I offer weekly lessons, either online (via Zoom or Skype), or in my home (in Sequim, WA).
Aside from standard lessons (described at bottom of page), I have a couple of unique learning options:
On my Fingerstyle Instrumentals page there are videos of me playing instrumental fingerstyle songs that I can teach you to play on guitar and ukulele…songs that have the melody woven in, so they can be played with no singing required. There’s delta blues & ragtime (Blind Blake, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Blind Boy Fuller), classical (Vivaldi, Pachelbel, Beethoven, Brahms), and soft rock and folk (Simon & Garfunkel, the Beatles, James Taylor, Eric Clapton and more.).
On my Play-Alongs page you can work on fingerpicking, flat-picking, strumming, and leads/solos on guitar…while ‘playing along’ with my band as you learn acoustic rock, folk and blues songs (more than 40 songs to choose from…the Beatles, Eric Clapton, Janis Joplin, T-Bone Walker, Pink Floyd, James Taylor and many more). This play-along method makes practicing fun…and gives you experience playing along with drums, percussion and vocals.
Standard Lessons:
The rest of this page describes what you can expect to learn from ‘regular’ lessons for various skill levels:
If you’re a beginner, I’ll first teach you to:
- Play basic chords…and to switch back and forth between those chords with correct and efficient technique.
- Play single notes on the first three frets of the fretboard…with proper technique and fingering. We’ll develop this skill by playing single-note melodies of familiar songs.
- Begin to develop basic strumming and fingerpicking skills While learning basic chords and single notes, we’ll start playing songs that use basic strumming and fingerpicking skills and patterns.
- Learn to read and play TAB (tablature) This is necessary because it’s how you’ll learn to play single-note melodies…and eventually…guitar and uke solos and fingerstyle songs.
Once students have learned the skills listed above (or if you’re already there…or far beyond), we have many exciting directions we can go. Students can choose any combinations of the following:
- Continue learning new songs: You choose songs you want to learn, and I teach you to play them, using each song as a platform for teaching you skills.
- Learn new chords: You could expand your chord repertoire by learning: 1) chords you already know, but in different locations on the fretboard; 2) slight variations like sus2, sus4, minor 7ths, etc; 3) barre and power chords; 4) jazz/complex chords; and 5) moveable triads (3-note chords).
- Develop intricate fingerpicking skills: This is by far my most requested area of teaching. You can either learn various fingerpicking patterns that you can play while singing, or you can learn to play fingerpicked songs that have the melody woven in so that they can be played without singing (see my Fingerstyle Videos page for many video examples for both guitar and ukulele).
- Develop more complex strumming techniques: Learn various types of strumming patterns, along with a variety of percussive ‘chucking’ and ‘muting’ techniques that can really improve the complexity of your playing.
- Learn to play leads and scales: Learning to play leads can be done with or without learning scales, but learning to improvise your own leads does require the practicing of scale patterns. I can help you choose which scales are important for your specific goals, and then teach you to play them in a step-by-step process.
- Learn music theory as it relates to chords, intervals, chord progressions, etc: Some people want to know things like…’what notes make up the Fmaj7, Dsus4 and E9 chords we’re playing?’, or ‘why does this song use the chord progression it uses…and how can I change it to another key to better suit my voice?’. I have lessons specifically designed to teach a wide variety of theory concepts.
- Learn songwriting skills: Some folks are interested in learning the approaches and techniques that are involved in the writing of songs, including the aspects of music theory that are needed to piece together the various components of songs.
- Learn to play in open-tuning: If this interests you, open-tunings (and drop-D tuning) create new opportunities for playing and learning. You can find examples and information about this on my Play-Alongs page.
