1. What exactly does FAQ stand for? Don’t worry about that, you’d really like the drums.
2. How much are lessons? You will have to call me for that.
3. How much practice do I need to do? Practice is not measured in minutes or hours, the musical equivalent of calories, whatever that might be, would be more appropriate. There are just too many variables, you could spend all day just wasting time or you could do 30 minutes of focused aggressive practice. You need to do as much good quality practice as possible.
4. I have small hands, is that a problem? No! If you have music in you it will come out. I saw a Mexican guy with no hands play with his feet.
4a. Eeeeek! What if I don’t have any music in me? No problem, I’ll show you how to fake it.
5. Do I need to read music? Not initially, although a familiarity with notation is very useful eventually.
6. Do you shout a lot? No, never.
7. Do I need my own guitar? Absolutely, yes.
8. Must I start on acoustic? No.
9. Do you teach many girls/women? Yes. I’m all for ‘chicks with picks’, there simply aren’t enough in this male dominated pastime, although it certainly is changing. If there is a bit of the rock chick in there that needs teasing out, I can help you become the strutting, preening, pouting Rock Goddess that you were always meant to be. How good would it feel to stuff it to the chaps for once?
10. Do you teach bass? My brief flirtation with bass tuition is now nothing but a golden memory of yesteryear (No).
11. I can’t find your email address, do you have one on the site? I don’t have one on here now, I used to have one but strangely I found that people who used email for initial contact never became students despite my best efforts. I just seemed to spend my time either answering really silly questions from timewasters or trying unsuccessfully to weedle fortunes from recently bereaved Nigerian princes.
12. Do you have a guitar I can borrow? I do, but only for the duration of the lesson. If you don’t want to bring yours to the lesson, you can always use one of mine.
13. How much is a guitar? The local shop do an ‘All in one box’ package for about £160. Electric guitar, amp etc, all in the box. If you want an acoustic, ask about the solid top Yamaha they have. it’s normally about £150 and sounds excellent. Prices may vary.
14. How many lessons do I need before I can play? Impossible to answer. Could you define ‘play’? What kind of practice do you intend to do? Some people never learn to play, others ask me this before I have even met them.
15. I want to learn a particular song, can you show me? I can…but the chances are it’s already on YouTube or somewhere similar. LickLibrary.com are excellent for song transcription DVDs, it’s a bit of a waste of a lesson because I’ll just go and check it out on YouTube and charge you for it a fragment at a time.
16. I’m thinking of applying to one of these ‘new fangled’ guitar colleges that I’ve seen, ACM, LCCM, ICMP etc. Can you give me a jump start? Yes, definitely, a couple of my fledglings have just scored distinctions in their fret board knowledge tests at one of them.
17. I am a total ‘guitard’, can you help me? I have built a business model around that very problem.
18. What do you call a musician with no girlfriend? Homeless, probably.
‘Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.’
-Voltaire.
