guitar lessons · schiedam

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( a short hello )

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guitar lessons · schiedamthe first one is free →

The text you are reading was supposed to be written in one day, all five panels. After the initial draft was down, I decided it could use some improvement. “Just one day tomorrow and stop at that”. Each edit felt like the last. The finish line was always one sentence away, and every one of those sentences moved it further.

How many days of improving a text does it take to forget why you were writing it in the first place? Now that I’m making the last edits, I’m on my fifth.

So I guess that’s the number.

( keep walking )

( the loop )

( now )

And that’s the loop: the keyboard holds your fingers like a live wire. Stopping is a decision, a change, and both are frightening. Nothing else exists; just relentless click-clacks filling the room.

Coffee that went cold an hour ago sits on the desk, under the guitars on the wall. Each time I look at it I catch a glimpse of my Gibson: a beautiful creature from the seventies, in walnut. It’s looking at me with reproach, sending a buckshot of guilt through my stomach, and I avert my eyes. Nothing new there, and I say to myself once again, “later”. The fun can always wait. Now there’s something more important, the real work that needs to be done. It’s about my future as a teacher, after all. That big word — “career”.

Locking my hands behind my head, I sigh and look nowhere — my eyes land on the grill in the corner, still in its box, now covered in dust. We bought it two months ago.

It’s now the end of August.

( the promise )

( eight years ago )

I made myself a promise eight years ago, and a big one at that.

I didn’t get to choose the university I went to — nobody really did back then — and after four years of aimless effort I emerged with a diploma and no sense of direction. This kind of thing makes you swing like a pendulum, frantically, with a force that sometimes feels like progress. And then it snaps, and you find yourself in bed at three in the morning wondering what went wrong. Eventually you stop asking. I needed an answer, but what scared me more was the day I’d stop needing one. I yearned for an identity.

There was an old guitar in the corner, the one I’d played as a kid. The memories of playing flamenco in front of a bored crowd of parents slowly dissolved, and I once again started warming to the instrument. There was a degree of secrecy to it, though. A lot of my friends were musicians, and I felt like if I mentioned playing I’d be signing myself up for an audition. In music school we’d focus on reading sheet music, and sitting down without it felt like losing a tether. What do you even do when nothing tells you what to do?

It’s a deceptively simple question with no right answer.

( the instruction )

One day I learned about the pentatonic, a scale without “wrong” notes. Instead of the standard seven it uses five, so no matter what you play it will always “land”. A friend mentioned it to me, and his instruction was as cryptic as it was simple: “Play it right and describe what you see out of the window,” he said.

“Play light.”

( the party trick )

It seemed impossible at first, my eyes would constantly gravitate towards the fretboard. But after a few days of brief but diligent practice, it clicked. It’s like tapping your fingers on a table — you simply can’t unlearn a mechanical skill like that even if you wanted to. I’d bet you could describe the view out of your own window while tapping, too.

Not gonna lie, it felt pretty cool. Something of a party trick to show your friends.

But the real revelation came later.

( the melody )

( that february )

There’s this special kind of tiredness. After a day of overthinking and overdoing it you plop down on the couch and your mind drifts somewhere else, your body fills with tingly heaviness, and you only catch yourself staring at a vase for ten minutes straight when your eyelids are already half-closed.

That’s the kind of day it was, but at the end of it I still found myself savouring the scenery as instructed, the pick climbing up and down the strings with precise monotony. Winter came with heaps of snow that year, and even though it was the end of February they still sat confidently, white glistening clouds on black branches of naked birch trees. A flock of birds flew by, and I wondered what kind of place they were going to. And then I heard a melody. A real, actual line cut through the monotony. “But how?” I mumbled, and the moment this thought crossed my mind the melody shattered. I was playing an exercise again.

The ease came from the lack of thought.

( the lamp )

( the next evening )

Late evening next day I turned off all but one small lamp, sat down comfortably with the guitar, turned up the reverb and started a backing track. My hands didn’t need my brain any more, so I gave the whole of it to my breathing. It didn’t work right away, but the feeling that washed over me after a few moments was new, unknown, calming and warm. I played slow, brushing the strings lightly. I felt each string strain against the pick. Each stroke was deliberate, but it came with no thought. Every note landed and there was nothing in the way.

It was a quiet night, filled with sound.

That’s what “play light” meant.

Eight years ago I made myself a promise to never forget where I’m going. The feeling that came over me that night was too grand to ignore. It was bigger than me, and bigger than just the guitar.

I found the tether, and eventually it became a red thread running through everything else.

( the claim )

The claim is no smaller than the preamble you just read, and if you are still here you deserve a straight explanation.

This feeling I mentioned has a name and isn’t really a mystery. Musicians call it “playing in the pocket”. It often comes unannounced and you don’t have to play an instrument to have experienced it: if you’ve ever turned the radio down to reverse into a tight space, you know what I’m talking about.

The guitar is one of the best ways to learn how to recognise and hold on to this feeling. Playing calms your inner monologue: you hear a chord and you feel it before you can name either the feeling or the chord.

Music sits under language, not on top of it: the first rhythm you ever heard was your mother’s heartbeat, the first melody the sound of her voice. Nobody taught you: rhythm and melody have been with you your whole life.

That’s why music makes you feel instead of think: it comes before thought exists.

The guitar is a special case: the instrument that talks back most, responding to the slightest touch. It’s tactile: an anchor reverberating against your chest, tying you to what’s real.

I want to teach you how to feel it.

( the invitation )

My method is philosophy applied through music, and music is only one way of slicing an apple, not the apple itself. If you are curious but aren’t sure it’s your thing — there are library and blog sections: recommended reading and articles of my own.

And for the reader who stays, here’s what to expect:

( the door )

The trial lesson is free, further classes start at €30. If the price is in the way, say so in any case

— nobody should rule themselves out before we’ve met

We can either practise at my studio or I can deliver myself straight to your door in the Rotterdam area, both are fine with me. Trials are only held at the studio, two stops from Rotterdam Centraal, in a quiet corner of Schiedam.

The length is not fixed — if we take longer, we take longer, and you are not obliged to stay for the full hour either.

If after the trial you realise it’s not for you, we just part ways; if you realise it is, we continue the adventure.

Come once, owe nothing