The Michael T. Roberts Music Studio Constitution

Mission

My mission is to provide my students the best learning experience possible, enabling them to progress steadily toward their goals while fully enjoying the process of making music. I strive to develop an optimum course of study for each individual student—based on his or her unique goals, interests, skill level, and learning style—yet also maintain core principles of well-rounded artistry and a solid grounding in the fundamentals of technique and musicianship. Most of all, I aim to create a thriving community of musicians, augmenting my students' private study with opportunities to make and experience music with others.

Core Principles

1) It's all about the tunes

From day one, we will always be working on real music.

My goal is to teach you good music appropriate for your level of experience—tunes you can complete in a reasonable amount of time given a reasonable amount of practice. Over time, you'll compile a solid repertoire with which to entertain yourself—and all those friends and family who will inevitably beg you to play for them! Whether or not you choose to indulge them, you'll be ready.

2) Fundamentals

Part of every lesson will be devoted to the fundamentals of technique and musicianship.

In addition to learning complete tunes, there are a multitude of elements essential to achieving our ultimate goal of playing and enjoying music. These elements—the inner structure of music making and guitar playing—range from technique to theory, from music reading to improvisation. My approach is to present these elements within the context of real music—sometimes music that you already know and love, sometimes new music that I'll introduce to you.

Here's a sampling (if you don't know what most of this stuff is, don't worry—that's what the lessons are for):

° Fundamentals of technique, grounded in classical pedagogy and applicable to all styles
° Counting, playing with solid rhythm and time feel
° Music reading, both standard notation and guitar tablature
° Basic music theory and harmony
° Fingerboard knowledge
° Chords, both the standard "open" chords and "up-the-neck" voicings
° Scales and arpeggios, grounded in the CAGED system, both for general fingerboard knowledge and...
° Improvisation!
° Songwriting and composition

If your goal is to be a skilled and well-rounded musician, these topics are as essential to your study as your skeleton is to your body. My goal is to present them to you not as a dry pile of bones, but as a dynamic structure that supports a living body of music.

3) The Musical Multi-Linguist

I will encourage you to learn from a number of different musical traditions.

Specifically: early in your study we'll choose 3 or 4 pieces of music from widely divergent styles and explore them thoroughly. From there, you'll free to focus more on a specific style if you so choose.* Here's one example of what a typical slate for a beginner might look like:

1) Bob Marley, "Redemption Song" (folk—no, it's not reggae)
2) Deep Purple, "Smoke on the Water" (rock)
3) Stevie Ray Vaughn, "Mary Had a Little Lamb" (blues)
4) "Malagueña," traditional (classical/Spanish)

One of the greatest things about being a musician is the amazing variety we have available to us. With so much different music to choose from—rock, jazz, classical, funk, bluegrass, soul, you name it—it's almost impossible to get bored. And the unique ideas we learn from these diverse perspectives—techniques, fretboard tools, elements of theory, and philosophical approaches—tend to reinforce and enhance each other. Simply put, we become better musicians.

Besides, stylistic categories are constantly blurring, and increasingly require multiple skill-sets in order to be played intelligently. Being a serious musician in America is kind of like living in Europe: you have to be multi-lingual just to get around.

*Note: this is not an outright requirement. I realize you may have strong feelings about learning a particular style, and I respect that—but I'm confident you'll find the multi-lingual endeavor both worthwhile and enjoyable. Steeping myself in a multitude of musical traditions has been one of the great joys of my musical life, and I think it will be for you too.

4) Productive Detours

There's nothing that says you have to just play guitar all the time. Take a page from liberal arts education: if guitar is your "major," why not have a "minor" to add a little spice to your musical diet?

I've rarely met an instrument I didn't want to learn how to play, and over the years I've acquired plenty of them (and actually learned a few). Like learning new styles, learning new instruments opens up whole new worlds in the musical cosmos, and can provide a much-needed respite from the usual routine.

Here are some of the instruments I can play with at least some fluency, any of which you could select as a Minor to your Guitar Major:

-Ukulele
-Mandolin
-Bass
-Piano
-Oud
-Balalaika
-Charango
-Hammered Dulcimer
-Native American flute
-Afro-Cuban percussion

Our lessons will frequently cover aspects of Music History and appreciation, but these are also subjects you could focus on in greater depth. My undergraduate Music major had a concentration in Music History, and I pursued the subject avidly in graduate school as well. Some subjects we might explore include:

-Early history of the guitar and lute
-Modern history of the electric guitar
-History of rock n' roll
-The solo jazz guitar of Joe Pass
-The music of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven
-The Impressionists: Debussy and Ravel
-The nuevo tango of Astor Piazzolla
-Temperament: the history of the science of tuning

These are just a few of many possibilities, and I'm always open to exploring new topics, so just ask!