Wednesday, September 30, 2009

The 70s

Just had dinner with the wife at an Italian pizzeria in Woodland Hills - good deep dish pie, try it at Paoli's. Anyways, we were talking about what music our parents listened to. Mine - not sure, but they bought a few vinyl records like Pink Floyd's The Wall, ABBA, Village People, ELO etc... not that they listened to them much, I think my brothers and I pretty much took them to the basement and listened to these records, fascinated by them, or anything we put on the turntable. Melinda's parents listened to Alice Cooper, Zappa... neither were into the Beatles, hmmm. Not sure why, but what a time the 70s were for music. I was born in '75, but boy the tunes resonated with me, as I discovered them growing up. If you think about how much music has changed, or not changed in the last 10 years, 1999-2009...then think about how music transformed in the ten year period from '69-'79, its amazing. You went from Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, psychedelic music, and Sgt. Peppers to Van Halen in just under 10 years. Hell, by '78 disco was in, and Deep Purple was broken up, if not just considered dinosaurs.

Music hasn't changed that much recently, just seems to be more of it.

Blog number 1 - Music Lessons

Hello folks,

I have been teaching guitar lessons again. Its been a while, but I have started up again this past year. I find the right teaching situations to be very satisfying. With recent stints teaching at the National Guitar Workshop, Duquesne University's Summer Guitar Workshop, and now at the Hollywood School of Rock, it has been great to be teaching enthusiastic, passionate students - rather than baby sit. I have been having great luck, getting good results, by teaching music as if it were a language, building my student's vocabulary one word, phrase, and sentance at a time. Pretty soon, I'll post some video lessons. Till then!