Guitar
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Jon Damian, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"During my years as a performer and teacher of improvisation, I have noticed that the more advanced we become as improvisers, the less we tend to respond to the basic musical events that happen around us. To make my students aware of this, I started an advanced performance lab class 15 years ago called the Creative Workshop, or Cre.W., to help players learn to really listen as they improvise. Although Cre.W. is a guitar lab, the techniques we use work well with any instrumental combination."
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Craig Hlady, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"I perform around the Boston area with various groups, everything from blues to jazz to rock. I've also toured the United States, Mexico, Canada, and New Zealand with my own group and as a sideman with others. Performing gives me the chance to apply some of the things that I teach, and to find ways to incorporate them."
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Guy Van Duser, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"I'm kind of the oddball. I'm here because a lot of people are curious about this technique, fingerstyle. I show them how to take melodies on the guitar-solo line melodies-and play those melodies while playing the chords at the same time. You're trying to get two layers going. You're using mostly your thumb just to play the lower notes of the chord while the fingers pick out the melody notes on the upper strings. The fingerpickers do that in such a way that the thumb is alternating back and forth on the string, being the rhythm as well. So I'm not just playing the chord under the note, I'm recreating a beat: boom-chick, boom-chick, boom-chick."
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Robert Harrigan, Assistant Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department- Alumnus, Berklee College of Music and Boston College
- Active performer in a variety of styles
- Clinic, concert, festival, and radio appearances
- Commercial and educational recordings
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"When I was a first-semester student going to all those different classes, I was studying hard and getting As on tests, but I wasn't sure why I was learning a lot of what I was learning. In my second and third semester, all of a sudden things started to click. So when I'm working with my students, I've learned to anticipate when they're wondering, 'Why are you making me do this?' and try to connect the dots for them."
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Mike Ihde, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"My mission is to open up people's ears to the players and styles they've never heard, and hopefully they think, 'Wow—I really need to check that out.' My goal has always been to prepare people to be able to play anything, anytime, anywhere. In order to survive in this business, you need to know a ton of tunes in a lot of styles and be able to play them all convincingly."
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Robin Stone, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"I would like my students to really know the guitar theoretically and to understand how the fretboard works. I firmly believe that students should have a thorough understanding of harmony and how it works on the guitar. Because of the way the guitar is tuned, learning the fretboard can be confusing and frustrating. Most students learn by patterns and fingerings. While this method is a wonderful way to learn how to play the guitar, it leads to a situation later in one’s playing of not knowing what they are playing. I would like to be able to say that my students come away with a better understanding of how those patterns and fingerings translate into a real working knowledge on the guitar."
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Abigail Aronson, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"A lot of times I work with students at identifying scales, chords, and improvisation approaches by ear while we're learning the fingerings and theory. Many people find it refreshing to increase their confidence about what things sound like, as opposed to being sure of having them under their hands or recognizing them on a page. In my own playing, I often sing and play in unison or octaves when I improvise on guitar or bass."
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