Conrad - Acoustic Guitar Tutor - New York
1st lesson free
Conrad - Acoustic Guitar Tutor - New York

Conrad's profile, diploma and contact details have been verified by our experts

Conrad

  • Rate US$66
  • Response 1h
Conrad - Acoustic Guitar Tutor - New York

US$66/hr

1st lesson free

Contact

1st lesson free

1st lesson free

  • Acoustic Guitar
  • Electric Guitar
  • Bass Guitar
  • Ukulele

Conrad's Guitar Lessons: Learn Guitar at Your Own Pace, Whatever Your Goals or Experience Level!

  • Acoustic Guitar
  • Electric Guitar
  • Bass Guitar
  • Ukulele

Lesson location

About Conrad

My lessons usually start with sound rather than a page of notes. I'll ask you to play something you already know, even if it's only three open strings or two chords, and then I'll play it back to you with one thing changed: the pick angle, where the thumb sits behind the neck, how hard the fretting hand presses. We listen to both versions, and you tell me which one sounds more like what you want. That habit of comparing two versions of the same movement is the center of how I work. Most people assume good technique means doing something the right way, but I'd rather you learn to hear the difference between two ways of doing it, because once you can hear that difference you can start finding the more efficient one yourself. A complete beginner might discover that a note buzzes when the finger lands on top of the fret and rings clearly when it sits just behind it. Someone coming back to the guitar after a long break often finds they are pressing two or three times harder than the instrument needs, and hearing the difference is usually more convincing than any explanation I could give.

When something breaks down, I try not to repeat the whole thing until it works by accident. Say you can play a chord change slowly, but at full speed the G turns into a muddle. I'll play it with you and stop at the exact moment it falls apart. Usually it's one of two things: the second finger lifts before the new shape is set, or the strumming hand stalls for half a beat. Then I isolate only that transition. You hold the first shape, lift only the finger that moves, place it, and play. After that I change the rhythm on purpose, perhaps adding a silent beat before each change or playing the changes only on the off-beats, so the coordination problem shows itself instead of hiding inside the song. A fingerstyle player working through an arrangement faces the same kind of problem between the thumb's bass line and the melody. I'd mute the melody strings and play only the bass, then only the top notes, then put them together, rather than replaying the whole arrangement and hoping it smooths out. With a child who is just learning to hold the guitar, the same principle might turn into tapping a knee with one hand and strumming with the other, so the two hands learn to work separately before they have to cooperate.

I want you to be able to find your way around the fretboard without memorizing it blindly. So I teach through landmarks: the fifth and seventh frets, the octave shape that repeats up the neck, the place where the root of the key sits. When you know where those are, the rest of the neck starts to make sense. For improvisation I often set a limit. You might have only two strings, or one position, or a scale with a single bend allowed, and you have to make a phrase that ends where you meant it to end. Limits force choices, and choices are what make a solo sound like yours. For a more advanced player working through a difficult solo, I'll reduce it to its skeleton, usually the chord tones that fall on the strong beats, play that skeleton until it feels solid, and then rebuild the ornaments and runs on top of it, one layer at a time. Whatever the level, we'll take the exercise straight into a real song you care about in the same lesson, because an exercise that never leaves the lesson room doesn't do much for you.

Most of what I want you to take away is not a list of exercises but a way of checking your own playing. At the end of each lesson you'll leave with a short note on what to practice and, more importantly, how to tell whether it's working. I'll often ask you to record a minute of playing on your phone at the start of the week and again at the end, and we'll listen to both together. Over time the goal is that you hear your own mistakes before I point them out, and that you know which part of a passage to slow down without being told. When you sit down for a lesson with me, expect the guitar on your knee, me sitting across from you, a metronome that is often a little off, and a lot of stopping and starting. You'll hear me say things like "again, but this time only the left hand," and "stop, what did that sound like to you?" That back-and-forth is where most of the learning happens.

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  • All Levels
  • English

All languages in which the lesson is available :

English

Guitar lessons with Conrad

In my lessons I start with the sound you want and work backward to the smallest physical change that gets you there. Most guitar problems look like one big problem, a chord that won't ring or a strum that falls apart, but they usually come from two or three things happening at once: the fretting hand, the picking hand, and the timing between them. So I change one variable at a time. If you are learning your first chords, say G to C to D, I might have you strum only on the downbeat while you change shapes. Your strumming hand gets to stay simple, your fingers get to find their places without rushing, and the change itself stops feeling like a scramble. Children often take to this quickly because it can be turned into a game with a song they already know, changing chords only on every fourth beat and then every second beat as it gets easier. Adults returning after years away tend to find that the old muscle memory is still there. It just needs to be woken up in small pieces rather than thrown at them all at once.

You will probably recognize this one: you can play a passage slowly, but the moment you increase the tempo, the same three notes collapse. Usually the problem is not the whole passage. It is one transition, often where the hand has to move from a stretch back to a closer position, or where a finger has to lift before the next one lands. I help you find the exact moment it begins to fall apart, using a recording on your phone and a metronome set just below the speed where it breaks. Then we isolate only that transition, practice it as its own small loop, and bring it back into the phrase. Rhythm gets the same treatment. If a riff keeps stumbling, I will often have you play the rhythm on a single muted string, so you can hear whether the problem is the timing or the notes. Intermediate and advanced players tend to find that this exposes something they had been hiding from themselves for months. For a beginner, the same method is just a slower, gentler way of figuring out why a piece of music feels stuck.

Improvisation is where I use limitations on purpose. Instead of giving you a whole scale and telling you to explore, I might ask you to improvise using only two strings, or only quarter notes, or only the notes that land on a single fret position. A tight constraint forces deliberate choices. You start hearing where a phrase wants to resolve, which note sounds like a question and which one sounds like an answer. Teenagers who want to play along with records often respond well to this, because they can take a riff from a song they already love and build variations on it over a backing track. For a beginner, the same idea can be a three-note melody on one string with a simple two-chord vamp underneath. For someone who already knows a lot of theory, it can be a way to hear how a ii–V–I moves through voice leading, one note at a time, so the harmony stops being a list of names and starts being something you can actually follow with your ear.

What I most want you to leave with is independence. I will give you direction, but I will rarely hand you the answer to every question. When you practice at home, you should know what to look for. Is the sound thin because the fretting finger is too far from the fret? Is the rhythm uneven because you are gripping the pick too hard? Does the passage work at sixty beats per minute but not at eighty? Over time, I give you a short practice routine you can run on your own, something like ten minutes of isolated transitions, one pass at tempo, and a quick check of what broke. Whether you are picking up the guitar for the first time, coming back to it after a long break, or trying to make a difficult solo sound effortless, my aim is the same: you should finish each week knowing more clearly how you learn, not just what you played.

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Rates

Rate

  • US$66

Pack prices

  • 5h: US$330
  • 10h: US$660

free lessons

The first free lesson with Conrad will allow you to get to know each other and clearly specify your needs for your next lessons.

  • 1hr

online

  • US$66/h

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