Hey, I'm Bryan.
I believe it's never too late to become the guitar player you always wanted to be.
How it all started
I picked up the guitar when I was 14 years old after seeing an AC/DC concert. I was immediately hooked...
I knew right then that I wanted to be a musician, and I've never really looked back.
I started taking lessons and immersing myself in everything I could find about music. I played in bands almost immediately—sometimes just jamming into a garage with friends and playing Ramones songs and power chords. Those early experiences taught me something incredibly important: how to listen, keep time, play with other people, and adapt.
Over the years, I studied with many different teachers and eventually attended the Guitar Institute of Technology at Musicians Institute in Hollywood CA. I've had the opportunity to study with some incredible professors, including Chas Grasamke, Paul Hansen, Keith Wyatt, David Oaks, Tom Kolb, and Steve Travado.
Today, I'm still performing, still learning, and still teaching. I currently perform a residency at Ole Red on Broadway in Nashville, and I also tour internationally.
But as much as I love performing, teaching has always been a huge part of who I am.
but it wasn't always that way...
When I first started, it looked a little different.
As I learned guitar, I kept running into the same problem: I wanted to understand everything.
Some teachers focused almost entirely on reading music. Others taught songs but didn't explain why the music worked. Others focused heavily on drills and exercises that, honestly, weren't always very fun to play.
I wanted all of it.
I wanted to play the songs I loved. I wanted to understand theory. I wanted to know what was happening on the fretboard. I wanted to improvise, play different styles, read music, understand harmony, and actually know why things worked.
So I started teaching myself.
I spent my teenage years reading books, studying different styles of music, exploring music from different cultures, and asking my teachers question after question. I was fortunate to have a high-school music theory teacher who recognized how passionate I was. One day, after I explained a way I'd figured out to understand one of her lessons on modes, she looked at me and said, "That's great. You can teach that to the class tomorrow."
So I did.
That was one of my first real experiences teaching—and I loved it.
I eventually realized that the same two things kept pulling me in: performing and teaching.
but then everything changed...
And now my life looks a little like this.
I've spent decades performing professionally, touring nationally and internationally.
But somewhere along the way, I realized that all of those years of performing, studying, and teaching had given me something I could pass on.
I began building The Guitar Factory around a simple idea:
There shouldn't be gaps in the way people learn guitar.
That's where the Pillar System came from.
I wanted to create a structured path where chords, rhythm, scales, technique, theory, and real-world playing all connect. If you want to go deeper into something, it's there. If you need to understand why something works, it's there. And if you want to actually play music, that's there too.
Because learning guitar shouldn't feel like collecting random pieces of information.
It should all eventually come together and make sense. That's the kind of guitar player I want to help you become.
let's get you the same results →
Some fun facts about me...
- I love surfing. It's taken a back seat while I've been busy performing and touring, but I know I'll get back to the beach. There's something about riding a wave that feels a lot like playing music to me.
- I love traveling—and there's something pretty special about traveling to a new place because you're there to play music. New city, new faces, new room, new audience.
- I taught surfing for many years in Huntington Beach. I guess teaching people how to find their balance—whether on a wave or a guitar—has always been my thing.
- I can teach the same lesson I've taught a thousand times and still get excited when someone finally gets it.
Whether you're picking up a guitar for the first time or finally getting serious about the guitar you've had for years..
HERE'S HOW I CAN HELP:
