Just a
line to thank you for your kind hospitability last weekend. Apart from the
course, which was wonderful, if at times daunting, your way of doing
things was as good as anything I have ever experienced before, and I shall
bring my wife next time as she is sorely jealous that I was looked after
so well.
I shall
be eternally grateful for Malcolm’s guidance throughout the weekend and
especially for his help with my guitar. I am really such a novice, but he
did make me feel extremely at ease and not at all as idiotic in guitar
terms as I probably am.
I know
that everyone on the course and the ladies who came along as well, were
mightily impressed with your work and organization, the accommodation,
food, your staff and everything else. Everyone was made to feel at home
from the minute we arrived. Apart from guitar weekends, you run a lovely
house.
Lin
Flanagan was kind, appropriately dogmatic and clearly informed. He was
always available for advice and did not demur from dealing with the most
basic or obvious of questioning. He is a very clever teacher, and when I realized
that the other people on the course were of such varying abilities I did
worry that it would not work out, but I was very wrong. I have learned so
much, and frankly at the right time before I get into too many bad habits.
Fantastic
weekend. Can’t tell you how pleased I was, still buzzing even after the
drive. Keep up the good work and hope to see you in the future.
Cheers
Paul
the left.
Hi all
Just a line to see if I have got all your address and to say thanks for
making a great weekend into an excellent one. Lets do it again some time
after the swelling goes down on my fingers!
Just to thank you and your wife for a really nice
weekend. I enjoyed the company and all the advice about learning the
guitar. Thanks. The food was excellent and the accommodation couldn't
have been better . Ziggy the Dog had a good time too. Anyway Im going to
try and improve and perhaps come again on the next course , With
probably a left handed guitar . Iv been convinced to buy one. We
hope to come up there some time just to do some walking . Again thanks ,
and not forgetting Lin , a very patient man .
Sorry I didn't get a chance to say
"cheerio" yesterday.............
I just wanted to say thanks for a great
weekend and hopefully you'll pass that on to Rod also. What I also
wanted to know is what sort of dates are pencilled in next
year for Blues 2 courses, although I appreciate that
I'll have to practice a lot prior to that course !
Hopefully you'll have continued success
with these workshops as they are a truly great idea. I just wish there
had been something similiar around when I started teaching myself
as I may have been tempted to get some solid theory and technique behind
me.
This is a belated thank you for a great weekend last week.
Both Chris and I very much enjoyed ourselves, it was a great
gesture on behalf of our wives to get rid of us for the weekend.
On reflection we did in fact come away with a lot of good ideas
and additional knowledge which we will be putting into practice the next
time our band come together.
Please pass on my thanks to your wife and your staff who looked
after our hospitality so well, along with yourself of course.
All the very best for now, and I hope you have a good summer.
Just a quick note to say thanks again for a superb weekend, I still
can't believe how much I have learnt. I've even started to write a song ( for
the first time in my life ) I'll email it to you when I finish it to see
what you think Its a kind of tongue in cheek humorous blues about my struggle
to learn guitar which hopefully is now a little closer to not being a
struggle anymore.
Another thing that I wanted to ask was if you could send me a handful of
your information leaflets about the weekends as the guy that runs the
blues club that I go to asked if I could bring some back and I forgot to get
some off you. I will also get them to put a link to your web site from theirs
(http://www.thesuttonbluescollective.co.uk/ ).
thanks again
Steve ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Hi Malcolm
Many thanks for
such a good weekend; so great to get the fingers working again, and to
have had such fun too! Excellent teaching, and very well looked
after. Many thanks to you all. And also thank you for
picking us up etc from the station. My train got back at
12.30am! I was strumming invisible guitar most of the way
back!
Have managed a
bit of practice since, and looking forward to a lot more...
Puff the Magic
dragon was mine! Sorry to have left that. If you could pop it in
the post that would be great.
Haven't had a
chance to look at the photos yet, but look forward to that giggle.
Hope this weekend
goes well.
And hope to see
you for another satisfying weekend another time in the future.
Hi Malcolm,
Thanks for a terrific weekend. Lin is an
excellent tutor and I know I learnt a great deal and am now motivated into starting my own rock band!
Thanks also for being such a terrific host and for teaching
me how to play 'Albatross'. I haven't mastered it yet, but believe me I am
persevering!
In the words of Arnie Swartzenegger (I think that's how you spell
it?) 'I'll be back'. Cheers for now.
David.
Thanks again for a
brilliant weekend - I really enjoyed it and wish I'd done it 30 years
ago. Will now practise/consolidate all the things we learnt (this
could take some time - may have to give up work to achieve it!). Many
thanks to yourself & Rod (a great tutor) for all the work you put
in.
I've been enjoying Rod's
Jazz CD and will be seeing Ken Hamm on Wednesday when he's playing
near Selby (a stroke of good fortune).
I'd like to come back on a
Country Weekend and would be grateful if you would let me know dates
& availability from January, 2003 onwards.
