Many children are being taught guitar in groups with four or more for 20 minutes at at £10 each. During that time each child could receive as little as 5 minute’s person attention.
At Adam Teaches Guitar, the charge is £22 an hour’s lesson. Your child will almost certainly make more progress. If you take up one of the special offers the price can be reduced even further.
Your child will learn to read music, strum the guitar and enjoy themselves. Regularly, I hear parents tell me that their child has progressed more in one lesson than many months of group sessions.
So now you know the real cost of guitar lessons.
Why not give your child the best chance and contact me, Adam Hinchliffe on 07407489232
I just wanted to do a quick post about where you should start when you have never ever played guitar.
Reading music and tab are useful though I feel the most fun way to get up and get going is to start with a chordex – I’d recommend a flip-over chordex that you can find in most music stores and on amazon which looks like this….
And start bashing away on your guitar!
This chordex above is called chord deck chordex – I believe it makes reading chordex boxes very simple as you can see the neck on these and it gives you a visual of a guitar. The circles with numbers in are where you place your finger (the circle) and which finger to use (the number in the circle)
You should learn all your basic open chords (E Em A Am D Dm C G for a start) but you can start with ones that go together – one good song to learn (though you need a capo at the first fret) is boulevard of broken dreams – it uses Em G D A.
However – here is how I personally would start you, or anyone – get the student to fret a D chord and then lets try some strumming patterns out…….. Start with Something simple show all the downs in a row
D D D D – Easy peasy, anyone can do this
Then how about the downs and ups? D U D U D U D U – Yeah most people find that easy too
D D U D U D U
1 2 + 3 + 4 +
Still pretty easy….. most people can do that one.
Here is the real trick to strumming though, if you can always keep your hand moving and master that there won’t be a basic (and even more advanced) strumming pattern you can’t master and here is the first strumming pattern that tends to present a challenge to people.
D D U (D) U D U
1 2 + 3 + 4 +
So on the third beat we will be missing the down – but we must move our hand here to keep the momentum and rhythm strong – doing one up and then another up tends to cause problems for people and to do it you have to move down in between but not hit the strings (logical yes?) which is not always easy. So that’s a place to start, you will already feel like you are playing guitar if you master that, then the next step is changing some chords. You can use this strumming pattern to do Jesus Dont want me for a sunbeam by the vaselines though I am working from the Nirvana cover on Unplugged in NY, although it is down tuned it works like this.
E D A A
D D U (D) U D U Repeat pattern on each chord
1 2 + 3 + 4 +
So there you have it – one strumming pattern and three chords and you can play guitar!
Hey, it’s been a whlie since I posted a blog post so I thought I would come back and talk about what I have been spending my time on. In my own time I have been working through tracks on “Learn to Play Funk with Jeff Tameliers tower of power” a brilliant yet flawed learning tool. Brilliant because it is tower of power and one of their previous guitarists who are to me (and my small funk knowledge) the greatest funk band I have heard but flawed because so much of what I hear is not written down in the tab so I have to use my ears work this out, not a difficult but a rather arduous task when you are also trying to memorise.
Problems aside I have really enjoyed learning some funk and it is taking my guitar player different to places when I jam, I have already started throwing funky (blues) jams into the mix, with some nice new mini funk chords that I have learnt.
One of my new jam pieces that is working rather well right now is a simplified rendition (because the original is madness) of Hendrix’ if 6 was 9. I was talking to friends at the jam night at about how amazing the sounds Hendrix creates on the original are, he had no fancy FX pedals that we have now but creates some of the strangest and dreamiest noises and I am also sure that it really is just a bit of a jam.
Anyway the version of if 6 was 9 works out well, with each drummer I bring it to bringing a different version. If you don’t jam but feel ready it is about time you got out of the house and made music with others, you will definately learn something and more than likely you will have a whole load of fun. 🙂 Thanks for reading.
This is a video I made for a student to remind them how to play this right during the week, if you know chords but never learnt to strum this could be helpful to you!
Here is a strumming lesson to learn “Boulevard of broken dreams” by Greenday it assumes that you can play and change basic chords but just haven’t learnt how to strum yet. It is to help a friend and student of mine, I made a few mistakes when I was talking in the video but correct them before the end and as I go along it is a video I did quickly for my friend but hopefully it will help you too.
This is just a video response about “Hendrix Sucks” on youtube, another too called “Hendrix is overrated”, it’s a continuation of my post too. 🙂 Have a look.
Sorry the quality is not the best and about Hey Joe, it charted in the UK at no 6 when Hendrix was relatively unknown.
