Welcome to our March newsletter. Another year slowly slips away into the history of my life and adds yet another year onto the story of Guitar Weekends. 2006 was a very busy year; we had the most weekends ever over the full year. We had so many people this year who wanted to be on courses that we are already fully booked on a lot of courses this year. As a lot of the places for 2007 are already taken, I strongly recommend not to leave your booking until too late. Bearing in mind that you may be registering for a course some distance in the future, I would also encourage giving consideration to taking out the insurance cover we recommend. Some info enclosed for you to browse through and a full copy of this newsletter and offers is available on the Guitar Weekends web site.

The big success of 2006 has been our 'new boy', Gary Dunn. Gary has very quickly established himself amongst our 'musketeers' of tutors. Through our new and popular "Improvers' Weekend" he has demonstrated his teaching abilities with great success."   These weekends will sometimes be themed towards certain styles or techniques eg Rock, Country or Jazz but generally they will be for strugglers. Or as one of our female enquirers, who was buying it as a present for her husband succinctly put it ‘Bedroom Tonkers’.

Another great success this year has been our "Maintenance and Setting Up Weekend" with Chris May, which caters for up to 4 people who will set up their own instrument over the course of the weekend. So much so that people who have been on the weekend want a follow up course to take them further along the road of guitar repairing. This would give us a chance to cover re-fretting and a more in depth look at the electrics. If you have the aptitude, here is a real chance to set up a small business and maintain other players' instruments, or just indulge in a personal interest. The 23rd of March is full now, the next available and filling fast is the 27^th of July 2007.

With a fresh year ahead now is the time to get serious with your practice and learning schedule. Sorry to get a bit serious here! If you are anything like me you will suffer from what I call the ‘Spring Gardening syndrome’. It starts with a lovely spring day and you get out into the garden to get it tidied up. This can also apply to jobs around the house. You get started with all good intentions and as you approach each job and start it another rears its head so you drop on to that. The intention to rake the lawn of all those old leaves ends up with digging up some weeds, lopping a low branch that’s in your way, starting to sort the rubbish pile, dragging out the mower to check it, having a chat to your neighbour who has similar plans etc etc. Come the end of the day you‘ve got all the garden tools out of the garage your backs giving you gyp and you still haven’t finished the lawn. Practice can be a bit like that if you aren’t focused enough. One thing does lead to another and if you aren’t careful you don’t achieve anything. My playing has improved since Lin Flanagan, who takes our strugglers weekends, gave me set pieces to learn that incorporated the material I needed to learn; Each piece being within my capability but still stretching it just enough. Of course this is why we need teachers to help us learn and also point out where we are going wrong.

London Guitar Show

            Talking about learning, the London Guitar Show this year on Friday the 27^th of April has a student day. Now don’t go thinking all students are young. The average age of students on our Guitar Weekend courses is 50+.
     This is an excellent chance to get some good guitar tuition from top players giving seminars on the day. We have teamed with the London Guitar Show organisation to offer you a special ticket price of £5 for the day instead of £13. Just download the attached pdf and fill out the form to get a discounted ticket. If you want to arrange a few of you to go then get as many tickets as you need. A copy of the letter and form is also available on the web site. Sorry but I could not get discounts for the other two days of the show.    London Guitar Show form

            Again this year we have a great Country Weekend planned with Jim Hornsby. This is on the 27^th of April. This is where you can get to grips with your rhythm playing and accompaniment. This is a weekend that would suit folk players as well. Without getting to technical you can learn how to add those interesting fills that just join up the chords and make your playing much more interesting. We have a look at open tunings and a bit of slide playing as well. This is a weekend for people who want to get away from just playing at home and experience playing with others. Its for strugglers as well as intermediate players. It’s also a great social and fun weekend.

Hi Malcolm,
    Many thanks for a superb weekend - we were talking about it most of the way home. We learnt so much not from just Rod and you but from all the attendees too. It was a great bonus that they were all so easy to get on with.

   I look forward to attending the next level sometime in the near future (i.e. at least one year to give me time to put the things I leant into practise!).

     Again, many thanks for the organisation and the obvious effort you put in to make our stay so enjoyable.
Regards,  Dave                                         Blues  March 2006