Teacher Profile: Noah Jacobsen

About Noah Jacobsen

Noah started learning how to play the guitar back in 2009 from his grandpa and uncle. They liked playing country songs in a hybrid finger picking style, so naturally this is what he learned and played on the guitar for years. It helped him get into composition and songwriting. Eventually, Noah got more into playing "psychedelic rock," which introduced him to playing improvised solos, using jazzier theoretical approaches, and composing for groups of people with varying instrumentation.

In 2019, Noah moved to Japan for about a half a year to go to school in Tokyo, where he began sitting in on a jazz jam session at a university. There he learned the etiquette of jazz jam sessions, a number of jazz standards, and an approach to self teaching that he still uses today in his own practice. In 2020, when he came back home, he started/joined a few bands, began playing gigs (in 2021), and recording songs.

Around the end of 2021, Noah began taking private lessons with Ian Hughes, a local Seattle guitarist and band leader of "Freudian Slurp." For over a year, Ian has helped Noah find his voice on the guitar as well as calling as a guitar teacher. Taking private lessons has been a liberating experience for Noah. He believes that although the resourcefulness one learns from self-teaching is important, guidance and mentorship is invaluable.

At around the same time as he started taking private lessons, Noah also began learning at "Jazz Night School," an alternative school in Columbia City. He's taken multiple combos to date, each of them with teachers whose wisdom and skill has been energizing towards a new level of playing. Those teachers include Larry Jones, Nelda Swiggett, Nathan Breedlove, and Ray Clemens. Each time Noah takes a combo with a new teacher, he adds something new and unexpected to his repertoire that helps him reach his yearly goals of becoming an "exponentially better" guitarist. Some of those things have been a sense of community, an ability to incorporate more color into his playing, and a wider range of mentors to appreciate and draw from. Currently, he actively gigs with his jazz-rock band called "Please Clap", and is recording an album with his other fusion band, "The Fully Realized."

Noah is excited to work with his students on reaching their personal goals as musicians, and to help guide them in discovering the possible ways that they can drive their musicianship forward. In lessons, he likes to incorporate lots of time playing music together, and granting students a sense of freedom and expression on their instrument.