“I teach a totally different type of ear training than is taught in 99% of music schools. Most schools teach interval training. I teach a system based on learning all 12 pitches against a key center.”
— Bruce Arnold, NYU & Princeton
Founder
BRUCE ARNOLD
Bruce Arnold is a guitarist, composer, and educator who has dedicated his career to transmitting the great pedagogical lineage of Western music to the next generation of artists.
He studied at Berklee College of Music (enrolled 1976, alongside Mike Stern, Bill Frisell, Steve Vai, and Wayne Krantz), then privately with Charlie Banacos and Jerry Bergonzi. He taught at Berklee 1984–1988, moved to NYC in 1986, and taught at NYU from 1989 and Princeton from 1990, retiring after 30 years in 2019.
He is also the founder of Muse-Eek Publishing, with over 669 music education products available worldwide.
Originally from Sioux Falls, South Dakota — he saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan at age 9, and never looked back.
Painting: Michal Shapiro
The Lineage
A TRADITION CENTURIES
IN THE MAKING
The pedagogical lineage Bruce carries and transmits runs from Scarlatti through Porpora, Haydn, Beethoven, Czerny, Vengerova, and Madame Chaloff to Charlie Banacos — and now to Bruce’s own students.
The Origin Story
SIOUX FALLS,
SOUTH DAKOTA
Every great artist has an origin. For Bruce, it was seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan at age 9. That moment lit a fire that has never gone out — through Berklee, through NYC, through Princeton and NYU, through 30 years of teaching and hundreds of recordings.
The Bruce Arnold Foundation exists because of that first spark — and because every young musician deserves the chance to find theirs.