Beginning, Intermediate & Advanced Guitar Lessons

Jazz guitarist Chuck Walker is now offering Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced Guitar lessons. Specializing in ensemble direction, Chuck is also available to arrange, conduct, and direct for jazz, blues, reggae, and pop groups.

Chuck is a patient, experienced teacher who enjoys sharing the gift of music. He custom tailors his teaching technique for each student to make every lesson comprehensive and enjoyable.

Teaching and performing professionally for over 10 years, Chuck has studied jazz with many renowned masters like Daniel Jackson, John Handy, Tony Shinnault, Dee Spencer, Hafez Modirzadeh, Jim Grantham, John Worley, and Wayne Wallace.

Emphasizing musicianship and music fundamentals at all levels, Chuck encourages, inspires, and challenges his students to learn and express their talent with music. Students can expect to learn music theory, practice techniques, music history, approaches to improvisation, arranging, and composition.

Lesson Rates

Individual Private Instruction - Guitar

$20 / Half Hour

$30 / Hour

Ensemble Direction - Conduction, Arranging & Theory

$10 / Person / Hour

Lesson and practice schedules are determined upon goals and expectations of the student. Generally, preparation for each lesson requires 30 minutes of daily practice. Lessons are normally schedule once a week.

Practice Guide

Followed daily, this step-by-step practice guide improves music understanding and guitar performance. The times for each exercise are general suggestions and can be lengthened as needed.

Sound Check - 10 minutes

1. Arrive on time
2. Set up gear
3. Tune up
4. Adjust tone

Warm up / Review - 10 minutes

Get to know the fingerboard by reviewing and exploring scales, arpeggios, and chords.

1. One note rhythm - generate a rhythm cycle using only one note
2. Scales - using a metronome, move with fluidity, consistancy
3. Arpeggios - move across the strings covering 2 octaves
4. Chords - finger positions, anchor points

This exercise expands musical vocabulary by reviewing and building scale fingerings and chord voicings. By using a metronome, timing, phrasing, and rhythm improves.

Practicing at slower tempos:

1. Improves overall sound
2. Develops more control
3. Increases technical dexterity and endurance
4. Settles performance experience
5. Improves ability to respond to other musicians during group performance

Ear Training - 10 minutes

1. Intervals - identify intervals between notes
2. Chords - identify chord quality - major, minor, dominant, diminished, augmented
3. Dictation - listening exercise - write down what you hear

Listen / Play along with Recordings - 10 minutes

1. Select any recording
2. Listen and play back what you hear
3. Deconstruct the song, start with short phrases
4. Hearing and repeating a new musical figure is the goal of this exercise

Folk Musicians - Romare Bearden

First Things First - Tuning the Guitar

Standard Tuning

String	1	2	3	4	5	6
Note	E	B	G	D	A	E

1. Use a tuner, online tuning pitch, tuning fork, or other instrument, like a piano, to produce a tuning note
2. Start by tuning the 5th string to concert A
3. Use your ear and harmonics to tune the D string from the A string
4. Next, continue thru to the high E string
5. Then, go back and tune the low E string
6. Now, re-check the A string again with the tuning note and repeat the entire process

A well-tuned instrument improves the ability to hear music intervals, the distance between notes, and chord voicings, the sound of two or more notes played together.