No previous experience of playing an instrument is required to start and you don't need to worry about reading music as I use chord charts and tablature which are easy and intuitive to read. So 'beginners welcome' really does mean absolute beginners.

I feel it is important that a beginners progress is structured in a meaningful way and students don't tackle material that is too advanced. When they do it often results in frustration at how it sounds, leads to tension and also the reinforcement of bad technical habits. When this happens, not only does the technique have to be relearnt, but the bad technique also has to be unlearnt and the whole process can take a lot longer.

With this in mind I take beginners through a programme that I have developed. This begins with chords, using popular songs that progressively get more challenging and steadily increasing the chord vocabulary. Whilst these have been picked so that they can be achieveable at a beginner level, they do include songs by artists such as Oasis, Bob Dylan, U2, Snow Patrol and Jimi Hendrix amongst others. As the student gets comfortable with a core group of chords, we progress to looking at strumming/rhythm technique, whilst at the same time learning riffs, tunes and simple scales.

As the student starts to learn their way around the guitar, it is important their musical instincts are also developed and they don't just play guitar in isolation. For this reason I give CD's of the songs covered to students to play along to from the outset. This means they don't just play chords, but have to play them in time and learn to listen, and develop a musical feel as they play. This is something a musician will always need regardless of whatever music they play, so it is essential this is started early.

I like to ensue that students are always being challenged and moved forward week to week in achieveable steps, but never overawed with something far too difficult. This develops a good musical and technical foundation which the sudent can use to help tackle more complicated material later on.

As we progresses, lessons become more open. The student will bring material they want to work on and start to control the agenda. In addition I will also provide material to keep them challenged, including lead guitar/soloing techniques, theory, reading music (if the student wants this) and more progressive rhythm work.

Intermediate - Advanced

For intermediate to advanced guitarists, the content of the lesson will obviously depend on the level of the student to begin with, and what they want to achieve. We'll look at your playing in the first session and discuss how to structure the lessons.

For example, if your rhythm playing is a bit weak, we'll look at a series of exercises to develop solid technique and use songs and CD's to put these into practice and develop timing. It may be that you want to explore lead guitar techniques, in which case we'll look at exercises, learn relevent songs and work on improvisation. Alternatively, you may play well, but want to learn to navigate your way around the guitar, know how to apply theory to different songs and know which scales to pick to solo with. Again, this can be covered as well as learning to read music if you wish.

Just the very act of having a tutor to go back to every week can add a focus and direction that speeds up your progress. Also, an objective set of ears, eyes and brain can spot things that you otherwise might not notice.