Kia ora everyone! I've been playing guitar since I was 13 years old. I'd always loved music and singing but I never really thought about learning to play an instrument until my friend Andrew Little (we're still mates) asked me to go to guitar lessons with him. I tagged along because I liked him and thought it could be cool. My first lesson with my teacher Peter Thwaites (we keep in touch even now) was a disaster as far as I was concerned because I couldn't even get my fingers to go on the fretboard properly! I had to use my right hand to put my left hand fingers in the right position to play a D chord for Yellow Submarine. My dad found out I was having lessons and told me to ask my teacher to teach me classical. I asked Peter if he could teach me classical and he said yes. So, I started learning all kinds of guitar styles and classical guitar as well. Fast forward three years and Peter and I both sat our Grade 7 Trinity College of London guitar exams at the same time. I ended up attending Victoria university in Wellington where I studied with William Bower. A couple of years afterwards I gained my LTCL with Distinction in Classical Guitar Performance. I first started teaching when I was 17 and still attending high school. I guess I've been teaching guitar ever since then. I taught at several colleges across the Bay of Plenty in New Zealand, and I also taught for a few months in Dubai at an international school during a five-month residency gig I had there. My first foray into online teaching began in 2016 when I was living and touring in China. I started the NBN Guitar YouTube channel to help people that couldn't access a classical guitar teacher in their area. Now, I've started this Skool community to help people that are at or near the beginning stages of playing guitar. I love virtually all styles of guitar, but my main areas of expertise and joy are: - Classical - Metal - Rock - Arrangements I've got three sons, and my wife is from South Korea. She's also a very fine musician and we toured the world together as a duo for many years before settling down in New Zealand to have kids.

Hi everyone! I just did our first livestream to 0 members! That's probably a good thing because I was still working out my multi-cam setup. Please let me know good days and times for you guys for a live catchup. I live in New Zealand so please take that into consideration.

Does your guitar ever look at you like this after you’ve tried to play it? To avoid this reproachful glance try some or all of these techniques: Preparation (hovering fingers above where they’re needed for the next chord) Guiding (keeping a finger on the same string when moving to the next chord) Pivoting (keeping a finger in the same location as others move around it when changing chords) Do you know all three of these?

With classical guitar your fingers are supposed to be perpendicular to the frets and your thumb is in the center of the neck. In contrast with rock guitar they tend to loop the thumb over the top of the neck and their fingers are slanted. Any comments on which of these I should choose?

In these three photos you can see me starting with an E minor but then keeping the middle finger on the 5th string while I pivot to having the ring finger on the 5th string. I found that this gives me more stability than simply lifting up all the fingers. I never would have thought of this had I not seen the pivot video in this channel.