My musical journey began in 2005 with the alto saxophone in middle school band. I instantly fell in love, and began taking classical piano lessons in 2006. In that year, I was introduced to the world of heavy metal, and in 2007, my stepdad finally got me an electric guitar.
I was lucky enough to have a fantastic piano teacher through the remainder of grade school, and attempted to self-teach metal guitar alongside of her piano lessons. Guitar Pro tabs and Youtube became my biggest resource for learning guitar, and I found myself most enjoying learning new techniques from the music I listened to rather than practicing scales and exercises day in and out.
Having had many years of concert, jazz and marching bands, piano and sax lessons, playing in a few high school bands, and a year long theory class, I graduated high school and unfortunately had to massively cut down on time I had available for music.
Fast forwarding through college and military time, I joined my first band, Crotalus, within a month of exiting the Army in December 2018. We played a show and entered the studio for a 5 song EP in the first 2 months of joining. We are still gigging regularly and released our 3rd EP in January 2023.
I began taking lessons early 2021 from my favorite modern guitarist, Phil Tougas, and truly felt I had improved tenfold 6 months into lessons over the previous 15 years of self teaching. I began planning out lesson plans later that year, and began working with my first student January 2022 and am aggressively seeking out more!
I am actively writing, recording and/or performing with Crotalus (technical death metal), Chamber Mage (trad/power metal), Incinerate (technical brutal death metal), Christectomy (war slam), and PoonTickler (grindcore) with concepts for 3 other projects I’d like to start in the near future.
Please check out my Linktree to follow the socials for my current bands’ news and merch!
I can always be reached via email at devanfguitar@gmail.com