Learning the Guitar
 

I play the electric and steel strung acoustic guitar and teach blues, rock, pop, metal styles and associated theory, harmony, chords, soloing, and general techniques.  I use a range of support materials, that you'll find listed here, as I find on one book seems to cover all that my students want to learn - or how they want to learn.  I would normally try to link up every lesson with a piece of music to reinforce what's been learnt.  Learn a scale - apply it to a song solo.

The songs and tunes cover pretty much anything from the last 40+ years that you'd hear on Radios 1 & 2,  G.W.R., Kiss and Magic.  But I put special emphasis on the last five years as that's what most of my students would be familiar with.  But some of the oldies are always around.  Almost every student will ask to learn to play 'Smoke on the Water', 'Sweet Home Alabama', 'The 007 Theme' and 'Stairway to Heaven'.

If you want classical, flamenco, jazz, or Latin,  I occasionally teach these styles (even went over to Jerez, Spain in November 2004 to take a course in flamenco).  But what I learnt was the need to focus and not spread my teaching so widely.  I was even invited back to Spain - "wow, I must have really impressed them with my progress....."  but no - this was to play the blues - "Chris you're Flamenco is... how do you say it... crap?"   I focus on rock, blues, metal and pop, alongside some finger-style standards and bluegrass/ragtime flat-picking. 

If that's your vibe, you're in the right place.

Playing and Teaching

I play AND teach.  As the bass player, guitarist and a singer with local Devizes' bands, I'm experienced at playing live regularly.  That means I understand what's important and what's not; the fundamentals that get you playing well as soon as possible with the maximum of focus on sounding good.  If you want to do exams, we can slant the lessons on what you need to do to get a good pass alongside building a repertoire to go with those successes.

Tuition and Exams - Options and Costs