Become a more effective player and accompanist for yourself. Learn to better express yourself on the acoustic guitar. In this class you will strengthen your rhythmic approach, discover alternate tunings, and how to move back and forth between finger-style playing and picking, and use many different techniques—judiciously, creatively, and dynamically. This course features in-depth examination of techniques directed at improving your guitar fluency, tone, dynamics, and control—and when it comes to performing your songs—your imagination.

 

We will pay very close attention to some noteworthy expert performers: solo acoustic singer-songwriters who masterfully employ the acoustic guitar, exploiting and exploring the range of what this instrument can do to serve and deliver a song.  Such guitarist-songwriters as Richard Thompson, Shawn Colvin, and Patty Griffin.

 

We will talk about the elements of music, songs, and arranging.  Then we will get to work building a foundation for a song, while investigating ways of keeping an arrangement interesting, like changing up rhythm from section to section, all with the goal of creating compelling and nuanced ways of supporting the song as a solo performer.

 

In this class you will pick up the tricks and techniques of others (as well as come up with some of your own) and then put them to work in your own songs. The goal of this class is to help you reach a little deeper into an expanded bag of tricks to make your own solo acoustic arrangements stronger, more interesting, and also more satisfying for you.

 

Prerequisite: You need to be a songwriter & acoustic guitar player and consider yourself a performing songwriter or have aspirations thereof; and you also need to be able to play some guitar like you mean it.