Guitar
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Jon Finn, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"You know the perception people have of rock guitarists—gunslingers and drug addicts. If there's one issue I get evangelical about, it's when I hear a lot of words from well-known rock players who say, 'Don't practice, be a rebel. Studying the instrument is bad for your creativity.' The mentality is that if you're too technically proficient, you're not rock 'n' roll; I'm not sure if I agree. My feeling is that it's possible to be a studied musician and maintain that primal energy—it's just not easy. I personally love players like Jeff Beck, Carlos Santana, Steve Morse, and Eddie Van Halen, the ones who can speak to my soul and challenge my intellect at the same time."
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Mick Goodrick, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"I got started because of Elvis Presley. I was maybe 9 or 10 years old. I put a belt on a tennis racquet and would mime the records in front of a mirror. I told my parents I wanted a guitar because the tennis racquet didn't look so cool. They got me a ukulele, which looked even worse in the mirror than the tennis racquet. When they started offering music lessons at my school, my mother asked me if I wanted to learn music, and I said I wanted to learn guitar. So I started guitar when I was 11."
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Julien Kasper, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"I think that the biggest inspiration I can be to the students is to be an active, performing, recording artist. They want to know that you're out there, making your own music, being your own musician. My professional background contributes enormously to my teaching because I have such a wide range of experience playing so many styles of gigs—from lowdown, disgusting dives in the middle of Alabama to great jazz festivals in Sweden and all points in between. I'm also in the studio, recording CDs as a side man and as a leader. All of those things factor into giving them some understanding of what's required of them in the real world."
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Jim Kelly, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"There are certain requirements that, whoever your teacher is, we need to make sure you complete as a player on your instrument. Certain scales, chords, pieces, or whatever. Those are the basics. Other than that, I kind of loosely base it on this old r&b song 'Long As I'm Movin'.' As long as we find topics that keep the student learning, we can expand what they feel they can do."
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Tim Miller, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"I've learned so much playing with musicians that I admire; just having the experience of playing with them opened my eyes. I think that's an important component of a lesson, so in private lessons we often play duets together. A lot of my students come in wanting to learn contemporary improvisational styles, but I try to enable them to find their own approach instead of trying to force my approach. I want to try to expose the player's own voice if at all possible."
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Scott Tarulli, Assistant Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"My teaching style comes directly from being someone who struggled a lot with learning—in particular, with learning jazz and how to budget my time. Absolutely nothing came easy to me in music. As a result, I base my teaching around my students and help them to become problem-solvers. When they leave Berklee, my hope is that they're able to do things on their own and not be paint-by-number players."
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Norman Zocher, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"You can't sound good if you don't sound good. Sound is probably the most fundamental musical element. It's the thing nonmusicians, even newborn babies, know instantly if it's good or not. There are so many facets to what makes a good sound, but I think what captures it best—the basic definition of technique—is touch. It's also that your sound must be coming from your ear internally first, then you shape it on the instrument. The answer is not in the equipment. The answer is in your own hands."
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Mark White, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"Berklee is the best school in the world for its kind. The musicians here sum up such a wide spectrum of the industry, from performance to writing to MP&E. They're the best of the best. These are people who are proficient in their business because they've been in the business. There's not another conglomeration of such talented faculty anywhere in the world! You combine that with excellent course structure and continuing efforts to improve the educational aspects of the system, and you get a real win-win situation here. You add to that state-of-the-art facilities and you can't do any better anywhere else."
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David Gilmore, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"Berklee has been a mecca for guitar players over the years. My first guitar teacher ever, John Baboian, still teaches here. I was fortunate in high school to have him as a private teacher. He came from the Berklee method—the William G. Leavitt method—which was really comprehensive. Later on, when I looked at other guitar books, I saw how unusable they were in a certain way. They dealt with tablature, not with notes. Piano players, horn players—most musicians—deal with notes on a staff. But a lot of recent guitar books are devoid of that. I've seen a lot of guitar players who can't even read music. They read tablature and they read other symbols, but not actual written note music. In a typical studio situation you're not going to find your part written in tablature."
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"It's really important to be versatile. When you get 'that phone call,' the more prepared you are, the less time you have to waste getting prepared for the gig. Regardless of what style you're learning, it is important to be versatile, because at some point you have to deal with other people in a recording studio who are going to say, 'I don't want you to play that part the way you play it, I want you to play it like it's written on the paper, because this is how the producer wants it.' If you don't do that, then you're not going to get paid, and you probably won't get called back."
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