Lessons

As an accomplished solo guitarist, Fiona offers lessons in all styles of guitar performance, with a specialisation in folk and fingerstyle guitar. All guitar lessons are designed to help students learn their favourite music, through a focus on technique, tone and skills development on the guitar.

Styles include but are not exclusive to:

• Folk/contemporary folk

• Fingerstyle

• Classical guitar

• Contemporary pop & rock

• Trad jazz/jazz

Fiona offers specialised, tailored lessons for singers-songwriters who are looking to work on the nuances of practical and technical guitar skills related to also being an active vocalist and/or songwriter.

This can be anything from looking at practical exercises to help multitasking between singing and guitar playing, learning how to expand options for self-accompaniment on guitar, learning technical focal points relevant to complement singing, or expanding how to write and arrange guitar parts specifically for songwriting, among other areas. These are suitable for complete guitar beginners up to advanced players.

This is a hybrid course offered for vocalists and/or songwriters who wish to learn or refine their skills on the guitar. This is available to students who are completely new to guitar, up to professional singers and songwriters.

Skills taught include, but are not limited to:

• Chord/harmonic understanding

• Rhythm development

• Soloing around the voice

• Vocal accompaniment guitar techniques

• Singer and songwriter-focussed music theory on the guitar

• Multitasking development exercises

As a subset of the Guitar for Singers course, Fiona coaches music therapy students and music therapists on specific skills needed for their occupation and training. Please get in touch if you are involved in music therapy and would like to discuss guitar coaching specific to your work or training curriculum.

Her songwriting lessons are tailor-made to each student’s goals and musical style. These can focus on learning songwriting fundamentals, to relevant music theory, lyric-writing, up to learning songwriting refinement skills. This could be for those entirely new to songwriting, those who have been practicing songwriting for a while but would like to take the next step and may be unsure of where to go next, or to practicing professionals who would like advice on specific songwriting nuance. These lessons can include focus on but are not exclusive to:

• Music theory

• Harmony & chord theory

• Aural training

• Song writing structure/form

• Lyric writing

• Reading & writing music

• Arranging & band/ensemble skills

While Fiona only currently offer lessons in guitar and songwriting, Fiona does also play the following instruments:

• Lead and backing vocals

• Electric bass

• Ukulele

• 5 string banjo

• Tenor banjo

• Mandolin

• Keyboard

For students in bands/ensembles with these instruments, having experience performing these instruments professionally, Fiona can offer insight and practical advice on how to sing, play guitar and write songs in relation to these instruments.

Upon request, Fiona offers music business/industry consultations for emerging to established professional musicians, covering areas such as copyright/music intellectual property and financial literacy. Please get in touch directly for a consultation.