Seamus M  
Instruments: Guitar, Bass Guitar, Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar
Styles: Pop, Rock, Blues, Electronic, Punk, Avant-garde

I have about two years of teaching experience, all of which has been done out of the recording studio I worked out of. I've taught students of all ages, ranging from seven to seventy-two! My teaching is less about learning to mimic songs and it's more about learning how the guitar/bass work from a music theory perspective. I like to call my take on theory "practical theory," meaning that I really focus on teaching all of the basic modes and how they work together so that my students can start improvising and writing - the two musical activities that I find to be the most mentally stimulating and rewarding. I find that theory is a wonderful tool for streamlining the writing process - it points you in the right direction. Other than that, I teach many exercises that strengthen mechanical ability.

Firstly, I teach the student the anatomy of the guitar and how to tune it, along with how to hold a pick. After that, I start teaching students how to identify notes on the fretboard. When they have a good grasp on that, I start to teach the basic modes, such as the major, minor, pentatonic, blues, lydian, mixolydian, and dorian modes, and while they are learning these, I give them exercises that use these modes to increase the student's mechanical skill, such as going up and down the scales in patterns of three/four/etc.