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I Tried To Get Out Of My Kids’ Way For 15 Years. Then I Asked Them “How Did That Go?” I’m excited that Lenore Skenazy, the enthusiastic and entertaining founder of Free Range Kids and a co-founder of Let Grow, will be soon be speaking to the NYCGS team and community on the topic of “Always Helping Kids Is Hurting Them.” My wife and I have felt aligned with the Let Grow motto (“wh

You Can Do It! But Don’t Wait! (For best results PRINT THE “BULLETPROOF YOUR RESOLUTION” PDF OUT NOW and use it as you read the blog post.) *** *** *** Every January we get lots of calls from students who are making a New Year’s resolution to play guitar. That’s awesome–it’s always a good time to make your dreams come true! But I’ve realized that the students who are most s

I’m passionate about guitar–and I’m super passionate about self-improvement, practice routines and being an effective parent to my three kids. To my surprise, when I started writing blogs about those topics, they received way more engagement (and student signups) than the previous posts about scales and barre chords. So, here’s another parenting blog from a guitar school founder and guitar p

Dear NYC Guitar School Community, For the past two decades I have devoted myself to making learning guitar as absolutely accessible, achievable and easy for my students as possible. “It’s easy to play guitar!” I shouted. “Anybody can learn to do it!” I strove to make every chord, every progression and every piece of theory as easy as possible as NYC Guitar School grew from a single room to thousan

  Ukuleles are quite similar to guitars. One of the perks of playing fretted instruments is the relative ease with which new instruments in the family can be picked up, and going from guitar to ukulele is no exception. It might not be quite as direct a one-to-one translation as going from guitar to bass, but the broad strokes are still pretty similar. Notes are fretted the way, each fret represent

  Pentatonic scales are a great way to start improvising on guitar. Pentatonic patterns are simple and easy to memorize, and they remove some of the riskier note options, essentially ensuring that every note choice will land safely. However, those riskier notes that the pentatonic scale removes can also be some of the most effective note choices when used well. So while the pentatonic scale is a g

While learning new chords can often be daunting, even the trickiest chord shapes can feel not so scary when you’re able to relate them to shapes you’re already comfortable with. Any chord shape can be mastered with enough practice and elbow grease, but you might be surprised to learn just how many chord shapes are out there where you’ve already put in the bulk of the effort without even knowing it

  Two-handed tapping is a fun technique that allows you to grab ahold of notes generally outside of your reach and often leaves audiences dazzled by its flashiness. While you shouldn’t learn tapping purely because it’s flashy, most guitarists would be lying if they told you that it wasn’t at least part of the appeal. But for all the awesome things a solid tapping technique has to offer, a surprisi

  The thundering guitar crunch that opens “Your Love”, the debut single from longtime New York City Guitar School teacher Clayton Hopkins’ new solo project Claytones, perfectly sets the tone for the song’s remaining four minutes. “Your Love” is a full-throttle rock and roll tune painted with the throwback sounds and textures of 80s arena rock, a fact which the song makes known from the moment it s

  The concept of keys itself isn’t too daunting. Most students I’ve taught have an easy enough time grasping the concept that each key contains seven specific notes that all work together, and that those seven notes can be arranged to form a specific set of chords unique to that key. However, what seems to give musicians more of a challenge is knowing exactly what key they are in. Those with