I have been
teaching guitar fulltime for 10 years and for over 25 years music
making has been part of my everyday life: playing, writing and recording songs
with friends, attending singing, music technology, jazz, folk, improvisation, performance
and song writing workshops, working as a PA to the organiser of the acoustic
stage at Solfest in Cumbria (which I also played on), playing at both my mum
and dad's 60th birthdays, performing at open mic and jamming nights and organising events at saltwell park bandstand.I started playing when I was 16 having bought my first amp and electric guitar
with money made from stacking jars of pickled onions on a supermarket shelf
during the summer holidays. After 6 months of hacking away at the strings i
decided to tune it. I learnt 3 chords from a book; A minor, C and E and wrote
my first song.
I never enjoyed music at school. We were made to read music and play scales to
a metronome on horrible electronic keyboards. A bad teacher can damage you for
life but I didn't even connect what we were doing at school with my own musical
activities at home: jamming with friends, figuring out songs by ear from vinyl
LPs and recording the results onto a shoebox cassette recorder. |