Thinking about private guitar lessons? What kind of guitar should I purchase? How much should I spend on my first guitar? These are questions that come from all of my beginning students. The photograph attached to this blog is my 1973 Gibson J 45 deluxe. It was a pawn shop rescue: it needed some major repair. But one of my friends purchased it from a pawnshop in Nashville, Tenn. Got the J45 into a shop, repaired it and sold it to me. It still has some cracks and scratches, but has...

Lately I have been adding a lot of new students to my music lesson schedule. Starting with 5 string banjo, guitar, voice, keyboards and mandolin, it seems like everyone is ready to get back into private music lessons. One of the most asked questions I get is: " how much time should I spend practicing each day?" That's a good question and I will answer with the following: With a student roster of 25 students with ages ranging from 6 to 57 and above, all of our schedules are...

Learning how to sing properly takes work. For those of us, who sing in bands, churches, choirs, and teach, we can forget how important proper breathing exercises matter. Singing and voice lessons can help you reach your musical goals. Some topics I cover in my private voice lessons are: 1. Singing the vowels. A E I O U. Singing them in a major or minor scale, will help you understand how words sound and feel when we sing them. 2. Learning how to breathe properly when singing a song....

I was asked this question from the mom of a possible student. She was wondering if her 6 year old son was too young to start guitar lessons. In my opinion, children can start learning and understanding music as early as 5 months old. One of my friends is the director of Music Together / Colombia Ridge here in the Camas/ Washougal WA area. We've had quite a few conversations about early musical development in pre schoolers. She and Music Together believe that there is music inside all of us,...

This is a picture of one of my favorite guitars: 1983 Gibson ES 335. Made famous by the Doobie Brothers, Eric Clapton during his Cream era, and Larry Carlton among others. This guitar can cover rock, blues, country and jazz. Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters has his own custom model. Gibson gets a lot of bad raps on the construction of their high end guitars. I agree, to a certain point. But if you find a good guitar teacher and take some lessons, the guitar shouldn't matter. The...