As a guitar teacher you’d probably expect me to be firmly against things like Youtube lessons and teaching apps. Surely they’re making me irrelevant and are an example of human workers being replaced by technology!? As it happens, when used in the right way, I think most of the technology available to us can be a brilliant aid to learning, doubly so when used alongside traditional learning methods. Here are some of the positives and potential pitfalls of using technology when it comes to your practice. Access to music You have access to pretty much every piece of music ever recorded. How can ..read more

Watch any Youtube or Instagram video of somebody playing guitar, or doing anything else for that matter, and you’d be forgiven for thinking you lived in a world entirely populated by amazingly talented people. These people can do anything they set their minds to instantly, and with an apparent lack of effort that only serves to prove just how big of a giant, clumsy idiot you are for ever daring to attempt to do anything good or interesting or difficult. Obviously that’s not true. What you don’t see are all the mistakes these people make. There are loads of them, just like when you practice. I ..read more

This is one that a few of my students have come to me with in recent months, and that both they and I were unable to find a satisfactory answer to anywhere else on the internet. As one of Led Zeppelin’s most popular hits Black Dog is inevitably a song that many guitarists are going to want to learn to play. It features a turnaround in which some very difficult to anticipate rhythms are played (rumoured to be a deliberate move to make the song difficult to dance to). Let’s start by analysing what happens in the main verse riff. Played entirely in 4/4 time, this riff bears many similarities to ..read more

Guitar players have been known to complain about a guitar being too heavy to use when standing up. While this proves to be a real nuisance to guitarists, there are certainly better solutions than allowing woodworm to eat their way through the weight from the inside. Contrary to the name, woodworm is the generic name for the larvae stage of wood boring beetles. These wood boring beetles generally emerge between April and October so it’s important for guitarists to be able to identify the signs of a woodworm infestation.Woodworm are attracted to wood and humidity and the female beetle will look ..read more