Guitar Playing - Who Were Your 3 teachers?

[david]

My brother got me started with strumming and chords when I was maybe 8? In high school I tried to pick up on finger-picking via "drop the needle" on some James Taylor and CSN songs. Then a few classical lessons. Finally some lessons from local teacher/performer Mark Hanson. There have been many others, but these are the most influential. Who do you credit most with your playing abilities/style?

[Deleted]

Chris Jones, Orrin Star, and this dork-ass who turned out to be a disappointing friend, but great guitar player, Vincent Muehter. These were in the past 19 years. Before that, I was mostly self-taught. In the mid-1990s, I spent a great deal of time learning how to play old-time backup with this guy, who played acoustic guitar on this John Gorka song, among others, and a couple of outstanding fiddle players.

[RickW]

I had some friends who played. Got some theory in high school. Couple of years off playing bars and dances really did it. Then two years of classical. Recently, my composition instructor.

[Russell Letson]

Miss Diamond, the junior-high music and piano teacher, oversaw my halting progress through the first third or so of the Alfred's Basic Guitar Method Book in 1956.



After that it was mostly figuring out tunes from sheet music and PP&M and Joan Baez folios and Oak tab collections (Happy Traum, Stefan Grossman). A college classmate showed me how the chords in a key went together (a useful but not exclusively guitaristic bit of theory), and another taught me the only scale I ever learned (but have never used in a tune).

The actual teachers came a lot later--lots of workshops, and sometimes the lessons stuck: Harvey Reid, Sean Blackburn, Ted Conner, Pat Donohue, Mike Dowling, Steve Abshire, Tom Mitchell, Raymond Kane, among many others.

I've probably learned the most from the local guys with whom I've played for the last 22 years: Mike Thole and Dan Preston, who invited me to get in up front of audiences with them and from whom I've been dragged through repertory from folk to swing to honky-tonk to Pink Floyd and Nine Inch Nails. (They also got me to sing after 30 years of stage fright, so blame them.)

That's more than three, but then it takes a metropolis to teach me anything.

[coachdoc]

I have been extraordinarily lucky to have 3 teachers, each of whom have become dear friends. First, Don Zepp. The best unknown musician I have ever met.. Introduced me to Doc Watson and MJH. Don is the master of folk guitar and banjo styles and deep groaner puns. Next Jack McGann. Finger stylist par excellence and whimsical humorist, eventually house mate and intro to some amazing pickers. There were mornings, um, afternoons, l would wake up to Paul Siebel or Bonnie Raitt picking in the kitchen. Then finally Eddie Pennington, the finest picker and person I know., who introduced me to the versatility of the thumb pick and universality of Muhlenberg County music. I have been blessed.

[millring]

My brother got me started with strumming and chords when I was maybe 10? In high school I tried to pick up on finger-picking via "drop the needle" on some James Taylor and Paul Simon songs. Then a few classical lessons in college. Finally some lessons from local teacher/performer Joel Mabus. There have been many others, but only in the sense of learning this song from so-and-so and that song from so-and-so.[/quote]

[lar]

I've not had lessons or any kind of formal training. I too got started with Alfred's Basic Guitar Method. I bought it during my freshman year of college. I was sick of studying and decided to try to learn how to play my grandmothers old guitar. I think it was the second week of school. The next year I started my first band and have been at it ever since.

Over the years I've had the great good fortune to work with a lot of players who were far more skilled than I was. Nearly all of them were very generous with their time and knowledge. I learned a lot from each of them.

The only real music training I've had was in the high school chorus. Mrs. Dasher made us sing intervals (1, 3, 5, 3, 1) for hours. But she never explained what we were doing or why we were doing it. She didn't even have a name for the exercise. It wasn't until many years later when I was trying to figure out how to sing harmony that I realized I could hear a 3rd and a 5th because Mrs. Dasher's class.

[Marshall]

Me, myself, and I.

[drlj]

I took a few lessons as a kid and hated them. It was the Mel Bay spend 3 weeks on the first string era. I can't think of anything I learned from the lessons other than that was not the way I wanted to go. I had several friends who played and we figured things out and showed each other.
I discovered Homespun Tapes early in their life and I got a series done by Dan Crary that opened things up a lot for me. Basically, though, it has been just me figuring it out and gleaning what I can from other players. I play a lot of chords I can't identify but I have a tendency to be able to figure it out.

[Cosmic Wonder]

The best single lesson I've had was a masters class with John Knowles. A gifted, kind, enthusiastic, and giving soul.

Took lessons on and off for a year or so with Eric Skye. I like the guy, and he plays well, but I don't think I improved much. It was a weird dynamic, not his fault, but I'd get nervous trying to play for him.

I think the best most fun thing was years ago when Kate Power and Steve Einhorn owned Artichoke Music. Kate ran a song circle every Saturday that was inclusive and just a ball to okay in. Playing with others was fun.

