Top Jazz Guitar Instructor Dr. Matt Warnock and His Road to World-Wide Success

By: Rick Landers

Matt Warnock

Having been intensely studying, performing, and teaching jazz guitar to thousands of students around the globe, Dr. Matt Warnock is decidedly the number one or most accessed guitar teacher on the planet.

Matt’s background in academia, writing, editing and publishing and both solo and collaborative performing have all developed his jazz playing and on-line site, MWG Courses, to be at the point where he’s earned his place as a “go to” respected jazz master in music circles.

The Canadian born guitarist developed as many musicians do, from the world of rock, metal, the blues, classical, and certainly from other  influences to jazz. With degrees from McGill University (Montreal, Canada), Western Michigan University and his doctorate from the University of Illinois, and on to teaching assistant roles at both Western Michigan and U. of Illinois.

Later, Matt would find his way to hold faculty posts in England at the Leeds College of Music, Western Illinois University and the prestigious Interlochen Arts Camp. He also taught in Moscow (Russia), Manchester (U.K.), Nepal, Chicago (U.S.), Sao Paulo (Brazil), Puerto Rico, Scotland, and more.

”I just love it when I see a new video lesson posted by Matt. His lessons are concise and to the point! I wish that his lessons were available to me when I was learning how to improvise!” – Vic Juris

“I first met Matt Warnock when he translated a clinic I gave in Belo Horizonte Brazil. Later I discovered him on his YouTube instructional channel. Matt’s online lessons are a great resource for any jazz guitarist – from beginner to pro. Matt is simply a great teacher and player.” – Dave Stryker

“A Straight Ahead Player of Considerable Merit” – John Kelman All About Jazz

No grass grows under Warnock’s feet. He’s a driven and inventive early adopter of technology and built Western Illinois University’s highly acclaimed guitar studio, from the bottom up. He also founded the university’s WIU International Guitar Festival, setting up clinics with luthiers, historians, music business professionals, and concerts by world-class performers from Brazil, Canada and the United States.

Today, at his MWG Courses site, he continues to highlight live performance interaction with students, breaking down the complexities of jazz guitar into easily consumable bites, small focused live instructional presentations, that are archived for later review by his followers. Unlike many guitar instructors who teach top down, Matt meets his students at their own level, drawing on his own experience-based challenges when he reached for his own higher musical plateaus. His instructional style embraces positive instruction, as he presents step-by-step and cumulative improvisation exercises, always encouraging growth and fresh innovation, rather than a stagnant, tedious memorization method.

And this month, we can all enjoy listening to his new release, Matt Warnock: Homecoming, a tasteful array of some of Matt’s latest jazz explorations!

Homecoming is available at:

Spotify, Amazon and Apple Music!

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Rick Landers: You’ve been able to build a solid career in music having pursued your ambitions and passion through academia, publishing, teaching, performing and helping others develop musically. When did you get the passion and what kinds of highlights and challenges have you experienced to get to where you are today?

Matt Warnock: I grew up playing music, first piano and then guitar. As I got into high school, I made the switch from piano to guitar and never looked back. Along the way I’ve had some amazing teachers that fostered my passion for music, such as Val Suriano my first jazz teacher, Mark Gough my first guitar teacher, and Roddy Ellias, my first jazz guitar teacher.

Some of my favorite moments in my career have been meeting so many amazing people in my travels around the world playing and teaching guitar. It’s been enlightening meeting so many people who share my love of guitar and music, and to play with many of them on stages around the globe. 

As a musician, there are always challenges with making this career work financially, especially with Covid and recent changes in technology. But, I’ve managed to keep my head up, work through the tough times, and come out the other side stronger than before. And I’ll keep that attitude going forward as I face new and unexpected challenges. 

Matt Warnock: Jazz is ever evolving, and as new and younger musicians explore the genre, they bring their unique influences and styles to their performances. Because of this, jazz is always growing and changing. I think that’s a great thing for the genre. If jazz stops evolving, then it becomes stagnant. Right now there are a lot of younger musicians exploring jazz combined with other genres in a way we haven’t heard before. And it’s very exciting for both listeners and musicians alike. 

Rick: Tell us about your first professional recording experience and how the process compares to how you record today?

Matt Warnock: My first professional recording experience, for a full album, was on a pop-jazz record with the band Magoo at Blueprint Studios in Manchester, England. It was a fun project, and I was really happy with how it turned out. That was a full band and I was co-writing it with a friend of mine, so it was a collaborative project. 