"Dear Malcolm
Thanks for a great weekend - and thanks to Rod. (if you are in contact
with Rod tell him the ' offbeat thumb' I was trying to remember was
Robert Johnson's Preaching Blues!)"
Ian Tracy
Malcolm,
Apologies for not being able to reply earlier but my pc has been out of action for a while and I'm now collecting my emails whilst on an oil rig
offshore northern Oman !
Just wanted to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the Blues weekend, great
bunch of guys, good music and great food too! Rod's tuition was just what I
was looking for and hopefully this will encourage me to take my playing a
step
further. I was quite taken by the slide playing..something I thought was
totally beyond me before, but I've now re-tuned my accoustic and have brought a slide with me on the rig for the first time ever!
Caught up with Ken Hamm on the following Thursday at my local blues
venue and had quite a chat. He'd met Lawrence a few days before and was seeing
Colin (I think) the following day.. a real nice guy.
I'm sure you'll see me again on another course in the not to distant
future. Once again thanks
All the best
John
Hi Malcolm,
Here is a rather belated THANK YOU for a great 'Back to Basics'
week-end. I certainly learnt a lot although I got back home feeling a little
confused and shell shocked. A couple of weeks down the line and things have began
to slip into place. Practice time is still the biggest problem but ten
minutes here and half an hour there soon mounts up.
I thought Lin was great! I will be contacting
him soon (lucky chap) and hope to have further lessons with him. With luck I hope to join you next year
for a blues or rock week end.
Please thank your wife and staff for making me
so welcome and comfortable during the week-end and I really enjoyed the food (and the lack of noise
due to the smoke alarm going of).
I have given details of your guest house to some friends of mine so you
may
get a call.
I hope to see you again in the not to distant future and wish you all
well.
Just a short note to say how much I enjoyed last weekend at Beckfoot. I
am keener than ever to improve my guitar playing and I am hoping that by
this time next year I will be good enough to tackle one of the other
weekends, probably the Blues weekend. One thing I forgot to ask, is it possible to get one of the group
photographs you took? If you have them on computer can you e-mail me
one? I would appreciate this, and look forward to hearing from you.
Regards
John Melvin
PS I could not get Nivram out of my head on the way home and have had to
go out and buy a copy!
Dear Malcolm
Thanks for a great weekend, although rather nervous at times, I had a
great time and learnt so much. I have started on my new style of
practice sessions and can see a definite way forward. I want to work on
this for a year then probably repeat the course to see how I am doing. I
would love to get a copy of Rod's CD, if you could e-mail me the price
and packing etc. I will send through a cheque.
Hopefully I will see you
again soon, once again thanks for the weekend, it will really change the
way I play.
Over the years I have been on a
number of guitar courses in different places and always approach them with some
measure of trepidation.Will
everyone there be much better than me?Will
I cope?Will I be able to get on
with the others on the course?
My thoughts as we drove up the M6 to Beckfoot House last November to attend Rod
Sinclair's Blues weekend were much the same.
Arriving there to a warm welcome with tea and
biscuits, being allocated the "executive suite" with the 4 poster bed
did much to dispel any worries I had.
There were eight of us on the course and we were soon
chatting and swapping experiences and learning each other's strengths and
weaknesses.There was a fair mix of
talent and experience but it soon became obvious that everybody could contribute
something useful.
The serious business started straight after dinner
when we all had to do a "party piece" - quite daunting, even to the
most experienced but we were soon jamming together as if we'd known and played
with each other for years!
The fine detail of the course is now a blur but Rod
made a lot of use of backing tracks which we improvised over.
On one session, one person would start a solo and then "hand it on"
to the next in line to pick up.As
soon as we got used to that we had to pass it on at random.If that wasn't enough of a test we then had to restrict our solo to only
3 notes of the pentatonic scale.As
I was sitting in "pole position", I had to go first, and it is one of
the most difficult things I have had to play and my effort was quite bland and
boring.But it was interesting that
by the time it was the last player's turn the quality of the solos had improved
measurably.
I enjoyed the weekend so much that I booked to go on Jim Hornsby's Country
course.
This followed a similar format to the Blues weekend with the
added need to be armed against Jim's wicked sense of humour!Again there was a mixture of abilities but we were soon jamming together
as if we had been doing it for years.
Both courses had a mix of playing together and learning techniques and licks
etc.For me it's the playing
together with others that is most important and most fun and it never ceases to
amaze how quickly a group of people who have never met before can very quickly
make music together.
Something Jim said to one of the group, at the end of the
course will always stick in my memory.This
was a player who had been on a previous course and whose technique and knowledge
of different licks was more that competent; but he admitted to not being
comfortable to playing with others.Jim
said to him "it's time to stop learning and start playing" - advice we
could all heed.
I can certainly recommend these courses to anyone who enjoys
playing the guitar.The atmosphere
is relaxed and it's worth going just for the food and the company.
