The electric guitar is the reason I became a guitarist. It’s also what later made me appreciate the acoustic, but the electric will always be my home base. No other instrument offers such variety of sound.

You don’t need to learn acoustic first before picking this up. Want to play rock, blues, pop or funk? You can start straight on electric, the same way you don’t need to learn organ before piano.

What you’ll learn

  • Technique & timing, a relaxed, reliable technique for both hands, with solid rhythm as the foundation.
  • Riffs & chords, power chords, voicings and the repertoire that excites you.
  • Soloing & improvising, scales, phrasing, and finding your own voice on the instrument.
  • Tone, amp, effect pedals and tone shaping, so you sound the way you want to.

As a graduated jazz guitarist I love bringing the deeper layers of harmony and improvisation within reach, even if you “just” want to play great rock or blues. We always work from music you love, at a pace that fits you.

A young instrument with a huge impact

The electric guitar is relatively young. When Les Paul bolted some pickups onto a plank around 1940 to make a ‘solid body’ electric guitar, he couldn’t have foreseen the musical revolution it would spark. With the mass-produced guitars from Fender and Gibson in the 1950s, music history changed profoundly.

Types, techniques and styles

You’ll meet the Telecaster, Stratocaster, Les Paul and archtop/hollow-body. On technique we work on pick playing, fingerstyle, tapping and legato. And almost any style is on the table: blues, jazz, jazz-rock/fusion, rock, pop, r&b, soul, gospel, metal, funk and country.

Guitar heroes for inspiration

Too many to list, but think of Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Mark Knopfler, Eddie Van Halen, John Mayer and Robben Ford, and jazz/fusion greats like Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Allan Holdsworth, Al Di Meola and John McLaughlin. Whichever direction pulls you, we’ll find top quality in it.

No electric guitar or amp yet? I’ll help you think it through, and renting an instrument is an option.