How I Teach

My goal when teaching guitar or bass is to make lessons a fun, interesting and rewarding experience for the student. Lessons are tailored to each student’s personal goals and musical interests. By doing this, I find that students are more likely to practice their lesson materials more thoroughly and thereby progress on the instrument more quickly. Typically, with beginning students I will focus on and assign work of the following three types in each lesson:

                     1.  Reading Method Books – For a student to truly have command of their instrument, as well as music in general, learning to read in standard musical notation is imperative.While a discussion on the advantages of reading standard notation versus tablature only is too expansive to be covered here, I am a firm believer in having all my students become competent in their reading abilities.The method books used will be chosen based upon the student’s age, abilities and musical interests.

                          2.  Scales, Arpeggios and Technical Studies –While used to help the beginning student learn and develop proper playing techniques, as students advance these studies also form an important foundation for improvisation (soloing).             

                          3.  Songs and Pieces – For the novice student, simpler songs are used to help learn and become more proficient at playing and changing chords.As progress is made, the songs chosen become more complex and challenging and often include lead and solo parts written in either standard notation or tablature.The more accomplished student will then move on to solo guitar works that may include classical guitar pieces, jazz/pop chord melody arrangements, transcribed rock, country, blues and jazz solos, etc.The songs and pieces studied will be chosen based upon the student’s abilities and musical interests.

 

As students become more advanced the following areas of study, among others, may also become part of their lesson:

 

·Sight reading studies.

·Improvisation (soloing) in rock, blues, country and jazz styles.

·Chord comping and substitution.

·Arranging of songs into chord melody solo guitar pieces.

·Music theory.

  

I also believe that an important and fun part of developing as a musician is interacting and performing with other musicians.As such, I will often introduce students of mine to other students that I feel are of similar ability.Additionally, once a year I host a “jam session” at my home to which all of my students are invited.This enjoyable event allows students to listen to and perform with players(both guitarists and bassists) of all levels.