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Like many of my peers I learned to play guitar long before the Internet. Today, guitarists have a wealth of material to learn from online. The sheer quantity of material online can be overwhelming, not to mention the fact that it is often wrong or misleading. People from around the world always ask me how I learned. So, I decided to create the CV Academy to show you my approach to mastering the guitar.
I began with the concepts and “artistic signatures” from dozens of heroes and contemporaries that I’ve learned from over the years. I’ve sat next to and played with amazing guitarists like Allan Holdsworth and Brian May. Larry Carlton, Guthrie Govan, Mark Knopfler, Joe Pass, Joe Diorio, Sonny Landreth, Albert Lee, Ron Eschete, Eric Johnson, Andy Timmons, Greg Koch, Robben Ford, Howard Roberts, Steve Morse, Joe Bonamassa, Reeves Gabrels, and Tommy Emmanuel have shown me their secrets as we’ve played music together, many times one on one. And through it all I’ve kept a musical diary that I call my Lick Book. I’ve tried to write down every good musical idea I’ve come across practicing or learning from heroes and friends. By now there are at least 30 volumes of these lick books in my practice room!
For many years I’ve taught workshops and clinics all over the world while on tour. I’ve given master classes at the University of Southern California, Musicians Institute, Los Angeles College of Music, Berklee College of Music, Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, MAI in France and many more schools in the UK, Italy, and Germany. I have distilled my decades of playing and teaching experience into the lessons in the CV Academy.
Together with my collaborator Ray Bergstrom I’ve organized a huge amount of this material into hundreds of video lessons. Our curriculum will help enthusiastic guitarists continually improve for a long time. I call it the CV Academy…check it out!