Guitar lessons tailored to you by Composer/Jazz Musician in Glasgow or online!

Fleur has picked up her technique building blocks well and is ready to explore lots of different songs that will build her sense of rhythm, introduce her to finger-picking techniques and build her confidence in performing songs. As well as expanding her vocabulary of chords she has began learning how to read Tablature and rhythmic notation - valuable skills for any musician. Fleur is a great student and I appreciate her enthusiasm for her music :)

It was great to meet someone who is as enthused by Wes Montgomery's style as I am! Elijah has pretty good guitar technique and is on the right path to expanding his chord and scale vocabulary and his understanding of chord scale relationships. Keep learning and experiencing new styles of music through your guitar!

Emily is already an accomplished musician with some great skill and feel for her guitar playing. We looked at root-6, root-5 and root4 chord voicings from the Jazz Guitar book which provide options when approaching how to learn a song like Nakamarra with the potential to find a different way through the changes - these chords also give us a starting point from which to understand guitar arrangements when we are transcribing and a basis from which we can create more complex chords. It would be great to see Emily challenge herself to find variations on the voicings of Nakamarra by swapping out root-6 chords for root-4 or root-5 or other such experimenting. We established a facet of her practice routine could be metronome practice - she should continue trying to play the 16th note basslines sampled from Grace Jones and Justin Timberlake along with the metronome or for a challenge (other than playing faster) try playing along with a drum track which changes the emphasis of the rhythm.
We expanded on the basic major pentatonic by looking at the modes of the major pentatonic across the fretboard: these are great for practising along with a BB King blues.
She should continue to increase her vocabulary of chords by playing songs which utilise extensions, suspensions and augmented fifths. As we work through this material it is an opportunity to join up Emily’s thinking on music and music theory with her guitar playing. I look forward to introducing more composition based exercises and exploring other songs with her, where we can spend time on her comping and soloing creativity. In future it would be great to look at learning the mode shapes of the major scale and chord shapes within the major pentatonic.
All the best, Simon

She has great knowledge of chords and seems to enjoy performing songs and recording them as videos for her work. A great enthusiastic student to teach. We focussed on learning pieces which incorporate melody playing on the guitar and reading music from the Rockschool book. This has seen her learn a whole bunch of new pieces pretty quickly. She gets a great sound playing fingerstyle on her acoustic guitar and she has begun to explore playing with a pick and finding new more expressive ways to play such as really digging in on tunes like Hoochie Coochie Man. Roisin shows promise as an improviser too as she pretty quickly worked out how to use the scales she knew so solo over a blues form. I look forward to expanding her knowledge of chords and encouraging her to explore new styles and approaches to playing her guitar as we look at more challenging material in her future lessons.

Yinsey already has good basic technique from her ukulele playing and this puts her in good stead to transfer these skills to the guitar. She also has a great enthusiasm and enjoyment of music already. I think learning the guitar will allow her to explore music in a new way however she should also give time to composing her own songs which I'd love to hear some time as this is also a great way to explore and experiment with music. I think lessons could be really creative combining ukulele, guitar, composition and a bit of music theory. All the best with your music!

She Peng is a good player of Intermediate level and can move her left hand intelligently to find the easiest fingering of chords. She is also aware of her tendency to rest the ukuleles weight on the bridge of her left index finger and with some experiments to assess how the weight of the ukulele is being held by this hand, has started to try to put more weight on the pad of her left thumb on the back of the neck. This will enable her to change chords without the ukulele neck dipping when she changes chords. When practising she is being mindful of how the weight of the ukulele lies in her left hand and to use the thumb on the back of the neck as a reset position. She is also going to practice playing songs standing up in the kitchen any time she is waiting for water to boil to make sure that the majority of the weight of the ukulele is being held by the ukulele being wedged by her right wrist. We looked at 'Come Away With Me' by Norah Jones which She Peng was playing well by the end of the lesson. She knows she needs to practice playing it in time with a metronome, slowly at first. Try emphasising the downbeats and making sure the crotchets line up with the beat when she plays them. Looking to the future in the songs she would like to learn from this "The Ukulele Playlist: Jazz" purple book, I suggested she learns "Hit the Road Jack" as it provides some new 7th chords and a more up-tempo song. She can work towards "Lullaby of Birdland" which has flat and more complex chords. As well as playing chords to learn these song charts, we looked at learning to pluck the melody to Imperial Death March. We used classical guitar method to use the pulgar (thumb) and indice (index finger) on the right hand to play the melody resting on the E and A string. This enabled her to mute the strings when they weren't playing and to play faster. She also utilised her left hand fretting technique of a finger per fret/4-finger technique which we practiced in the "Flea Exercise", to find her way when playing further up the neck when the melody jumped to the 7th fret. Next time we can look at more fingerpicking methods using the indice and medio fingers together to play faster and look at the rest of this piece. A really great first lesson with an student who is engaged in learning her instrument and improving. Great to see such enthusiasm.