces helps him have an appreciation for multiple genres and multiple approaches to music and music theory. While Josh does not force students to learn to read music, he does encourage it as part of learning how to approach music in multiple ways. He also thinks improvisational and listening skills are important for every genre, and encourages both in all his students. Having a variety of these fundamental skills is important for every student, but Josh focuses on teaching them in ways that are centered around each individual student and what they want to learn and/or accomplish.
Guitar, Bass, & beginning piano/percussion