This course is one from the archives. Before MusicEL was even in existence our tutor, Jamie Toms, created a guitar workshop for a Virtual Summer School in 2020. Although it was made in his flat (without our professional studio equipment), we think you’ll find a lot to learn from the course!
What’s in the course?
- Warmups for both left and right hands, and for finger style and plectrum.
- That’s a total of 12 warmups to learn new techniques, exercise your fingers, and develop control and coordination.
- Mobilisation and posture – how to play with control, whilst staying relaxed.
- Tone – at the heart of this course is a workshop on tone. Jamie will take you through various ways you can control the sound of the guitar, exploring the huge and exciting range of tones that guitars produce, and giving lots of ideas you can use to get some traditional and fun sounds from your own guitar.
Who is this course for?
It is designed to be accessible for beginner level guitarists. But it will also stretch you and give intermediate or more advanced guitarists plenty to think about and put into practice. It is aimed mostly at secondary age and adult learners (although older primary-age students will still find much they’ll enjoy and use).
This course is equally useful for acoustic and electric guitarists, and for finger style or plectrum playing.
The warmups increase in difficulty, so younger players and beginners might do the earlier ones, and more advanced players with larger hands might continue to the later ones.
About your teacher
Jamie is a professional musician, performing in many areas of music predominantly as a guitarist. He can be found (amongst other places) performing in folk duo “MacQuarrie and Toms” in folk festivals such as Lowender Perran and the Festival Interceltique de Lorient, or winning the International Pan Celtic Instrumental Duo competition in Ireland. They have also featured on BBC Introducing.
Alongside his performing career, Jamie has been teaching for over 10 years. He now creates courses in his role as an online content co-ordinator for MusicEL. If you want to find out more about how Jamie got to where he is now, check out his MusicEL Pathways podcast:
Course Instructor
