About Me

  • Guitarist
  • Teacher
  • Youth Workshop Facilitator
  • Recording Studio Sound Engineer
  • Producer
  • Writer
  • YouTube Creator

At age 14, hearing the energy of early 2000's Pop Punk blasting away on MTV made me run out to buy a guitar.

And I’ve played guitar every day since. I’ve been in many bands (Punk, Rock, RnB, Rap and Pop), dedicated my education to music, built and ran a successful recording studio in Manchester UK and have been a guitar teacher for 15 years now.

My primary qualification is a degree in Sound Engineering undertaken at well known British performing arts college, Rose Bruford. My engineers background has led to developing a very practical approach to guitar and music in general – I care about the process, how things are put together, the nuts and bolts.

I find this translates very well to teaching guitar. I am able to deconstruct a good performance and explain, piece by piece, technique by technique, how we as learner guitarists can play the same thing ourselves.

My technical background also means I’m well equipped to provide modern, high quality post-covid online guitar lessons. I use high grade cameras, wide angle lenses, microphones, audio interfaces and lighting to broadcast a TV quality stream to my students.

Creating Backing Tracks for Guitarists

This is a new project I started only a few months ago.

Playing along with Backing Tracks is a great way for a guitarist to learn their chops and gain confidence.

I’ve written many of these tracks to help support the progression of specific students. Being able to create these learning tools for my students is a unique service that I can offer as a guitar teacher.

Check out my channel

Youtube

The Best Way To Learn Guitar

Here’s a couple of projects recorded and produced at Studio Z, my old recording studio.

The best way to learn guitar (or any instrument for that matter) is to spend time with quality musicians. I’ve been lucky enough to have spent time recording a lot of them.

This simple fact is one of the most important and often overlooked benefits of having a guitar teacher.

You can find educational content everywhere, in grade books or on YouTube, but the time spent one-to-one with a more experienced musician, watching how they play, talking about guitar and organically picking up tips and tricks is something neither books or YouTube can offer.

American Primitive Fingerstyle Guitar

After a few years most guitarists begin to specialise. It’s not possible to be both a master Jazz and Classical guitar player – each style needs your full attention.

Whilst I have a good understanding of most styles, I have gravitated towards learning about old Blues from the deep South of America. Charlie Patton, Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, Mississippi John Hurt, Elizabeth Cotton and many more. I have also learnt a lot from more recent artists, loosely considered to be within the American Primitive genre, such as John Fahey, Jack Rose, Glenn Jones and Robbie Basho.

This has led me to specialise in advanced fingersyle techniques for Folk and Blues, as well as open tunings (this is where the strings are retuned, usually to a chord like C, D or G).

As a guitar teacher I have developed a successful method for teaching this approach. And as a result I’m delighted to say many of my students have become accomplished fingerstyle guitarists.