By: Matt Warnock
With the online guitar learning community exploding over the past decade, several names have risen to the top of the heap as the leaders in online guitar education. One of these players is Jimmy Bruno, and recently Jimmy has branched out on his own, after working with another company on a previous website, to launch a new site called the Jimmy Bruno Guitar Workshop. If the past is prologue to the future, then this site should be a great resource for guitarists of all levels and backgrounds that are looking to better themselves as players, and all at a very affordable price.
Guitar International recently caught up with Jazz guitar giant Jimmy Bruno to talk about the launch of his new website, the Jimmy Bruno Guitar Workshop.
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Matt: You were involved in another teaching website in the past. Why did you decide to leave that site and branch out on your own with the Jimmy Bruno Guitar Workshop?
Jimmy Bruno: I felt that it was time for me to move on and for us to go our separate ways. No one did anything wrong and it was just time for me to go out on my own because I had some different ideas on how to proceed.
Matt: Did you ever think it was time to pack it in, or had you always known that if you moved on that you would continue with a new site?
Jimmy: I think it’s definitely the way to go, online teaching. The reason being, and this is what a lot of students have found out, that I started to get emails from people who would forget things I had said in private lessons when they got home and wanted to practice. But with this site, all the information is there in one place. It’s a little less personal, but there are definite advantages over teaching in person.
Everything is there for people to access at any time, and if they live far away, say out in Seattle and I’m on the East Coast, then they can study with me without having to fly all the way across the country. And I comment on all the videos that people upload. It’s almost instant feedback. I think it’s the wave of the future. Even with a DVD there’s no feedback, so I think it’s better.
Matt: What are the different ways that you present the learning material on the website for people to check out?
Jimmy: The whole concept of the site is a visual concept, which is my approach to teaching. I connect that visual picture with sounds. If you want to replicate a certain sound then I help them visualize it across the guitar to help them learn how to play it. On the technical side, they can submit a video through the site. I watch it and reply to them by either a text or video response. There is also a forum where we can all meet to discuss the topics being taught. And there’s a weekly chat session that will be launched soon, so that we can all get together and talk in real time to get a real one-on-one experience for the users.
As well, once we get more videos on the site I’ll be able to really dig deep into questions that the students have. For example, if someone asks a question about the bridge to “I Remember April,” I might not send them a direct response because that’s something that everyone can learn from. Instead, I can create a video response where I address the bridge, mention the student by name that asked about it, but make it available to everyone on the site so that they can learn about that tune too.
Matt: How is the site divided up to make it easy for students of all levels to access lessons that are designed for their level of development?
Jimmy: There are different categories, such as jazz guitar chords and improvisation etc. Then, each category has levels, so level one, level two and so forth. For example, a song like “Satin Doll” would have different levels to it. Level one might be learning the chords and some basic improv skills. Then, level two would be some chord substitutions and level three would be an advanced chord melody. So you can get an idea of how the different lessons are divided in order to reach players of all levels and backgrounds.
I tried to cover just about everything in the site. From the guy who knows a few chords and has never improvised before but can play a simple song like “Blue Bossa,” to the guy who wants to improve his chord melody playing and solo guitar playing. That’s the goal. The site is never complete, it’s a work in progress and new material is added every week so it will continue to grow over time to cover more subjects and concepts.
Matt: Can people who like all styles learn from the site, not just jazz?
Jimmy: I teach sounds. How you connect those sounds to the music you want to play is up to you. You can apply it to any genre of music if you want. Once you have an ear for music, once you can play what you hear in your head, you can play Fusion, Wayne Shorter tunes or whatever, that’s up to them. It’s not really style specific, but I probably won’t teach two-hand tapping because I really don’t know much about that specific technique. If I tried it would be like two lessons. [Laughs]
I got an email this morning from a guy in a Country band that’s been using my lessons and applying it to Country tunes and told me it’s working out great. He’s been able to connect his ears to his hands and it’s taken his playing to new levels, which is great. These lessons can be applied to any style of music.
Matt: Is there anything that you’d like to add that you feel people would want to know about the site?
Jimmy: Yeah, one of the big differences from the old site is that I’ve posted lead sheets of different songs, with the chords like you’d see in a Real Book. So, when I post the tune and play the tune, I’ll show them how to decipher the fake book changes. That’s a big thing with guitar players. I’m old school, when I learn a tune I take it off the record. But, not everyone has the ears to do that so they learn songs from fake books. When they get to the lead sheet they learn the chords written in the book, which aren’t always the right changes, most of the time they’re someone’s interpretation of the tune. I’m looking forward to straightening out the changes to these great tunes and helping people become better players along the way.
Matt Warnock is the owner of mattwarnockguitar.com, a free website that provides hundreds of lessons and resources designed to help guitarists of all experience levels meet their practice and performance goals, and is the author of the widely popular “30 Days to Better Jazz Guitar” series. Matt lives in the UK, where he is a lecturer in Popular Music Performance at the University of Chester and an examiner for the London College of Music (Registry of Guitar Tutors).
