R. Aaron Walters
Studied at Belmont University
Works at Self-Employed
Bring me whatever you're working on and we'll dig in together: Logic Pro and production, mixing and audio engineering, composition and theory, songwriting and lyrics, arranging and orchestration, drums and percussion, improvisation, or ensemble leadership. Most people come to me able to feel that something isn't landing but not able to name it—that's the part I'm best at. My schedule shifts with performing and production work, but Leland clients come first and resolving any conflict is my job.
Questions? Start chatting with this coach before you get started.
About R. Aaron
I am a composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist based in Ithaca, New York, and I am distinctly passionate about music from nearly every angle I have been able to approach it. I came up as a percussionist, studied composition & percussion performance at Ithaca College, and went on to Belmont University for a master's in commercial music composition & arranging. I spent close to a decade in Nashville before moving back to Ithaca, where I now live with my wife and our dog. I have written a percussion concerto that has been programmed by a professional symphony in Brazil, and a two-minute cue for a national Intuit QuickBooks campaign that had to hold a single identity across dozens of variations. I produce & mix records across jazz, indie rock, americana, neo-soul, & contemporary classical; producing is my happy place, and to me the artist/producer relationship is sacred. I have played drums seven nights a week in a summer stock pit; toured twenty-five cities as a drummer, keyboardist, & music director; conducted premieres for other composers; improvised live for university ballet & modern technique classes; and I served as Operations Director for a professional contemporary chamber ensemble. My curiosity has never confined itself to music. I am an experienced cook and a genuinely obsessive one. I hold a black belt. I run a long-form tabletop campaign and have built out an absurdly detailed world to set it in, I have written a novella, and I am currently working on a book about practicing creativity. I have never thought of any of it as separate. The precision of studio recording; the intricacy of writing for picture; the architecture of rehearsing; the chemistry of a live room; the patience of cooking; the long unfolding of a story—each has taught me something the others could not.
Why do I coach?
I coach because learning has never felt to me like a means to an end—it is a way of life. We begin learning the moment we are born, and I have never stopped finding joy in it: in cooking, in the intricacies of art, in diving into unfamiliar territory, in the endless work of making music. I try to embrace both the role of student and the role of teacher at all times, because I think those two are far more interconnected than we usually admit. The practical reason is this. Many musicians can sense when something in their work is not landing but do not yet have the vocabulary to say what it is. Even skilled engineers can identify a melodic, harmonic, or rhythmic flaw without necessarily being able to articulate the problem or the solution—and that is not always their job. I have made it my priority to be the specialist who can, and to do it clearly and supportively. Those precise musical elements that get overlooked are exactly where I like to work. The reason I keep doing it, though, is less technical. Creating and understanding music is a journey of exploration, experimentation, and expression, and what I want most is to build an emotional space where a student feels safe enough to actually experiment. My critiques stay fairly general on purpose; the goal is never for someone to sound like me, it is for their own perspective to come through more clearly. I want the people I work with to discover their own voice and to leave with the skills to bring their ideas to life. And, selfishly, teaching gives me constant opportunities to learn from the people I work with. I am always eager for their feedback and their ideas. The common thread in everything I do—performing, producing, composing, teaching—is wanting to enable the people around me, art-makers and art-experiencers alike, to feel something. Coaching is the most direct way I know to do that.
Work Experience
Composer
QuickBooks
May 2025 - May 2025
Composed the sonic identity for Intuit QuickBooks & Mailchimp's national Small Business Hero Program: a two-minute work delivered with dozens of variations, built to underscore every winner-announcement video and supporting PR asset across the campaign. The brief was cohesion—one emotional through-line that had to survive dozens of edits, run times, and tonal registers without ever sounding like the same cue twice. That meant writing music with enough internal flexibility to be cut, stretched, stripped, and rebuilt while still reading as a single identity. Created for the program's inaugural year, as Intuit expanded its annual Hero Day into a year-round national initiative.
Private Logic Pro, Audio Engineering, Production and Composition Teacher/Mentor ·
Self-Employed
June 2020 - Present
Over twenty multi-year students in Logic Pro, production, mixing, audio engineering, composition, music theory, songwriting & lyrics, arranging, ensemble leadership, and rehearsal direction. I teach from a 250-entry relational curriculum database that breaks the discipline into discrete topics and subtopics mapped to each student's progress—so I can diagnose the specific gap rather than guess at it, and sequence what comes next deliberately. Lessons are built on the student's own material, not exercises. Beyond technique, the throughline is decision-making: knowing which of a hundred possible moves actually serves the music, and being able to commit and finish. Also delivered Elevate Your Musicianship with Logic Pro X, a four-week group masterclass series for the Nashville Jazz Workshop.
