What do Eddie Van Halen, Joe Satriani, Martin Taylor, Danny Gatton, Tommy Emmanuel, Chet Atkins, Les Paul, John Mayall, Eric Clapton and most great Jazz players have in common?

They are among the best of hundreds (thousands?) of incredibly good guitarists who have had no formal music training. They are self-taught, learning the instrument by ear.

"When I was growing up, I just listened to the records and tried to play what I heard," says Tommy Emmanuel. "I'm self-taught but I've begged, borrowed and stolen from everybody, and made it mine. When I was a kid, my elder brother was the lead player and he had an incredible set of ears. I mean, he would hear something on the radio and literally play it back. He could tell what the chords were and all that, long before I could. I'm talking I'm 5 and he's 7."

Les Paul said, "I'm self taught, but when anybody asks that question, in all fairness and to answer it correctly, I was very schooled by the people that I was influenced by and I studied even though I didn't go down to the store and pay ten dollars for lessons. I sure as Hell had to study and study hard and I did it up until an hour ago (laughs). I'm still learning."

How can so many of the best players, across all genres, get so proficient without formal training? Is it God given talent? Good genes? Do those hallucinogens really work?

I asked myself those questions while studying scales, modes, intervals and arpeggios. My instructor would ask me to play for example a D Dorian scale in 5th position, then a G Minor arpeggio in third position, then a Bb Minor scale in first position (the heartless bastard). He would drill and drill, and I could do it, but I shudder to think of how long it took for me to memorize all those patterns. This is not something that comes easily and quickly to most people. Retaining it is difficult. Applying it? Don’t get me started.

Drilling patterns and relationships by repeating exercises is inefficient (that's about the nicest way I can put it). It's akin to studying how to diagram sentences before learning even rudimentary speech patterns (¿Dónde está el cuarto de baño?)

Music is a language. We need to learn it like a language. In fact, there may not be a more perfect analogy on the planet than that of spoken language to musical language.

How do we learn our spoken language?
The single most important thing we do is we listen very intently. Watch a one or two year-old listen to you speak. He or she will stare at your mouth and devote 100% of awareness and focus to learning those sounds. He will mimic your mouth movements even with no sounds at first. He would probably try to slow you down if he could! Throughout his life, he will learn to speak well, sometimes poetically well, by simply listening and trying it out.

Here's a question for you: Does this developing child need to learn to read and write in order to communicate verbally? Does he need to know a verb from a noun or an adjective? What if he was required by circumstance to communicate very precisely and even poetically? Could he learn to do it without knowing how to read and write? Could he be very accomplished, even masterful?

Absolutely Yes! The degree of his success depends upon whom his associates are. What quality of speech does he listen to every day? Are his "speech mentors" well chosen for his goals?

Follow me now: How should we learn our musical language?
The single most important thing we can do is to listen very intently. Intense focus on listening does not come quite as naturally as we age (just ask my wife). It is truly a skill that must be practiced purposefully. Intense listening combined with an attempt at reproducing the sounds with your guitar in hand is the most powerful guitar learning method you will ever find.

Want proof? See (and more importantly listen to) the list of guitar greats at the beginning of this article.

If you can master this technique you are guaranteed success! The degree of your success depends upon whom your associates (musically) are. What quality of music do you listen to every day? Have you chosen your "guitar mentors" well, based on your goals?

OK then Jeff, why learn to read and write at all? Why learn grammar and sentence structure? It's complex. Do we need this stuff? Good question.

Human communication is not limited to the verbal. Sometimes we just gotta write stuff down (historical facts, for example, and legal contracts and treaties, you know stuff like that.). Effective written communication requires many more rules than effective verbal communication because we do not have the luxury of gestures, body language and inflection (among other things). The lexicon of grammar (subject, predicate, etc) is not necessary in order to communicate well! It exists in order for humans to converse effectively and efficiently about the rules of communication.

It's like the tax code; as soon as you write down the first rule in an attempt to define something specifically, the great black hole of "completeness" opens up and sucks everything around it into the abyss (not to be dramatic or anything). Effective expression of the subject matter is lost in the process of defining the subject matter.

Here’s the rub: The rules of language are much more difficult to master than actually speaking the language well.

It's the same with musical language. Reading and writing music is necessary in order to communicate the work in other than aural forms. Before recording devices were invented, this was the only way to communicate music to those who missed the performance. The lexicon of music (scales, modes, arpeggios, etc) is not necessary in order to play masterfully! I would argue that it often gets in the way of playing masterfully. The lexicon of music exists in order for musicians to converse effectively and efficiently about the rules of music. Effective expression of music is often lost in the process of defining music.

The rules of music are much more difficult to master than actually playing music well.

So, Jeff, why shouldn't I follow in the footsteps of the guitar greats and just teach myself? Didn't you just make a persuasive argument against taking guitar lessons?

If you can do it great! Really. I mean it. Achieving such a goal will benefit you in many aspects of your life.

Self teaching is extremely time consuming. Tommy Emmanuel says he practiced 12-18 hours a day when he was a kid and a teenager. He fell asleep playing his guitar sometimes. Chet Atkins told similar stories. Doesn’t it seem that the players deemed “most talented in the world” are those that work the hardest?

Most of us simply don’t have that kind of time. Rest assured every self-taught player had many bumps along the way, many dead end streets and a lot of backtracking. Many guitarists who try self-teaching can't get by the rough spots and simply give up in frustration or they continue playing in a perpetual rut.

My goal is to streamline the process for you as much as possible by keeping your own, individual path to discovery on track. People learn differently. Your learning experience could be radically different than others. Keeping your path goal centered, interesting, productive and rut-free is my job.

The Baltimore Guitar School teaching approach is song-based; using songs that you are passionate about. After all, the self-taught guitar greats did not learn by listening to music that bored them! It's passion that will get you through those rough spots.

I will teach you to listen very intently. I ’ll do it with you. We’ll figure it out together.

I will teach you to mimic those sounds on your guitar. I ’ll demonstrate the techniques so you have a visual idea of what your hands should look like while you are playing that song.

Throughout the process you will be amassing a repertoire of complete, real songs that you want to play, all while learning the guitar techniques that carry over from song to song and genre to genre.

You will begin to see relationships and commonalities among these songs and learn that these similarities have names. Much like learning a language by immersion in the culture, you will begin to see phrases and motifs that repeat with astonishing frequency.

Your song-based lesson plan can be supplemented with videos, dvd’s, cd’s, books and websites. We have an extensive library available for rent or you can bring anything that interests you.

It’s time to speak a second language ... music!

Click on the LESSONS link for information on Group Lessons and Private Lessons. There is also information there about Intermediate and Advanced lessons as well.