Why have you created the Online Guitar Academy?
The Creative Guitar Academy is a structured guitar method of learning but with a teacher. It improves the traditional one-on-one experience dramatically, as all the classes are pre recorded and the students have to learn the materia in advance before the following class.
I have designed a method to make sure students learn and above all, you can do it online, but remember, always with a teacher.
What makes your method special?
I take guitar learning one step further than traditional schools as students in order to progress must demonstrate they can actually make meaningful music with the new material.
Can your courses complement the traditional learning with a teacher face to face ?
Definitely and I must say they are the structure I use in my regular Sydney Guitar lessons. The main difference and good difference is that at the traditional location, now on 56 a Raglan Street, Waterloo, 2017, NSW, I offer Sydney ensembles, so musicians interact with others and this makes the learning experience extremely satisfying .
How do you solve this issue with online learning?
My online learning focuses on learning and interacting as groups of students. Of course due to the limitations of the internet we cannot do so in real time, but I have found a very good solution through my guitar method.
Students work together online collaborating on all projects outside the classroom hours.
Who are your courses for?
For those who want to create, perform music that really expresses. Music becomes more meaningful when we experience the true joy that comes out of it.
This will not occur by learning scales, chords flash riffs, 10 seconds show offs, but by learning to tell a full story to an audience.The audience is waiting to hear your full 3 minute story and students have to experience the joy of such that only occurs when you learn to play the guitar with the objective of sharing who you are.
It is not the same to play some notes for yourself rather than sharing them with others. This uses another part of our brain that can create pure pleasure, a consequence of real existence for sharing
Feel Create. What does this mean?
You memorize and learn music by feeling and not thinking. I do not know why but when we think, music just sounds pretty horrible but when we feel it and play it and we are not thinking, we tap into a realm of just pure existence . It is very magical and sometimes scary as we do not have control and must truly judge our feelings to help us remember everything we will do.
Believe me, it is much easier to play this way, than to repeat and repeat and hit yourself against the wall, for not being able to remember a chord, a melody or for screwing up a solo.
Why do you insist so much on accompaniment?
When we play with others we spend most of the time supporting others. When we record we are recording supporting lines.
There is really no guitar method out there that shows you how to be creative with your chords with your groove.
Let’s say you have to play in a funk band , how do you play that, and why. Once you understand the why of your playing, the objective, it all becomes very natural and very easy and your accompaniment which is the essence of the song, just explodes with life.
Your Level 4 course seems very specialized?
As I mentioned earlier, there is very little educacional material out there that teaches guitar students to be creative in the accompaniment and therefore when we go and play live we just cannot hear ourselves and also get buried in studio mixes.
There is a fundamental aspect of orquetsartion and arranging where harmony against harmony just creates a nice texture and the individual textures tend to naturally become a new one.
In other words if the guitarist only knows how to strum, his strum will be buried away when the pianist plays chords and even when the vocals harmonize. We can avoid this by being melodic in our playing and by really doing what we have to do which is to play groove. The more we play groove, the less we think about fills and solos and the more melodic we are the clearer we will sound and overall the song will sound so much much better, and of course we will have a lot of fun.
How do you achieve this?
Ahh that is the secret of the guitar method. If you complete all exercises with precision and not superficially then your playing will dramatically increase in quality.
Are guitarists aware of this need, of this way of playing?
All guitarists will find themselves in a situation where what they do just doesn’t feel right and unless you have your objectives clear you will not be able to find a way to make it right.
Some musicians do this naturally but what about those that can not and have to be taught how to do it.
This guitar course is for them, for us, as we are the majority.
