Courses

Have you always wanted to play the guitar but were afraid it would be too hard to learn? This course will help make guitar playing easy and fun. At a comfortable pace, students will learn basic chords and right-hand accompaniment patterns and apply these techniques to easy folk and popular songs—including songs written by John Fogerty, Carole King, and more. The course will also lead students through a study of elementary music reading on the instrument, which will allow them to acquire basic musicianship skills with the goal of playing simple melodies on the guitar from standard musical notation. This study will let students pick up a piece of sheet music and accurately follow the directions found there in terms of form, chord symbols, and meter. We will also cover how to tune with and without a guitar tuner, how to change a string, how to use a pick, and how and when to use a capo. Toward the end of the course, students will form small groups in the class and play easy ensemble pieces together.