Music Performance with Barney C.

Hi! I'm Barney Cockburn, born and raised in Austin, Texas. Music inspires every aspect of my life- from my faith to my marriage and everything in between. Everyone speaks music, and because of this, I believe that it has certain powers pertaining to the mind and soul that it, and only it, can access and stimulate. Growing up in Austin, I picked up the guitar at church at 9 years old. I began giving lessons through my church until I graduated high school and left for Texas State University, where I continued to give lessons at the University. I also played in 4 bands in my 5 years at Texas State University, and have played in 3 more since graduating. I now live in New Braunfels, Texas with my wife and two dogs- a town lush with professional musicians, and work as a hired gun performing with many bands around the Texas Hill Country. My philosophy on teaching is a bit different than most others. I believe that developing your own style whilst learning is key to maintaining passion, discipline and progress in your playing. And maintaining these three things is the best (and only, if you ask me) way to maintain a life-long love for music and make sure that you never grow tired of it. Identifying your influences (and their influences) and pinpointing exactly what techniques, sounds, theory and styles they use is very focal to my approach. Inside the focal point of identifying your influences, their influences, and learning the riffs, solos and licks that personify their playing and style, we will be studying their tone, vibrato, phrasing, chord progression, techniques and other aspects of their playing to identify what exactly about their playing is what drives you and makes you want to be a better guitar player. It will also help you to learn the instrument in general. Early in your playing, we will keep it simple. We will hover around the basics in your influences, and through learning some of their more iconic riffs, we'll learn your basic chords and scales. But as you progress, we will then develop these aspects that you enjoy in others, and begin to apply them to your playing to develop your own style. We will get more into technical aspects of the guitar and deeper into music theory. This all, of course, will be catered exactly to who you are, what you want, (your goals as a player) your improvement and how your style is developing. Come with me on this musical journey of developing your guitar playing, and you will not be disappointed! Thanks!