I'd been given a Ukulele for my birthday, and wasn't exactly getting on brilliantly with it. Coming…read morefrom a musical background, this was a source of enormous frustration for me, and I decided that lessons were the answer.
Looking about for suitable lessons or courses, I was surprised that finding something suitable was turning out to be difficult, so I was delighted to discover this course from the Glasgow School of Guitar.
It was a 10 week course, priced at £110, which is a really excellent price for music lessons. The person I was dealing with in terms of the organisation of it, Pete, was lovely - really helpful and encouraging. The course I attended was on Wednesdays 7pm - 8pm, and was held in Wellington Church (just opposite Glasgow Uni), which was a very convenient location for me.
I missed the first lesson as I was away with work, so when I went for my first class, I was nervous that I would already have fallen behind already. Not to worry though, everyone was just as bad as me! Well, we were all beginners.
Mark our tutor, was good too. That man has seemingly endless patience. I was very impressed at how he managed to keep the heid with a group of beginners randomly battering our way through what he was trying to teach.
The course content wasn't what I expected though. I had expected a lot more structure around the individual lessons, and the course plan as whole. I had thought it would be along the lines of - learn a technique in the class, say finger picking, have an exercise or tune that helps you practice that technique at home for a week, come back to class the next week having learned it, then learn another one, perhaps certain chords. And so on. This I would imagine, would build your skills over the course of ten weeks and perhaps have you playing a nice piece of music at the end of it.
This wasn't quite how it worked out. Basically, we were given a ukulele arrangement of Beethoven's Ode to Joy, and worked on that for the whole 10 weeks. We were given small snippets of other things too, but it seemed to me that they were more as a point of interest rather than serving the purpose of us learning a technique. By the end of the 10 weeks, I still hadn't covered strumming in a class, and we still couldn't play Ode to Joy. All l really wanted to achieve was learn how to play You are my Sunshine, and other nice wee tunes! Sadly, that skill still eludes me.
Class sizes varied, as attendance seemed to be a bit sporadic (myself included due to work travel), but seemed to be around 4 or 5 people per class, which is a nice size, ensuring that you all get individual attention along with the group work. Everyone I met was lovely, and we all got on and helped each other. This was probably the best thing about the course, seeing that other folk are at the same stage as me, having a wee laugh, and sharing beginners' tips with each other such as tuning apps, or internet sites and books.
I think Glasgow School of Guitar could have a really promising course on offer, but for me, it needs a lot more structure and pre-planning.
