The Green Space Lesson Series – Live 1 On 1 Lessons with Sean
What Is A 1-on-1 Green Room Lesson?
I’ve created this series specifically for students who are in discovery mode. They are just learning to speak the language but want some more general guidance to go further. The Green Room Lesson series is for those students.
These lessons can be totally customized to your path. It’s much more chill than the hyper focused specialty course series I offer. The green room lesson series is in essence to get you prepared for the actual stage or just the next stage of your development… wherever that may be in your musical landscape.
1-on-1 Green Room Series Lessons Include
- Weekly 30 , 45 and 60 minute lessons
- Lessons are using Zoom
- Hi-definition audio and video
- Lesson recordings permitted
- All materials used in the lesson are provided at the end in PDF form
How Will I Learn? What Will I Learn?
Balance
Learning new songs can efficiently aggregate many concepts in a meaningful way. I show students the finer aspects of playing the song and the inner workings from a music language perspective. Many times, the student makes suggestions. At other times, I will make tune suggestions to give new perspective and insight into various melodic, harmomic, or rhythmic aspects of music. I have been teaching for over 20 years and have an extensive library of songs that span pop, rock, jazz, blues, hip hop, latin jazz, r&b, soul, reggae, metal, fusion, etc. Areas of focus here:
- general sense of reading music and song form
- rhythmic and melodic accuracy
- attention to detail: dynamics, articulations, tone, etc
- insight into harmony, melody, or rhythm that make the song memorable
Awareness
Whatever song or exercise we might be playing, I aim to instill fretboard awareness in the student and not simply memorize music. Fretboard command, combined with solid rhythmic footing goes a long way in
- Learning songs faster
- writing more sophisticated songs
- listening and responding on the fly in playing situations
- bringing out your own personality in any music situation
Expression Is All In The Hands
Expression is paramount in any language to getting ideas across. The guitar is capable of a multitude of expressions. I will work with you on practicing techniques that are appropriate for your music of choice. These include:
- fretting, sliding, bending, hammers, pulls, trills, and vibrato
- strumming, picking, muting, raking, harmonics
- finger picking, slapping, and tremelo bar use
It Don’t Mean A Thing…
… If it ain’t got that swing. Playing music in time is as much, if not more important in sounding musical than simply playing all the right notes. Many guitarists haven’t developed a solid sense of time, feel, and tempo. I will work with you to expand your inner sense of groove. Whether it’s open chord, fingerstyle, fast funk picking or lines, syncopated rhythms, jazz chord comping, or a jangly r&b motifs, connecting them with being in time is part of being a well rounded guitarist.
Speak Music
Music traditions of songwriting, arranging, and improvisation require
a solid understanding of the basic principles of melody, rhythm, and
harmony. Understanding these musical elements are the essence of
speaking the language to others. They also require imagination, emotion, and a willingness to take risks. We will look at some underlying theory of these musical elements as well as the mindset that goes with delivering musical ideas clearly.
Many Of the best lessons I’ve given have come from good questions asked by the student. Some of these questions include:
- I’ve been working on soloing for a while, how can I expand my vocabulary?
- I’m interested in playing a specific style of music, can you show me how to start out?
- I don’t know the notes on the fretboard that well, what can I do to improve?
- I think I should learn more theory, but have no clue where to start or how to apply it to my playing, can you help?
- How can I work on improving my left and right hand technique?
- Can you show me how to play my favourite songs?
- I’d like to write better chord progressions and melodies for my songs, but don’t know where to start, any suggestions?
