Guitar with Chris D.

Ever since I began teaching guitar in the halls of high school, my focus has been on helping you, the student, achieve your goals. I grew up in a musical home, played piano for a year or two, and finally fell in love with the guitar at 14. Before long, I was teaching high schoolers the latest Green Day hits, showing business men how to play their favorite Beatles tracks, and helping college students break down songs by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. By now, you may have figured out that I'm primarily a rock/pop guitarist, but I'm also very comfortable teaching blues, r&b, funk, metal, country, and jazz. The only major style I can't help you with is classical guitar, which I love but don't have the training for! Here's what I am trained in: while at Berklee College of Music, I focused on skills that would make me a better teacher - Performance, Ear Training, Music Business, and Private Instruction. I continued to teach throughout my four years there, and the more I learned, the more I was able to pass on to my students. When I'm not in lessons, I'm playing guitar with my band UnderFire at Chicago venues like Hard Rock, and working as a videographer and video editor, filming, producing, and editing musical instruction, performance, and promotional videos for clients like Berklee guitar faculty Jon Finn and Scott Tarulli, touring artists like Nili Brosh and Pinn Panelle, and companies like Ibanez Guitars. Through these experiences, I've gained insights into the music industry that I'd like to share with you to help you on your journey - wherever it leads you. *** Lesson Details *** It seems obvious that the easiest way to learn new skills would be to use something you already like. So why do we learn our favorite songs without looking for the patterns inside that draw us to them, or spend our time doing mechanical musical exercises that benefit but exhaust us? It doesn't have to be that way. I love to use songs as a teaching tool, because it helps engage students while also giving them a practical example of musical concepts in action - melody, harmony, lyrics, rhythm, form, arrangement, sound design, mix - and the interaction of all of those elements working together to create the music my students love. Before our first lesson, I'll use your goals, needs, and musical interests to design a lesson plan for you - tell me as much as you can about yourself and where you want to go in the student questionnaire so I can set a good course for you, and then I'll tweak it once we've spent some time together. We may be honing your skills as a composer by studying the arrangement of notes within and between instruments, and the interplay of melody and harmony, or we may be training you to be a master soloist by focusing on the nuances of tone, inflection, and technique. Whatever path you choose, there will be certain skills you need to learn to progress. With many students, I use MI's Guitar Fretboard Workbook as a practical guide to mastering the repeating patterns that connect all the notes on the fretboard, and NGW's Theory For The Contemporary Guitarist as an efficient way to understand the way those notes weave together into the chords, scales, and arpeggios that make up the music we learn together. The tools you and I use may be different depending on your personal goals, but I will encourage you to study theory and fretboard knowledge if it will help you reach those goals. *** Studio Equipment *** 2 Amplifiers, Recording Equipment, Audio and Video Monitors, Picks, Cables, Tuners, Metronomes, Music Stands, Library of Instructional Books/Videos *** Specialties *** Rock, Pop, Blues, Funk, Metal, Jazz, Music Theory, Ear Training.