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Randy Roos, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"My classroom teaching is more in the production range. The Recording Techniques for Guitarists class centers on giving students the basic skills to record themselves and small ensembles, and then to be able to work with those recordings production-wise to flush them out; orchestrate them; and mix them really nicely, with effects and coloration, to get them to sound polished and really well produced. A lot of students really need the basics in terms of the technical things, and we try to cover that as completely as possible, but always with the goal to making a recording that is moving to listen to in some way."
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Colin Sapp, Assistant Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"Students sometimes forget to nurture their artistry while they’re in school. It’s easy to get caught up in becoming proficient at specific skills like ear training, playing at quick tempi, improvising over difficult changes, etc. I think it’s critical to use learned music concepts to inform one’s individuality. The learning process is a creative process, so students should compose and/or improvise new ideas as soon as they are struck with that inspiration."
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Bruce Saunders, Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"In my classes and private lessons I always try to point out the importance of playing with other people, as opposed to (or in addition to) locking yourself away in the practice room. There are psychological aspects of playing music with other people that one can only develop through personal musical interaction. For this reason, I try to play with students as much as I can in all my classes and especially in private lessons. There is so much we can learn about ourselves and others by playing together."
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Benjamin Sher, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"The guitar is a bit of a matrix; because it has so many strings, the same note appears in different regions, so it's hard to figure out where to play notes. To help students find their way around the guitar, I use a streamlined version of Bill Leavitt's 'old-school' approach that I learned from. Brazilian music is also helpful in teaching students to read, because the subdivision is in two instead of in four, so I feel students are able to see wider rhythmic phrases and see the bigger picture of what's going on from measure to measure."
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Curtis Shumate, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"In my Survey of Guitar Styles class, I try to give students insights into some historical players, respecting the tradition of the guitar. I acknowledge the present, but want to raise students' awareness of the more traditional players, not just in jazz but in blues. I'll play the blues great Albert King, and students will inevitably say he sounds a lot like Stevie Ray and Hendrix. And without disrespect, I'll say, 'Well, it's kind of the other way around.' Then, after class, a lot of students will come up and ask, 'What's a good Albert King recording I should check out?'"
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Robin Stone, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"I would like my students to really know the guitar theoretically and to understand how the fretboard works. I firmly believe that students should have a thorough understanding of harmony and how it works on the guitar. Because of the way the guitar is tuned, learning the fretboard can be confusing and frustrating. Most students learn by patterns and fingerings. While this method is a wonderful way to learn how to play the guitar, it leads to a situation later in one’s playing of not knowing what they are playing. I would like to be able to say that my students come away with a better understanding of how those patterns and fingerings translate into a real working knowledge on the guitar."
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Joseph Stump, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"Since I'm kind of the high-tech metal specialist, I spend a lot of time demonstrating these techniques. It's really a player's approach. Rather than holding the student's hand and saying, 'Do it like this,' I'm showing them how it's done and fielding questions, making it clear how to execute certain things. Then they come back after they've worked on it a bit."
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Ken Taft, Assistant Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"My approach is to teach the way real people play, not through rules and attitudes. It's not like a math or chemistry class, where you put this and this together and get that. The rules for playing are: if it works, it works. Younger students, of course, need to know theory. But as you become more proficient you can actually change the theory. To paraphrase Charlie Parker, 'Learn all that stuff, then forget about it.'"
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Scott Tarulli, Assistant Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"My teaching style comes directly from being someone who struggled a lot with learning—in particular, with learning jazz and how to budget my time. Absolutely nothing came easy to me in music. As a result, I base my teaching around my students and help them to become problem-solvers. When they leave Berklee, my hope is that they're able to do things on their own and not be paint-by-number players."
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John D. Thomas, Associate Professor
DEPARTMENT : Guitar Department"The way I teach, it's the music that is most important and not the guitar. Personally I think that looking at things solely from the standpoint of the guitar is kind of self-restricting and limiting. One of my goals is to get students to appreciate the universality of things musical. The instrument doesn't matter; what's important is the person that plays the instrument. After all, all true art is nothing more than an expression of the human condition. The instrument is only the medium to bring out what's inside of you, so the most important thing is what's inside."
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