"This testimonial might only be insightful to guitar novices. As of this writing, I’ve played guitar for just under 10 months. I had a teacher when I first started, but switched to Tim after one month of total confusion. I am very glad I switched otherwise I probably would have thrown in the towel early on.
Tim’s teaching style is very effective for me and would be great for any beginner in my opinion. He helps you build your skill set in guitar by coming at it from several different angles at exactly the right time in your development. Songs, finger exercises, scales, licks, rhythm studies, theory, singing, open and moveable chords and transitions, and development of your general “musicianship” round out the tools that Tim uses. Each of these aspects of developing as a novice guitarist are taught clearly and seem to challenge the student in the appropriate way at each stage of development.
I would say Tim excels in all aspects of teaching the guitar, but his obvious strengths (again for the novice) are: clear communication; use of technology to aid in the learning of guitar; a ridiculously large database of hundreds, if not thousands of song transcriptions, skill and lesson mp3s, licks, and rhythm studies, all of which he has developed for students over his 20 plus years as a teacher. All the teaching support materials are already documented and provided to the student in mp3, paper copy, or .pdf, so that there is no wasted time in the lesson. And, if he doesn’t have it, he’ll put it together.
His ability to deconstruct a song, and teach the student how to transcribe not just the tab, but the rhythm, and singing, are pretty phenomenal. Tim also carves out time in the lesson, to teach theory. I’ve tried to learn theory out of books and had no clue after the circle of fifths. Tim’s method of teaching theory is outstanding, interesting, and easy to understand. Tim also helps you get the most out of your lesson. The amount of material you cover in the lesson is related directly to how much practice time and/ the stage of development you are in. In my case, I have a lot of time to practice, but it takes me longer to learn certain things. So for each lesson, in general I usually have about 2-3 songs that I am learning, as well as various exercises, licks, melodies, jamming or improvising, and theory that supplement.
At the lesson, typically I’ll play the things that I learned and Tim will help out with areas of difficulty. Then, for most of the lesson we focus on the new material for the following week. Tim demonstrates the new material, records it in your lesson mp3, and emails it to you after the lesson. I then go home, use the “amazing slow downer software” to learn the new material measure-by-measure, or sometimes note-by-note. I also will often practice jamming/improvising over backing tracks that Tim provides, wrestle with pesky exercises and blues licks, review theory, continue with rhythm studies, or sometimes only one or two of these things. The pace is up to you, but the most important thing for me is constantly finding the balance of hard work to pure enjoyment aspects of the guitar. Last note, I’ve heard that everyone goes through burnout at some point or several points along the journey. I am no exception; Tim is great at helping the student through this inevitability, by giving a heavier dose of more fun and lighter fare when needed. With Tim it always seems to be, just what the doctor ordered. Couldn’t recommend him more highly."
Chris Huber