Another free lesson, this is for people who already have a fair amount of experience playing guitar – you have to have knowledge of barre chords and pentatonic pattern 1.
Have a go 🙂 It is an original riff I made up in the style of Hendrix.
What I mean by the above is, when you look back at yourself as a player it is often funny to think “wow I couldn’t even do an E chord or strum” however if you laugh at your students for not being able to do these things then you obviously have too short a memory to be a great teacher. All great teachers should remember the time when what they now consider simple, was very hard for them.
I remember the first time I learnt a difficult solo, the summer I spent trying to master the basic open chords and my struggle with barre chords. I overcame these things but it is important to remember that I went through them. You should never say to a student “well that’s easy, why can’t you do it?” or if they say “I can’t do it, it’s too fast” you should not say “it isn’t that fast” but “practice it slower and you will get there in time”.
It is important to always value your student and where he or she is. I have had students who were not as far along as me on guitar but in perspective were coming on a lot faster than I ever did (which hopefully reflects on my teaching and giving them all the help and information they need). I really enjoy seeing pupils come from nothing to really becoming musicians and I always praise them for overcoming difficult first obstacles, however small.
It is important to remember that one of the main things you should teach in any subject is self belief, because without it you can never acheive what it is you want to do.
I just wanted to post a song I recorded a while ago, the quality is not brilliant but there is a guitar solo I did which I found worked quite well. Lauren Gibson, my cousin, is the singer on this track and I do everything else (the drums are a machine).
As you can see from the title there are two things the following videos will fall into. Either bands or guitarists that I feel are overlooked (some by me until recent years), some of the bands are BIG bands but have a guitarist I never hear anyone talk about by name, my first guitarist is one such as this;
Ray Toro of My Chemical Romance,
Many people dismiss them as a band only for little kids who shop at hot topic (I would say “kids that hang around at the corn exchange” in leeds but no one online would get that) but if you listen to any guitar solo there is a lot to discover. This is how I first found that there was some real talent going on in that band, I heard “I’m not okay (I Promise)” I had heard it before on TV but this time I didn’t flick over and I heard the solo and it is great. Lovely phrasing, harmonies and even a little bit of speed at the end to build up to its crescendo.
Things then progressed with the Black Parade – showing another really cool solo with “Dead!” and then a very tender guitar track “I don’t love you” with yet another fantastic solo. I really like Toro, I am sure I can play any of these solos but the creation is what I admire.
Dead!
I don’t love you
The next band is both a band and guitarist that are overlooked.
The band is Dinosaur Jr, that guitarist is J Mascis.
Pieces – by Dinosaur Jr – J Mascis is definately a very gifted improviser. This is the first Dinosaur Jr album I have ever bought (farm) however I heard singles Feel the pain and start choppin’ in the 90s.
This one is for the guitarist, Billy Corgan, though they are an acclaimed band and you probably already know them I think people overlook how good Corgan is on the guitar and also how good James Iha is too. Iha also had a lovely little country album toward the end of the 90s which most pumpkins fans I have talked to don’t like half as much as me!
Soma by The Smashing Pumpkins
Jealousy – Jame Iha, lovely, it’s not how it was played but how you play and create it. The real art in music is how you lay it down track by track.
The Lemonheads – Overlooked band and songrwriter in Evan Dando
Though most of what Dando does it simply strumming, I admire him for his numerous brilliant songs. When the Lemonheads returned a few years ago it was on of the few comebacks that I was actually impressed with. I really recommend the red self titled “The Lemonheads” album. If you haven’t listened to The Lemonheads yet you’re in for a treat. Unfortunately I couldn’t find tracks off the new album on youtube, so here is an oldie!
Teenage fanclub – Has anyone else listened to this fantastic band? This band are new to me, I found out about them through a festival in Norway called Slottsfjell. I looked at their name a few days before the festival, looked up the band on youtube and I decided I would see them. This is a track off their newest album machines, it’s not always true about later career albums being true and this proves it. I have an early album by them too, which is “Bandwagonesque” and have explored other albums on spotify.
Thats all for today, let me know what bands/guitarists you think I should have written about in my overlooked bands/guitarists post.
I would have liked to have included John Fruciante, but I don’t think he is overlooked anymore since the Chilis came to the mainstream.
A notable nod goes to another band I have seen at the festival and leeds festival and have known of since early 2000s, Belle and Sebastian.
Calculating bimbo – by Belle and Sebastian, the intro riff shows how simplicity can be magic.
I thought of one last band I don’t hear many people talking about (in the UK) – Here’s the counting crows with “Goodnight Elizabeth”
Adam teaches guitar 