education
Student always
In addition to the music academia detailed below, Mike is now an MBA candidate at U.C. Berkeley's Haas School of Business, class of 2026.
Mike holds a Bachelor's Degree in Media Music with emphases in Songwriting, Music Production, and Guitar Performance from Brigham Young University. The program included intensive coursework in music production and recording techniques, songwriting craft, arranging for various instruments, record clone projects (deep analysis of classic recordings and use of all available tools and techniques to reproduce the tones and spirit of the original), projects using virtual instruments, sampling, multiple DAWS/MIDI editors and much more. As part of his coursework Mike completed a Music Production Internship with Ryan Staples (then at Gription Audio, later house engineer at famed East West Studios). Mike studied and was juried in both Jazz and Classical guitar performance under Lawrence Green. While studying at BYU, Mike was also employed by the university as a teacher in guitar courses for the general student body and for students pursuing a Minor in Music. Prior to college, Mike studied guitar with acclaimed World Fusion recording artist and educator James Robinson, and with Daniel Roest (then President of South Bay Guitar Society and CA classical guitar legend).