Producer | Audio Engineer
Self-Employed
August 2015 - Present
Produce, record, edit, mix, and master records for independent artists and ensembles across jazz, indie and synth rock, americana, neo-soul, contemporary classical, and dance accompaniment. Working command of signal flow, sound design, MIDI programming, and corrective editing—tuning, timing, and performance repair. Engineered and produced a live two-record session for the Bachian Swing Consort pairing free improvisation with three Bach organ trio sonatas. Mentored two Belmont University graduate students fulfilling apprenticeship requirements, evaluating their production work and delivering structured technical critique. Because I'm also a composer, I hear arrangement and structural problems that no amount of processing will fix—and can say precisely what to change.
Musician for Contemporary Dance
Self-Employed
January 2015 - Present
Over a decade playing live for dance — percussion, keyboard, and live-looping across eight levels of ballet and modern technique at Middle Tennessee State University, Vanderbilt, SUNY Brockport, and Belmont, including a stint as staff accompanist for modern and ballet at MTSU. I also researched and designed a specialized music curriculum for dance majors, bridging music theory and movement pedagogy, and have led masterclasses at four institutions and three national conferences. Playing for dance is its own discipline: improvising in real time against phrase lengths you read off bodies rather than a chart, holding tempo through counts that change mid-combination, and shaping dynamics to serve attack, suspension, and release rather than a song form. It has sharpened my sense of pulse and structural pacing more than any other work I've done, and it feeds directly back into how I compose and produce.
Composer
Self-Employed
May 2010 - Present
Concert and commercial work performed in the U.S., France, Spain, Germany, Taiwan, Latvia, and China. My percussion concerto Dichotomous Figures was performed by the winner of Ithaca College's 110th Annual Concerto Competition with the IC Symphony Orchestra, and has been programmed by the Orquestra Sinfônica de Porto Alegre in Brazil for its South American premiere. Catalog spans solo, chamber, and large ensemble—solo piano, unaccompanied horn and bass, marimba duo, percussion ensemble with cello, piano quartet, a cappella choir. Film scoring, podcast themes, and over a decade of commissioned dance work including a 45-minute score for the Phantom Bodies exhibit at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts. Member composer, Nashville Composer Collective.
Multi-Instrumentalist
Self-Employed
August 2001 - Present
Drums — 20 years Piano — 25 years Guitar — 20 years Bass — 20 years Vocals — 10 years Orchestral, mallet, chamber, and world percussion; drum set across jazz, pop, rock, folk, funk, soul, and R&B; acoustic and electric piano, organ, and synth/MIDI; guitar, electric bass, and voice in both studio and live settings. Percussion and drum set for a professional contemporary chamber ensemble, where I also conduct; drums, keys, and vocals for a touring synth-rock act across a twenty-five city U.S. run, while serving as its music director and tour manager; over thirty-five musical theater pit productions, including a summer as house drummer at seven shows a week for ten weeks; principal percussion in a collegiate wind ensemble; plus orchestral and Nashville session work. Playing this many instruments seriously changes how I write and produce — I know what a part feels like under the hands, what's actually idiomatic versus merely notatable, and where a player will fight the music instead of playing it.
Education
Belmont University
Master of Music (M.M.), Commercial Music w/ a specialization in Composition and Arranging
2015 - 2017
Activities and societies: Pi Kappa Lambda Thesis: 27:53 minute recorded production + 191 page paper Music Industry Apprenticeship with Michael Whittaker
Ithaca College
Bachelor of Music (B. M.), Music Composition and Percussion Performance (Dual)
2010 - 2014
Activities and societies: Ithaca College Jazz Club (Co-founder, Vice President, and Treasurer) Ithaca College Movie Music, IC Wind Ensemble, IC Symphonic Band, IC Symphony Orchestra, - I premiered multiple pieces for different instrumental performances - Played drum set on many recording projects - Played percussion on 5-15 recitals per semester - Had an original composition be the first to be included as a winner of the Ithaca College Concerto Competition - Took private percussion lessons with Gordon Stout, Conrad Alexander, and Greg Evans - Took private composition lessons from Dana Wilson, Jorge Grossmann, and Sally Lamb McCune
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