Information About Ridgestone - Ridgestone -

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Personal Description:

Hi I'm Ridgestone a UK SKYPE Tutor for any location. I teach Guitar, Harmonica, Mandolin, Banjo & Ukulele.

Tutoring Experience:

21 Years Guitar Teaching experience I taught myself to play the guitar when I was a teenager back in in the 1960s (you can probably guess my age).

There was no such thing as the Internet then and there were very little teaching resources available to me, so it was a long hard struggle to make any reasonable progress, there was much hit and miss and experimentation. When the internet became available I was able to vastly educate myself in music and was able to make good and satisfactory progress. I just wish I had that resource when I was young

Of Course there must be many guitarists that are better than me, that will always be the case for any guitarist, but what I have found is to make the best of what you can do and improve on it by adding quality and feeling to the music. Not everybody likes shredding guitar. My Current stable of instruments are, 2 Acoustic Guitars, I Electro Acoustic Jazz Guitar, 1 Classical Guitar, 1 Electric Guitar (Strat) 2 Mandolins, 1 Mandola, 1 Ukulele, 2 Banjos, 3 Amplifiers, 12 Harmonicas in different keys, 2 Flageolets in different keys, 1 Keyboard and 1 Didjeridu.

I gave my very first Guitar Lesson in June of 1993 in Strood. Naturally I felt a little nervous as the guy who I was going to teach was telling me that he wanted to play like Eric Clapton. My Stable of instruments at that time consisted of one Fender Acoustic Guitar, but I had to make a start somewhen. The guy showed me what he could do on the instrument and I developed a sinking feeling because his playing was vastly superior to mine (at the time). I patiently listened to him running up and down the Minor Pentatonics and when he finished he said "That's all I can do mate I can't do nuffin else." Breathing a sigh of relief I then showed him chord progressions and the like. The lesson taught me to be to act confidently. After about a year of experimental guitar teaching, I started again August 2000 and spent the next 19 years travelling the County of Kent conducting one to one lessons during the evenings and weekends in the homes of my students, also holding lessons at my home and on occasions conducted SKYPE lessons as well. At the same time I was holding down various "Day Jobs" (to keep me in guitar teaching). I have taught all ages (the youngest 5yrs & the oldest 70 yrs) and all levels of of society, and have added other instruments to my stable that I teach such as the Mandolin, Banjo, Ukulele and Harmonica. I had the privilege to teach Guitar at a Community School in Ashford for a year. In February of 2020 I suffered a heart attack and shortly after being discharged from hospital Covid19 Lockdown measures were in place and I haven't been able to teach since. When it is over I look forward to getting back into guitar teaching, the guitar is my life.

Approach to Grinds:

I teach on SKYPE Nationwide