Homecoming is a solo jazz guitar record. So I wrote, arranged, and recorded all the music myself, with the help of my engineer, Dustin Jones. Because of that, this record feels more personal, as it was a more intimate and individual recording session. 

As well, most sessions I’ve done in the past were one or a few long recording sessions where we tracked multiple songs. With Homecoming, I wrote, arranged, and recorded one song per week until the album was finished. This approach to writing and recording reflected directly on who I was and where I was, as a person, for each song. I think that really brought out a unique side of my musical personality in the record. 

Rick: More recently, I see artists releasing single songs, one at a time, rather than going for the long haul and waiting to record a set of songs for an album, or some other in-between strategies. What track are you following to get your music out there and what are the benefits that you find appealing”

Matt Warnock: For now, I’ll write full albums. I like to think of albums as suites or long songs broken up into smaller movements. So, there’s an overarching theme that I then break down into chunks with each song. I like this approach as I tend to hear and think about music in larger groups like this. 

Rick: You’ve taught guitar in several parts of the world, how did your various experiences change you or impress upon you the best teaching methods, ones that worked best?

Matt Warnock

Matt Warnock: Whenever I spend time playing or teaching on the road I come back a changed person, guitarist, and teacher. I find that spending time in different cultures, with new people, eating different food, jamming with different musicians, and working with new students, all combines to shape my playing and teaching in new and exciting ways.

I always tell students, here and abroad, that I learn more from them than they do from me in lessons. I always keep the beginner’s mind and am open to new ideas and challenges, and I’ve found that’s strengthened my teaching over the years more than anything. 

Rick: As an early adopter to the technology, you’ve built a pretty formidable on-line presence teaching guitar. Tell us about. your site and what you offer the various levels of guitarists, and have any surprised you when they shifted to different styles of playing when they discover something different, like another genre…metal to jazz, as an example?

Matt Warnock: MWGcourses.com is my main site right now. There are hundreds of guitar and jazz guitar courses on the site, as well as my archive of over 250 hour-long jazz guitar workshops for students to enjoy. 

The main part of the membership is the MWG Studio, where there are daily interactive lessons, weekend challenges, three to four live practice sessions per week, guest artist workshops, and more. Students can upload as many audio or video performances for feedback each day as they like, and there’s a really strong and welcoming sense of community amongst the players. 

Each month we learn a new jazz standard together, melody, chords, soloing, and chord melody. And students prepare a “final project” each month where they showcase their progress on that song. It’s a fun and interactive way to learn jazz guitar, and students get a ton of time with my live and through video, it’s very personalized even though it’s an online school. 

I have a lot of members that come from different backgrounds, nobody really starts learning jazz right away. So, we all come from somewhere, like I came from metal and classical into jazz, with some blues mixed in there when I was younger. A lot of players come from either blues, classic rock, or classical before trying out jazz. And they’re all welcome. 

Rick: Where are you now with releasing new material and how do you decide what comes next?

Matt Warnock: I’ve started writing new songs and go into the studio every week to lay down tracks. My first album was all solo jazz guitar. For my next releases I’m planning on more layered and composed music that I’ll release as singles. More instrumental guitar music than purely jazz. I have a lot of influences and music that I love to listen to, and my upcoming releases will reflect that. 

Matt Warnock

Rick: I know you’re a big Wes Montgomery fan. What is it about him that impresses you most and who in today’s pantheon of jazz or guitar masters are influencing you or impressing you most now?  International artists?

Matt Warnock: For me, it was seeing Wes smile every time he played. Jazz is hard to learn and perform, and a lot of us approach it as work. Seeing Wes smile ear to ear as he played reminds me to have fun and enjoy the journey. For modern players, Sheryl Bailey is in that category for me. An immensely talented performer who always looks like she’s having fun on the bandstand. 

Rick: Your wife, Holly, has followed somewhat of a similar path in music, have you two found ways to collaborate writing or performing yours and her music?

Rick: You’ve never shied away from being a nomad, a world traveler, what have been some of your favorite places and was it tough to make those moves work while keeping your music career on track and sustaining a certain level of income or life style? And would you do it all over again?

Matt Warnock: I’ve loved all the places I’ve lived, Canada, the U.S., Brazil, and the United Kingdom. Each had their own unique culture and flavor and all have helped shape me as an artist and teacher. I’ve worked online since 2011, so moving doesn’t affect my work at all. In fact, that’s the main reason I began working online, to have the flexibility to travel and work wherever I had an Internet connection. And I would do it all again in a heartbeat.  

BONUS VIDEOS OF HOMECOMING!

Homecoming is available at:

Spotify, Amazon and Apple Music!