Guitar
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Colin Sapp, Assistant Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"Students sometimes forget to nurture their artistry while they’re in school. It’s easy to get caught up in becoming proficient at specific skills like ear training, playing at quick tempi, improvising over difficult changes, etc. I think it’s critical to use learned music concepts to inform one’s individuality. The learning process is a creative process, so students should compose and/or improvise new ideas as soon as they are struck with that inspiration."
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Amanda Monaco, Assistant Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"Berklee is so comprehensive and up to date with what's really going on in the music business. They tap into that in a way that I think other schools don't. And they're very realistic about what a musician needs to have to be a complete musician as opposed to just a player. The resources are vast, and students are getting a whole music experience, even before declaring a major. They have a foundation."
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Rick Peckham, Assistant Chair
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"To me the musician's responsibility is not only to get the sound out of your head and to the instrument, but actually into the mind of the listener—and there are a lot of things between your mind and the listener's. You need to know about sound production on your instrument, getting your sound recorded, and making that sound the best it can be."
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Freddie Bryant, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"I always have students make a blank book, because they're going to discover hundreds of things. You need to write them down, because at the end of the year, it could all be like mush. What do they put in the books? Sometimes people will write a great lick or a melody. They may not write the rest of the song, but they could do so in the future. It's the same thing with me. In my books there are different kinds of scales and different rhythms, chord voicings, and inversions; a Latin tune, a more Middle-Eastern kind of a jam vibe; harmonized diminished scales; and even poetry. I experiment with all these different possibilities, and then two or three things may develop into a tune or an arrangement that I'm writing, or later, with time and practice they'll be able to fall under my fingers easier for soloing or melodic improvisational ideas."
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Benjamin Sher, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"The guitar is a bit of a matrix; because it has so many strings, the same note appears in different regions, so it's hard to figure out where to play notes. To help students find their way around the guitar, I use a streamlined version of Bill Leavitt's 'old-school' approach that I learned from. Brazilian music is also helpful in teaching students to read, because the subdivision is in two instead of in four, so I feel students are able to see wider rhythmic phrases and see the bigger picture of what's going on from measure to measure."
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Jeffrey Lockhart, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department- Guitarist
- Member of Wally's Tuesday Funk Band
- Performances with Meshell Ndegeocello, Mike Clark, Bill Summers, Sam Kininger Band, Al Evans of Soulive and Play on Brother Band, Lettuce, and Richie Goods of Nuclear Fusion
- Recordings wtih Beyoncé and Dido
- Former musical director for Brian McKnight
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Bret Willmott, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"The joy of the guitar is that it has so many different sounds and stylistic approaches. It has a harmonic sound unique to itself, and it can closely simulate the sound of a horn or voice through various techniques like string bending, hammer-ons, and tapping. I think many other instruments have greater difficulty accomplishing the versatile sounds that a guitar can make. Piano is ultimately the best instrument harmonically, no question, but I still believe the guitar is a more versatile instrument in terms of varied sounds and styles."
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Tomo Fujita, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"In my private lessons and blues/funk labs, I teach fundamental techniques for playing good music—getting a good tone from the guitar and keeping a good rhythm. But I try to teach something more valuable for the future, so I really emphasize feeling. Especially in blues playing, I emphasize expression, tone, and time. Sometimes these simple things are really difficult to achieve with quality and detail. So I teach a lot of grooves and rhythm."
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David Fiuczynski, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"I'm interested in students finding their own voice. I start with teaching chord scale theory in the style that the student is interested in playing. It doesn't matter to me if it's death metal, jazz, or electronica. I want players to be able to analyze a composition, figure out what modes they can use to solo over or generate parts with, and learn how to comp with chords, riffs, or counterlines. I find this really stimulates creativity and helps students approach the music from a fresh perspective."
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Dan Bowden, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"What draws students to my private lesson studio are the instrumental labs that I develop, which deal with acoustic blues, slide guitar, and bottleneck guitar. An important goal of mine has been to expand on what would be the typical blues education—trying to round out the blues students we have playing modern electric blues style by imparting some historical perspective along with traditional blues skills that are still viable in today's music, when you look at Eric Clapton, Derek Trucks, Taj Mahal, or people like Keb' Mo'."
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