An Overview of Community Guitar

Photo: Tatsiana Kezha

Community Guitar is the fruit of over a decade of experimentation that began with a single question:

What would my teaching practice look like if it were really oriented toward helping people develop the skills to jam and then gave them the opportunity to do so?

Community Guitar tackles both of these—the opportunity to jam as well as the skills to do so—together because it's very hard to address them separately. Without the opportunity to make music with others, people often have no compelling reason to develop the skills that are called for in a jam setting. But without those skills it’s really hard to participate in a jam. It's a vicious cycle and one that most adult, recreational guitarists are stuck in. Community Guitar recognizes the power of that downward spiral and puts it to work, but spinning in the other direction:

By providing the chance to meet and play, we give people a reason to practice and a clear focus for their effort.
With practice comes skill, which makes for better jams and more fun together.

Now that's a whirlpool you want to get caught in!

How do we do it? Through high quality group instruction built around an eclectic repertoire of songs that really lend themselves well to jamming. Unlike some group classes, in our case the group setting itself is a tremendous asset. If you want to learn to play with others, why not learn to play with others?

Community Guitar classes are offered at three levels of ability so participants can work with people who are ready to tackle more or less the same challenges. But because we teach most of our songs at all three levels, everyone shares enough common ground to dive in when someone hosts a jam outside the class setting. After all, a successful jam comes down to just three things:

The right songs.
The right skills.
The right people.

Community Guitars brings all three together to create a learning, playing environment that offers unique benefits for both guitar teachers and students. Let us give you a quick snapshot of those benefits by following one of the links below: