Lessons
Lessons in classical guitar, flamenco, electric improvisation, and composition. Online worldwide via Zoom.
Approach
My approach to teaching grew out of an unusual path — piano from the age of six, guitar from nine, and decades of work across classical, flamenco, and progressive electric traditions. Each tradition teaches something the others cannot, and that combined sensibility informs every lesson.
Posture before pressure
Almost every problem — tension, fatigue, lack of clarity, speed walls — traces back to alignment. Headstock at eye level, fretboard at roughly forty‑five degrees, four contact points with the body, the elbow hanging rather than pointing out. We sort this first.
Slow practice is the road to fast playing
The road is a thousand kilometres long, walked slowly. Most players take a right turn after two hundred metres and stop at a wall. Practising slowly with full attention is not a chore to be endured until you are good enough to skip it — it is the actual work, and it never stops being the work.
Press lightly
The left thumb does not clamp; it balances. The fingers come down close to the fret, on the tip, and stay close to the fretboard between notes. Tension in the left hand is almost always inherited from tension in the right — so we listen to both at once.
Three voices, not one
From early on, students should hear the bass, the inner voices, and the melody as separate lines. A piece is not a stream of notes; it is several conversations happening at the same time, and the player’s job is to keep them distinct.
Range, not narrowness
Time spent inside styles a student thinks they will dislike pays back tenfold. Listening to and playing jazz, flamenco, blues, popular music, and traditions outside one’s first interest builds an internal reference library that nothing else can give.
What is offered
Format
Begin lessons
To begin lessons, send an email to hartguitarinternational@gmail.com.