Workshops & Private Instruction

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Over the years I have played a lot of different styles of music. I started playing as a kid in the 1950’s when half the cowboys in the movies, on tv, and on the side of lunch boxes rode horses and strummed the guitar. The first song I learned was “Hang Down Your Head Tom Dooley”, from a baby sitter in 1958 or ‘59. I started learning songs during the folk revival of the early 1960’s. By the time the Beatles hit in 1963 I was writing my own songs, some of which are actually not that bad. I discovered fingerpicking in high school in 1968 listening to John Fayhe, Donovan, Dylan, John Renbourn and a host of others. (Somehow I missed the Delta Blues thing...) I started writing instrumentals and fingerstyle folk songs that year and by the time I got to college in 1969 I was performing this repertoire in campus coffeehouses. In 1973 I started classical guitar and had already been in several rock and roll bands and taken a year and a half of theory in college. Since those formative years I have continued my interest in acoustic guitar’s possibilities from both the classical and folk point of view, and gone on to play electric guitar in the kinds of bands that could find work in the 1970, ‘80’s and ‘90’s which would include oldies bands, jam bands, blues, rock rockabilly, hillbilly swing, jazz, country & southern rock bands. Never played in a wedding band. (this is good?) In 2000 I quit the electric guitar and have concentrated only on my first love, acoustic guitar. Hmmm...that’s a lot to work into a teaching routine. Somehow or other I draw on most of this material for teaching.

In private lessons, I try to meet a student’s needs. If I can, I do. If not, I send them somewhere else.

My private guitar teaching may or may not include:

Fingerstyle guitar:
• Classical guitar
• Modern folk and Steel string guitar, pop, rock etc.

Technique: picking and strumming methods, exercises, study pieces, etc.

Reading skills: standard notation and TAB
Basic theory
Songs and analysis

Contact me to set up an appointment.

I also conduct workshops on Alternate Tunings and Fingerboard Mapping. Click on the link here for general outlines for those two workshops. Depending on the time available I fit in as much from the outlines as I can.

Newport Guitar Festival 2008

These workshops this year will be mostly discussion, and a certain amount of playing if there is time. Each workshop is only an hour long and there is a lot to pack in. You won’t need guitars as there won’t be time for everyone to play the examples in class. You probably will want a notebook. If there is time I’ll stick around afterwards and answer questions. I am scheduled to perform at 10:30 on both Saturday and Sunday so I will have maybe 15 minutes. Workshop outlines are available here.

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