Let's Play Some Guitar!

Guitar offers the widest range and versatility of any modern instrument! While easily flowing between chords and melodies, it also has diverse rhythmic and percussive qualities. You can hold the rhythm with chords or step forward in the mix and take the lead. Guitar can provide amazing textures, layers, and emotions with techniques such as fingerpicking, palm muting, vibrato, intervals, and so much more.

Acoustic guitar has a warm and vibrant tone, giving it a more earthy and organic feel. With electric guitar your tone options explode as amplification and effects choices inevitably become part of your sound. Most people start learning on an acoustic guitar to keep things simple, but the electric is a bit physically easier to handle with regards to holding down strings and learning to make chords. While the two styles of guitar may feel somewhat different and offer contrasting sound qualities, you can easily start learning on either one and make a switch later on.

Guitar for Beginners

With just a few lessons and some dedicated practice time,  you can start strumming along to songs fairly quickly, learning the basics of right hand and left hand technique while building up the fundamentals of rhythm. If you want to explore further, we can get into the basics of playing scales and chord tones and learn how to use them in songs, setting you on a path to make educated guesses about the notes you are playing in order to add texture or improvise with the music. Believe it or not, this is not nearly as difficult as it may sound! 

Learning to read sheet music can open you up to a world of melodies, tapping into the wide range of tones and frequencies that the instrument offers. Students learning to read will go deeper into rhythm, working through the nuances of the music while learning to connect notes from the page to locations on the instrument. I can help you demystify this strange language so that you can learn to play any music you can find.

I can also help you to break through more advanced and complex rhythms on your guitar, helping you to learn rhythmic phrases by understanding and mastering both the beat and the underlying rhythms in any given piece. From Elton John, to Jack Johnson, to Rush: there’s no rhythm we can’t decipher. These concepts can apply to strumming, melodies, or fingerpicking patters.

Some self-taught guitarists bring themselves to incredible levels of technical skill musicality but sometimes feel that they have left some of the “basics” behind in their training. Many players enjoy learning to read music so that they can play whatever is it they come across, dramatically raising the ceiling on the amount of music they can access. Others want to simply learn their notes on the fretboard and connect them to chords or patterns in a more meaningful way. Another common subject for my advanced students is basic music theory. They learn to take out the guesswork and understand the "why" behind the notes. I’ve been very lucky to have the opportunity to teach amazing players and I’ve found that I always have something to offer them to guide them towards the next step on their musical journey.