Mike

[Dub]

I've only had one actual guitar teacher and that was after I'd been playing for twenty-five years. As a child I'd taken lessons on piano (1 yr), violin (2 yrs), and trumpet (3 yrs with some trombone in the mix) so I understood music in a general sense. Put it all down through high school because girls, beer, rock 'n' roll, cars, etc. After all, it was the late 1950s.

Bought a $20 Stella my first semester in college and a roommate knew some guitar but nothing I thought was useful. He owned a Fender electric but didn't know much. Then I saw a college professor in Des Moines perform folk songs in a little coffee house. I think I t was the first time I'd ever seen anyone play guitar through an entire song in person. I was fascinated and asked how he'd learned to play thinking there must have been the dreaded lessons and practice involved somewhere.

He said he just bought a book that showed some chords and put them to song he wanted to sing. That was probably the most important lesson of any kind I've ever had. My idea of music was spending years with lessons and boring excersizes and being forced to learn music I didn't even want to hear let alone play. That opened up my life. The idea that I could do anything I wanted by getting some information and start trying. Who knew?

I did as he suggested. I got a book that showed first position chords in a few keys and started applying them to songs. I'd attend "hootenannies" and watch to see what chords other people were using. I started trying to pick up stuff from recordings learning some simple runs and licks to use between chords. I was on the way.

I got past The Kingston Trio, The Weavers, Pete Seeger, Woody, Oscar Brand, etc. and began going after Brownie McGhee, Big Bill, Lead Belly, and Rev Gary Davis. I was convinced that real folk performers were self taught and by gum that's what I was going to do. Of course this meant my teacher was someone who didn't know how to play.

Everything I played was through memorization. It was years before I could hear and anticipate changes in songs I'd never played or heard before. I'd pick up tunes and technique watching other players at bluegrass festival jams and attend all the live performances I could to try to catch what people were doing. I was embarrassed to ask people how they played something because I figured it was stuff I should already know.

I finally took lessons for a time in the 1980s from a local jazz player, Art Erickson. A lot of it was more theory than technique but got me using a lot more interesting chords and sight reading melody lines.

Since then I've used some video material. The first was probably Marcel Dadi then Thom Bresh and Buster B. Jones. Now YouTube and the Net have more free tips than I will ever absorb. Still, I keep on plugin' away at it.

[godotwaits]

Well, I dare say, I'm probably the only one around who can lay claim to have studied with Sal Salvador. About a year or so. To use a Harry Chapin line.."the lesson hadn't gotten very far.." Oak Publications! Remember them? And Bob Zaidman at the Guitar Study Center in NYC back when Paul Simon owned it.

[Doug]

In HS I took lessons from Larry a music grad student at Rollins.  He taught me a lot of guitar theory that I had no use for but as the years went by all the things I learned came to be useful.

Then a lot of years self teaching and swapping stuff with other pickers.

Took a lesson from Roy Bookbinder with Tom and Ken about 10 yrs ago.

[Deleted]

Nobody's citing Esteban....

[fauxmaha]

I'd mention a few names, but don't want to embarrass anyone.

[Deleted]

The only one anyone could possibly of heard of would be Dave Smyth who always plays with Paul Shaffer whenever he returns to Thunder Bay. Dave taught me about modes. The world became my oyster.

[Don Clark]

Aug 24, 2017 7:50:25 GMT -5 Marshall said:

Me, myself, and I.

+1

Edit - I take that back.....the late Mary Brett was my instructor at the Westport School of Music for my first year of classical studies. She helped me get it together with my right and left hand positions, the practice disciplines, and a few pieces of classical music plus Mauro Guiliani's exercises and Segovia's scales. My year in the guitar program at the University of Hartford's Hartt School was all what I got out of it. Ear training, a guitar ensemble class. My private teacher that year was as useless as tits on a bull. Mainly an arrogant exterior sphincter Anu (nicer way to say asshole), who would just play my pieces for me, tell me how much better he played them than me, then get mad and walk out if I didn't lavish him with praise.

[TKennedy]

Mostly guys in the dorm that knew one more chord than I did and Jerry Silverman's "Folksingers Guitar Guide" and some other books as well as lots of listening.

Banjo was Pete Seeger's book and Pete Wernick's book and a couple of clinics.

When my right hand went bad and I could only really play with my thumb I switched to trying to learn jazz guitar and had a great teacher by the great name of Mel Lamar. He
Is now 85 and still playing. He was a professional jazz guitarist in the Milwaukee area in the 50's and 60's and is just a great player.
I find that what he shows me in one hour takes me about three months to incorporate smoothly into my playing.

Mel gigs with us and he makes us smile on every song.

He is on the right in the picture.

[Rob Hanesworth]

No one, yet.

[Hobson]

It's not 3, it's 4. The first one was a friend. We listened to records and figured out chords together. I took lessons for about a year from a guy who played country and used the Mel Bay books. The piano lessons that I took during college helped my reading. Playing for a community chorus for the past 12 years has really improved my reading and forced me to learn some jazz chords too. Our director is a rarity, a pianist who knows chord structures.