At Leeds Guitar Studio instruction takes place in a 16 input digital based studio. This bestows all manner of technical benefits to the student. Lessons can be recorded including both the tutor and pupils guitars parts and voices. This can be burned onto CD at the end of the lesson and taken home for review. Electric guitars plug directly into valve preamps specifically designed for recording guitars so that a natural full range response is enjoyed. This then goes into the DAW which allows seamless integration when backing tracks are used. Everything is played back via studio monitors for absolute clarity. This is very beneficial in a teaching situation and allows both teacher and pupil to really hear what they are playing. The studio has been designed with guitars in mind including an isolated live room housing a range of amps including a mid 80's JC-120 a JC-50 and a Peavey 5150 head. Most of the time the amps are miced in stereo using a pair of Shure SM57's in combination with an audix D3 and 2 Sennheiser E609's. The Audix is a fantastic microphone for close micing loud amps. It can tolerate high spl's and has fantastic detail and presence. Likewise the sennheiser can take a lot of volume and is designed to lie flat against a speaker grill. Stereo micing takes advantage of the variations between speakers and mic placement to capture more detail and life to the sound. A custom pedal board feeds the amps through permanent tie lines making it very easy to rig any combination of effects and amps. All pedals are wired using George L's solderless cabling system for utmost clarity. There is also a Randall Isolation cab for micing up valve amps. LGS is an aladin's cave of all the best guitar pedals and boxes including a Holdsworth Juice Extractor for harnessing those power tube tones. This setup allows two players to play with a professional level tone simultaneously.There are also numerous guitar processors including a Zoom G9 2TT, a Zoom G7, a Zoom GFX5, a yamaha dg50 stomp amongst others.

Many pupils have taken advantage of the facilities here along with my production skills to produce demos and full blown album tracks.

Recorded Lessons

As well as the custom written teaching material used there are many backing tracks available when the time comes to start improvising and developing band skills. These range from generic styles to specific songs with the pupils part omitted. Musical examples and backings can be burnt onto CD and used by pupil to practice at home. Also an lesson can be recorded including improvisation sessions between teacher and pupil mixed down with the backing track. This can produce some very nice recordings for future reference.

The Rhythm Method

Real life drum loops are used in a unique way as an aid to developing rhythm playing. Relating everything to a drum pattern makes learning this difficult to master guitar skill much simpler. Students can learn real life rhythm parts and practice them with any one of thousands of drum patterns. This method really works towards developing a strong sense of timing.

Style Sheets

Virtually any style can be taught to the student once the basics are in place and we have an extensive archive of material to draw from. A pupil can work from transcriptions or use digital technology to transcribe an example themselves. In this way a deeper understanding of a particular players' style can be gained. This is another important element in a guitarist's development.

Guitarcraft

Eventually most players want to play in some sort of public setting be it with a band or more dauntingly, solo. We can advise on equipment choice, tone, performance anxiety and a whole host of associated issues. This is the general "craft" of the gigging guitarist. Where better to advise on amps, effects and tone than a digital studio with it's own dedicated amp recording room?