Guitar, Bass, Drums and Theory

I first started teaching music nearly 30 years ago while I was still in my teens - and to some extent I've been teaching ever since.

I was taught as a Drummer by a top session player in London in the 70's and 80's, and the methods I learned as a drummer I have transferred into both Guitar and Bass tuition.

Technique is really important, I spend a lot of time with my students on this. Even if you know exactly what note you want to play, with poor technique it will always be hard to achieve.

Everything we play is written down (unless we're working on Improvisation). So students have to read. That doesn't always mean standard notation (like piano music), but if it isn't written down then the student must rely purely on memory, and that is not a reliable way to learn.

Theory is also important. How do you know what note to play? Because you understand how music works, not because you can remember every note and finger position by rote.

But at the same time, music has to be fun, and it has to relate to the real world that most musicians have to exist in.

I teach a wide range of styles from Rock and Pop, to Latin Country and Jazz.

Prices are £20 per hour, £10 per half hour.

Rockschool

Rockschool is a course and exam grading system which is available to students on request. It involves the purchase of a book with each grade which has access to digital resources for backing tracks. An original copy of the book must be used for all exams. Examining centres open several times a year in both Norwich and Kings Lynn for most grades and instruments, and can be taken in Acoustic and Electric Guitar and Bass, and in Drums also.

I now offer all of these courses to junior students (to age 18, I generally don’t advise them for adult students), but nobody is obliged to sit the exams even if they choose to utilise the course materials). At levels above Grade 5 UCAS points are available which may be used for University entrance. This alone gives them some value, but there are other advantages such as the access to backing tracks.

Rockschool also helps many students who don’t have a clear idea of what they want from their instrument, or have difficulty in organising more self directed tasks to focus on individual aspects of their instrument, piece by piece with the supplied media and tracks.

The Teaching Environment

The teaching room is located in my house at Norwich Road Fakenham. It has been recently refurbished and modernised with improvements to sound systems and upgrades to the recording studio facility.

Tuition is available also in Studio techniques and basic mixing, writing and recording, the use of Digital Audio Workstations. Here I use the Reaper DAW as a teaching tool, which shares many elements with industry standard DAW such as Pro Tools, Logic and Cubase which students are likely to encounter in the professional or college studio.