THOMAS - Acoustic guitar tutor - New York
1st lesson free
THOMAS - Acoustic guitar tutor - New York

THOMAS's email address and phone number have been validated.

THOMAS

  • Rate $46
  • Response 1h
THOMAS - Acoustic guitar tutor - New York

$46/h

1st lesson free

Contact

1st lesson free

1st lesson free

  • Acoustic Guitar
  • Electric guitar
  • Bass guitar
  • Ukulele

Learn Guitar with Thomas: Patient, Personal Lessons for Every Age and Skill Level, Starting Today!

  • Acoustic Guitar
  • Electric guitar
  • Bass guitar
  • Ukulele

Lesson location

    • At THOMAS's house: New York

    • online

    • at your home or a public place : will travel up to 80 mi. from New York

About THOMAS

I teach guitar by comparison. Most problems on the instrument are hard to fix while you only have one version of a sound to work with, so in a lesson I often play the same thing two ways and ask which one you hear. A beginner might compare a chord fretted with fingertips standing up against the same chord with the fingers laid flat, and the difference is usually one string buzzing. An advanced player might compare two picking patterns on a fast run and decide which one stays even as the tempo climbs. The point is that you learn to hear the difference yourself. Once you can do that, you no longer need me to tell you whether something is right.

I watch the hands more than the notes. When something breaks down, I look for the exact moment it starts to fall apart, because that moment tells us what to work on. A common frustration goes like this: you can play a chord change slowly, but the moment you speed up, the second chord collapses. I would play just the transition, both chords with a silent beat between them, and watch for the thing that goes wrong. Often it is one finger lifting before the other has landed, or the thumb sliding behind the neck. I isolate that single motion, practice it with the last beat silent, and only then bring the rhythm back. The same method works differently for other students. A returning player who has not picked up a guitar in years might start with a song they already know, played with the hand moved to a different position on the neck, so the familiar tune gives the fingers something to hold onto while posture and pressure are rebuilt. A teenager who wants one specific song might find that the hard part is only four bars long, and we would learn those four bars first and let the rest follow from them.

If one explanation doesn't land, I change the way I'm getting it across rather than repeating myself louder. If words about pick angle aren't working, I'll tap the pick against a string and ask you to tell me which sound changes as the angle shifts. If fretting pressure is the issue, I'll have you press until a note buzzes and then ease off slowly until it clears, so the threshold is found by your own fingers instead of by a number I give you. For rhythm, I might clap the pattern first, then play it with the picking hand on open strings, then add the fretting hand back in. Sometimes an analogy does the job: I think of a chord shape like a handshake, where too tight is uncomfortable and too loose means nothing actually connects. Patience, for me, looks like going through the same passage five different ways in one lesson, because I would rather you find one approach that you can reproduce at home than hand you a correct answer that disappears the next day.

Lessons are meant to make you more independent, not more dependent on me. I want you to leave each session with a question you can ask yourself while you practice, such as "which chord sounds dull?" or "where does the buzz start?" Many students begin recording themselves on a phone and listening back, and I encourage that, because the recording becomes a second opinion when I'm not in the room. Over time I give less direction and more prompts, and I often ask you to play something wrong on purpose so you can hear exactly what the mistake sounds like. A typical lesson starts with a few minutes on one chord to settle the hands, moves into a focused comparison on whatever is causing trouble, and ends with a real piece of music, usually one you chose, played through with a few stopping points where we listen back and decide what to keep.

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About the lesson

  • All Levels
  • English

All languages in which the lesson is available :

English

I teach guitar by starting with sound and working back toward the hands. Before we settle on a chord shape or a scale pattern, you will hear what the music is doing and learn to recognize it. A complete beginner might start with one open chord, strummed slowly, then lift one finger at a time and listen for which string goes dull or buzzes. That small test shows exactly which finger is at fault, so the first chord stops being a vague struggle and becomes a question with a clear answer. If you are returning to the guitar after years away, your fingers will be stiff and your calluses gone, so we begin more gently: ten minutes of open strings, a single chord change played back and forth, and attention on how much pressure you really need. Nothing is rushed, and nobody is expected to already know how to read the instrument.

For students who already play, I spend a lot of time on the fretboard as a set of relationships rather than a set of memorized boxes. We take a song you know, find its bass note, then locate the same note an octave higher, a fifth away, and a third away, until the neck starts to make sense as a map. From there we move into improvisation with deliberate limits. You might be asked to solo over a backing track using only two strings, or only the notes of a three-note cell, and to make every choice count: where to hold a note, where to slide, where to leave a gap. These limits matter because open-ended soloing often turns into running patterns you have practiced without knowing why they sound good. When the options are reduced, you have to listen, decide and commit, and that is where your own phrasing begins to form.

When a passage falls apart, I do not want you to play the whole thing again and hope it holds. You might recognize this: you can play a run slowly, but the moment you push the tempo, the same three notes collapse. In a lesson, we find the exact place where it begins to break, usually one change of string or one shift of position, and isolate only that transition. I often separate the picking hand from the fretting hand so each can be checked on its own. Then I change the rhythm of the passage, turning it into dotted notes or placing an accent on a different beat, which reveals whether the trouble is timing, coordination or finger placement. When there are two possible fingerings, we try both at the same tempo and compare them by feel and by sound. The one that is quieter in the hand and cleaner in the ear usually wins, and you learn to test for that yourself.

Lessons are shaped around the person in front of me. With children, I use call-and-response rhythm games, clapping and muting patterns, and short turns that keep attention without turning practice into a chore. Teenagers often arrive with a song they already love, and we take it apart into its hook, its chord underneath and its fill, then learn the structure before the details. Adults who have limited time get a short written plan with three specific things to work on each week and a reason for each one, so practice has direction. Across every level, my aim is that you leave each lesson able to tell me what went wrong in a passage, what you will try next, and how you will know it worked. Over time you will need me less, and that independence is what I care about most.

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Rates

Rate

  • $46

Pack rates

  • 5h: $230
  • 10h: $460

free lessons

This first lesson offered with THOMAS will allow you to get to know each other and clearly specify your needs for your next lessons.

  • 1hr

online

  • $46/h

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All Levels

All languages in which the lesson is available

English

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This first lesson offered with THOMAS will allow you to get to know each other and clearly specify your needs for your next lessons.

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