Mrs Brightside
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guitar lessons -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hey guys, we're in Chicago. I don't really have anything in mind to say. . . let's see where this goes. I just felt like saying hello to all of you. Matt Flynn is talking about teaching drum lessons. I used to teach guitar lessons. I had 40 students a week at one point. Now my students are growing up and moving all over the country for school and professions, and they show up at our shows ocassionally. Alot of them have started bands too. I miss teaching, I learned so much from it. My approach was to figure out what music my students were really into, and then base my lessons around those songs. I found it was the only way to get them to practice--to be really into what they were learning. I ended up getting exposed to alot of different styles and artists that way. In my latter teen years, I was mostly into instrumental music--mostly pretty out there stuff like Zappa. The lessons started exposing me to more mainstream music that my students were into--I started to value the economy of a good pop song. Through teaching, I wasn't only exposed to all of this music, I had to really get inside it, to figure all of the guitar parts. That education continued as I joined Kara's Flower's, who were rigorous disciples of the Beatles, and their approach. I still take lessons as a student when I can. On this tour I had the chance to get together with Jon Damian, who is a professor at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. He wrote a book called "Composing and Improvising for the Guitar" that I have been using for ideas for a while. Back in LA I had a lesson with Julian Coryell, who is not only a wicked guitarist, but great songwriter (check out his website). I still learn the most from putting on great records and playing along. I have the Beatles entire discograpy on my ipod right now, and I can send it through this little fender g-dec amp I have and play along. Sometime I just put my music library on shuffle, and will go from playing along with Charles Mingus to Slayer. I haven't been able to do much playing outside the shows lately because of my sore fingertips. The dry weather, and heavy schedule has caused my hands to crack and make it painful to play. Don't worry, it's getting better. Anyway, that's enough about me and my practice habits--bye everyone, hope to see you at a show soon. . .
