Dan is an absolutely superb guitar, bass and vocal teacher and all round good guy. My middle son Jack (now approaching 18) has been taking weekly music lessons from Dan for about three years now, and has a very diverse love of music ranging from Elvis to Simon and Garfunkel to Metallica. He considers Dan a friend, as do I, and outside of weekly lessons Dan has involved Jack in public concerts, with the most recent being for a street party celebrating the Queen’s 90th birthday.
Dan teaches both playing and singing in his lessons, as he is very active in the music scene himself, and whilst Jack is still in training, we are no longer (a) attracting nearby dogs when Jack sings, or (b) having well meaning citizens ringing our door bell anxious if someone was in extreme pain. All credit to Dan for that alone, my ears no longer ache when Jack sings.
When it became apparent Dan had ignited a real passion in Jack, we bought his first new bass guitar. Dan gave free, impartial and very sound advice as to the most appropriate instrument, and where to look, purely with Jack’s best interests at heart.
After taking Rockschool Grade 3 Bass Jack also craved for an electric guitar, hatched a cunning plan that ironically involved me paying for one! It has been worth the investment as the increased range and quality of what Dan is teaching him, and the pleasure he and we as a family get from his ability. We had a family BBQ with my parents visiting us recently on one of the actual sunny weekend days for 2016 and, after eating, we spent about three extremely enjoyable hours singing along to what Jack was playing (even some of the neighbours joined in over the fence).
Jack has also taken on electric acoustic guitar, and he has recently advised me that he wants a “really big guitar collection”. I haven’t yet managed to glean from Jack whether this is a collection of ‘really big’ guitars, or a collection of guitars that happens to be large in number as a group, so will report back once this becomes clear.
Jack plays all his instruments extremely proficiently, able to play tricky guitar parts of pretty much any song from any era that he either works out by ear or searches for online. Dan focuses on the type of music and songs that Jack wants to learn to play, selecting songs that will challenge him, rather than only sticking to a formulaic structure.
I can’t think of any reason why I would cease using Dan’s services, as he is an absolutely fantastic teacher and has been a really positive influence on my son.
