2007 RGT Conference
In case you missed this event, Chaz Hart relays his experiences of the 2007 RGT Guitar Teachers Conference…
There were about 150 attendees at what proved to be the event of the year for anyone connected with guitar teaching. The conference was opened by RGT Director Tony Skinner with the accent very firmly on the new acoustic guitar grades. Before the first seminar got under way, James Uings, the Music Editor of Total Guitar magazine, presented Tutor of the Year awards. The overall award went to Vic Hyland - a very popular choice and one which showed why Vic has had one of the best attended seminars at previous conferences with his talks on how to set-up and run a guitar teaching practice.
MORNING SESSIONS
The opening seminar was given by Tony Skinner, later on joined by Merv Young, who took us through the new acoustic guitar syllabus, demonstrating many pieces from the new grades. There were some excellent performances of the pieces from Grades 3 to 8 and it was interesting to hear all the sections of the exam in action.
After the morning break and a chance to digest all of the information on the new grades over coffee, there were six seminars to choose from. I managed to visit Ray Burley (classical guitarist extraordinaire) who was running a very well attended ‘Improve your Sight Reading’ seminar. As my brief for the day was to take as many photos as possible, I moved on to Merv Young’s class on ‘Teaching In Schools’. The room was heaving with interest, so clearly this is a popular topic. ‘Alternate Tunings’
with Terry Lees was a fascinating talk and I picked up lots of useful information; great demonstrations too. My last jaunt of the morning was to Vic Hyland’s talk on ‘Creative Teaching Using NLP’. If you haven’t been to his class and you want that extra dimension with your teaching, this is a definite for future conferences. The only morning talk that I didn’t get to was ‘Using Music Software’ with Richard Payne, but I have been to one of Richard’s seminars before and if you own Sibelius 4, 5 or G7, then it’s well worth looking out for future workshops by Sibelius. Tony Fleming was giving away his new book ‘Ultimate Guitar Tutor’ to anyone attending his seminar and there were certainly plenty of attendees.
AFTERNOON SESSIONS
In the afternoon I decided to stay longer in each of the seminars I attended and boy am I pleased that I did! The first one was with Max Milligan playing ‘Acoustic Rags’.
Max is a great player and a really good speaker who injects some excellent humour into his talks, and this was no exception. The last seminar I saw was by Clive Carroll: his tone and timing on many complicated pieces was an absolute delight to behold. I overheard at least three teachers say: “This has been worth the price of the conference on its own”. When I see and hear good guitar playing, it just brings a smile to my face. I never stopped smiling all afternoon. Other afternoon seminars I heard great reports about but simply didn’t have time to get to were ‘Jazz Chord Playing’ by Merv Young, ‘Advanced Acoustic Guitar Techniques’ by Stuart Ryan, ‘Advanced Classical Guitar’ by Ray Burley, ‘Blues to Jazz Lead Playing’ by Max Milligan, ‘The Seven Habits Of Successful Guitar Teachers’ by Vic Hyland and ‘Becoming A Guitar Magazine Contributor’ by James Uings. What a choice! If you missed this year’s event make sure you book early for 2008.
