My name is Greg and I am a full-time private guitar teacher. I have been playing the guitar for 26 years and I started teaching in 2007. After teaching in Wimbledon for 12 years I moved to nearby Ewell which is just ten minute drive from Tolworth roundabout off A3.
Early days and my music influences:
I started to learn by teaching myself from magazines and playing along to my favourite bands which was brilliant fun. Still, when I later began taking lessons, I realised that a good teacher could help me to achieve my goals faster and more effectively. When I started teaching students of my own, I wanted to help them in the same way as my teachers have helped me and inspire them to love playing the guitar!
My early guitar influences came from the 70s and 80s rock bands such as Deep Purple and Guns N Roses, and I still love that music! But over time, I have discovered many other artists that I admire and who influence my playing. I don’t have one favourite artist. Still, some of my influences are Slash and Ritchie Blackmore for rock, Gary Moore, BB King and Peter Green for electric blues, and Yngwie Malmsteen for technical genius and combining classical and rock music on the guitar!
My Recordings
For anyone interested please check out my albums – Under The Same Sky (2008), a compilation album released with friends (my track was called Twilight Etude), and Dream (2011) a solo album recorded with the great singer Ken Tamplin.
Most recently I have got into country blues and fingerstyle guitar, and I have been taking guitar lessons from a great guitarist called Toby Walker. There are many amazing artists who play (or played) using this style: Doyle Dykes, Merle Travis, Tommy Emmanuel, Chet Atkins, Thom Bresh and Jerry Reed. But this style is also used by more mainstream artists such as Bob Dylan, Ralph McTell, Dire Straits and James Taylor, and I think that it can really enhance any song and I am really looking forward to working it into my own music.
My Current Music Project
In my spare time, I work with my wife, who is also a musician, on our music projects which vary from classic rock and blues to rockabilly and country, to acoustic. Our new band is called Giant George, and you can listen to some of our music on this page.
