HI, I’m Josh Zisman.

Guitarist, teacher, and craftsman of wooden instruments.

As a guitarist and lead screamer, I’ve been playing in bands since high school and throughout my time at Berklee College of Music. After college, I took a bite of the Big Apple, playing in various NYC area groups for the last 20 years. Playing in a variety of more experimental rock bands has had me shredding a lot of ground in the punk, indie rock, dance punk, noise rock, garage punk and free jazz worlds. With a healthy dose of weird pedals awash in a creamy layer of psych-influenced rock, and subtle jazz chord voicings thrown into punk ragers, I’ve also been known to clean up real nice and can do the Chet Atkins thing or even a hint of fusion, for that Sitar funk. Improvisation and melody are at the  core of my playing style. 

Teaching everything from Bowie and the Beatles to Lady Gaga along with jazz improvisation, I have a strong and seasoned teaching background in guitar along with some bass guitar and ukulele lessons. Since graduating Berklee,  I’ve taught privately in the Hudson Valley and surrounding areas for 20 years. As the director of woodworking and music at Lindgren School summer arts camp for 15 years, I’ve gotten very good at working with kids.  I’ve taught everything from young children to seniors and individuals to masses of hungry 6 year old campers banging on home made drums.

Being the director of woodworking and music at Lindgren pushed me down the path of repairing broken instruments and eventually building the school a full size marimba and Nesting sets of Brazilian wood box-drums; Cajones. As a self taught luthier I’ve built several stringed things; a mandolin, a ukulele, and a lefty Fender Jaguar style guitar.

Most recently after practicing Tai Chi hand form for several years I built my first Tai Chi Jian, or wooden practice sword, with practices and tricks accrued from my instrument building skills. My fellow students were so impressed with the balance and quality of my sword, that I ended up being commissioned to build 11 more Jians for fellow Tai Chi players at my school and it’s sister schools.

Armed with a massive stack of Tape Op magazines I have been self-producing and recording my own and other musicians’ projects throughout my professional life. Having worked in everything from cassette 4 tracks to studios with 2-inch tape and modern digital multi tracking, I’ve produced dozens of tracks for albums and EPs as well as incidental music for film scores and spoken word pieces.