What Styles of Guitar Playing Can You Learn?
Stuart teaches most styles of guitar music including pop, blues, rock, metal, jazz, fusion and classical. You don’t need to decide on any one style in order to get started.
Many students are happy to be led and see what styles they find most enjoyable as the lessons progress.
Pop
Pop music has been around since the 1950s. Since then a vast body of popular songs have been written and recorded, spanning every decade.
Whoever your favourite artist or songwriter is, you can learn to play their songs. You’ll learn the fundamentals of good guitar technique, chord vocabulary and the essentials of rhythm and timing.
These skills will give you everything you need to start playing the songs you know and love.
Blues
Blues is one of the most important styles of twentieth century music. It’s a crucial component of almost all modern pop and rock. It’s also a lot of fun to play!
In your guitar lessons, you can learn the all-important 12-bar blues sequence along with many musical embellishments and chord substitutions.
You can also learn how to solo. Blues soloing is essential to performing blues music, and is a key component of rock, pop and jazz soloing.
For almost all popular music performers, a solid grounding in blues is essential.
Rock and Metal
If you’re interested in playing rock or metal, you can learn everything you need from Stuart.
Both rock and metal demand far greater technical ability than most pop or blues. You’ll learn how to model your technique on the best rock and metal guitar players, and how to continue to refine your skills in the future.
Guitar soloing is a central part of rock and metal. So, you’ll learn the essential scales and arpeggios for these styles, as well as how to use them authentically.
Jazz
If you would like to play jazz then you’ll start your journey with chords; in particular the various types of 7ths which are ubiquitous in jazz.
You’ll immediately start learning simple jazz tunes; usually learning to play them in more than one way.
You’ll then learn how to develop these renditions by using extended chords, altered chords and adding bass-lines to chord progressions.
When you’re ready to start soloing, you’ll learn all the arpeggios you need in order to negotiate jazz tunes. You’ll also learn authentic musical vocabulary to play over major and minor ii-V-Is.
Fusion
Fusion is a hybrid of rock and jazz music. It’s a large category of music, but one which is very popular among seasoned guitarists.
Fusion music can lean more towards the jazz end of the spectrum, such as the music of Mike Stern or John Scofield. Or it can lean more towards rock such as the music of Greg Howe and Frank Gambale.
It could also be said to include sophisticated blues guitarists like Robben Ford.
Whichever region of the fusion music spectrum appeals to you, you’ll learn all the necessary scales and arpeggios, and develop a good grounding in both jazz and rock music.
Classical
Stuart teaches the ABRSM classical guitar syllabus from grades 1 to 8. As you progress through the grades you’ll learn classical composition arranged for guitar from different musical eras.
Your learning will be supplemented by technical exercises, scale and arpeggio work, sight reading and aural training.
To take guitar grades 6-8 you will also learn music theory grade 5. This is a requirement for these higher grades. Music theory is enormously helpful in making sense of the music you play.
Booking a Guitar Lesson
To book a guitar lesson with Stuart, or to ask a question about taking lessons, send an email using the button below: