Hobart Guitar Lessons started in 2005 as a private guitar teaching business by Andrew Sweeney after fifteen years of working as a professional musician. Some of the bands and artists Andrew played with included BLiM, Toast, Fitzroy Gorillas, Zulya Kamalova, Geoff Allan, Skaleidescope, Scary Faces and The Impacts. These groups played diverse styles of music, ranging from heavy rock through to jazz. Andrew’s original, modern and unique voice on the guitar includes influences from Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Edward Van Halen, Bob Brozman, Andy Summers, The Edge and David Gilmour:
Andrew started teaching professionally in 1990 at the age of eighteen after his former guitar teacher Phillip Lawler employed him at the Hobart College Of Music. Later he also worked for some other private teaching businesses including the Glen Long School Of Music, Southern Music and Bay Music Studios. The schools worked at included Rosny College, St. Mary’s College, Elizabeth College, Dominic College Primary, Rokeby High School and Bridgewater High School. During this time his students included everyone from children through to Conservatorium guitar performance honours graduates.
In setting up Hobart Guitar Lessons Andrew aimed to achieve these goals:
- To provide guitar lessons that were first and foremost fun.
- To teach students the music that they wanted to learn.
- To enable guitar students to progress as quickly as possible.
- To cater for all styles, ages and levels, from complete beginners to advanced guitarists and professional musicians.
Despite the recent proliferation of information on the internet about guitar playing there are not many teachers who have a sound playing technique and who are able to communicate that knowledge effectively to a student. A large proportion of YouTube guitar lessons can be quite flawed. Many of these are popular because of a large amount hits, not because of quality. Often if someone has posted a video with a popular song title and tagged it effectively they can rise to the top of the list despite the fact that many of them are teaching the songs incorrectly and/or with bad technique (not to mention a bad tone!). A similar situation tends to happen with online guitar tabs – most of them are not a particularly accurate representation of how a lot of popular songs are played. This is not to say that all online material is flawed. There is a lot of good information out there but so much of it is usually a case of: “I know a few chords so why don’t I become an online guitar teacher? Ummm – maybe it goes like this?!”.
Another reason that learning guitar from a video or piece of music from a tablature site can be problematic is that there is no helpful feedback about what the student is playing. At the moment online real-time guitar lessons with Skype and other similar apps also offer a limited version of what can be achieved with an experienced teacher in person. That’s where Andrew will be able to help, teaching just the basics or advanced techniques on both electric and acoustic guitar – with the music that you like.
Hobart Guitar Lessons is wholly Tasmanian owned and operated.
Andrew has a working with vulnerable people card. Registration No. 171385149
ABN: 33 793 775 350. Business Number: BN01724939. Registered as “Hobart Guitar Lessons”.
“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible” – Frank Zappa.
Hobart Guitar Lessons 