Shane Des Enfants

Guitar

Shane is a music educator, multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, and producer from Montana who moved to Seattle in 2024 after living and working as a facilitator at an arts based non-profit in Ecuador for several years. After completing a degree in music and multimedia at Brown University he has pursued a diverse range of musical work which include teaching beginning guitar, ukulele and rhythm classes at summer camps and K-12 public schools, facilitating the production of an album of original music by his students, performing as a singer-songwriter, writing and producing original music for local theater productions, and audio engineering for independent recording artists.

A lifelong musician, he started playing violin and piano at age 7, French horn at age 12, and guitar a year later. He has played horn professionally in orchestras including the Bozeman Symphony, Brown University Orchestra, concert & marching bands as well as an indie rock band called Attic Wood. Also a producer and recording engineer, he released his first self-produced EP "shan/m/e" in 2022. His most recent recording endeavor was in Ecuador, where he worked with rural communities to create an archive of recorded stories and music entitled “Indigenous ways of knowing and being through art, music, storytelling, and community" in 2023. He currently works as a teaching artist for local non-profit “The Rhapsody Project”, where he teaches (and learns about) music and cultural heritage with Seattle K-12 students and young adults.

Shane is comfortable working with youth, has a lot of experience teaching total beginners, but also has plenty of advanced techniques to offer more skilled students. He believes that as artists and musicians, we must realize that mistakes are inevitable, but how we accept them and move through them is what defines us, not the mistakes themselves. Being patient, seeking to understand, and doing his best to meet people where they are at while continuing to push them a little out of their comfort zones are cornerstones to his teaching philosophy.

Specialties:  Acoustic and electric - pop, rock, rhythm guitar, blues, flatpicking, hybrid picking, fingerstyle, songwriting, and singing while playing guitar

Levels: Total Beginner to Advanced Intermediate

Ages: Middle School and up

Rates: $45 for 30 min, $55 for 45 min, $65 for one hour

Availability: Tuesday – Saturday, including Wednesday evening

Online/In-Person: In-person only

“But in the background, I was falling in love with pop music.”

When were you first introduced to music and what got you “hooked”?

I grew up listening to almost exclusively classical music, and I bugged my parents to let me take violin lessons. Then I started playing French Horn in middle school and I pursued it seriously. But in the background, I was falling in love with pop music. I wanted to play guitar and sing my own songs. When I finally convinced my dad to get me a guitar, I was obsessed. I spent hours learning chord shapes. It opened up a whole new world for me, very different from the rigid classical rules that I’d grown accustomed to. I was simultaneously excited by and overwhelmed by the “lack of rules.”

What is one of your most memorable experiences as a performer?

I played an original song for voice and electronics at a summer camp I was a music director for. I remember feeling super nervous that it wouldn’t work or totally tank and bore everyone. In spite of these worries, I think the performance went well and I noticed that more kids were signing up for music class after they saw me perform. It was really cool to see that my creativity and courage to try something new had caused these kids to get excited about something new that perhaps before had seemed daunting. The lesson for me here was to embrace going outside of my comfort zone. I never know who I’m inspiring.

Do you have any good practice tips for guitar players, or musicians in general?

You have to get out the metronome. There’s just no way around it. Playing in time is integral to your overall musicianship and especially important if you want to play music with others. I recommend practicing with the metronome and keeping a practice log of everything you practiced each day. Looking back on the log and your progress can help when you feel stuck. I also encourage people to avoid stopping upon making a mistake. If you can try to roll with it instead of stopping, it will help teach your body how to continue without losing the flow and help you improve at recovering quickly from inevitable mistakes.

Sign Up for Lessons