Music Lessons
Want to learn how to play the guitar or the oud?
I offer private lessons, both online via Zoom and in-person.
Students of all levels are welcome (beginner, intermediate, advanced). Lessons are tailored based on the student’s goals and needs. We can work on anything as simple as learning how to play simple songs and melodies and working on basic exercises to more advanced topics to learn different skills related to the guitar or the oud and to music as a whole such as:
- Music theory and harmony for guitar: scales, chords, arpeggios, modes
- Music theory for oud: Arabic Maqam system, Maqam families, Ajnas
- Understanding the strings’ tuning and their relationships and how to move around the neck
- Sound production on the instrument
- Rhythm
- Ear training
- Improvisation, Taqasim
- Sight reading
- We could also explore different styles and repertoires such as Pop/Rock/Blues, Jazz, Arabic/Middle Eastern, Flamenco, and Classical.
Get in touch if you're interested!
Guitar
I love teaching music so much because of the progress that my students make during our lessons together. Nathalie Bichara came after only THREE lessons, and she was already playing through the chord changes of Autumn Leaves very nicely, so I thought it would be nice to celebrate her progress by making this little video. Oh, and she’s a fantastic singer too so make sure to check out her music! Way to go Nathalie!!
As a music teacher, nothing gives me greater pleasure than seeing firsthand the results of my students' hard work. Here is a short video showing one of my guitar students performing the famous classical piece Spanish Romance. Over the course of eight lessons, I helped him rise from a complete beginner to a level where he was able to perform the piece. Bravo to his hard work!
Oud
I'm very proud of Nadine Altounji, a promising oud student of mine, to be performing her very first oud transcription within just six lessons of starting to learn oud from scratch! I had her work on Hamza El Din's rendition of Shams El Shammousa, Hamza's style being not too challenging for a beginner oud player, but still full of wonderful ornamentations and intricacies. To be noted that Nadine is already an accomplished guitar player, so she was quickly able to absorb the strong foundation elements that I instil with my beginner oud students such as proper posture, position, right & left hand techniques...etc. Bravo Nadine!
