Richard Mills BA LGSMD Guitarist, Guitar Teacher

Professional guitar lessons in Leeds, tuition for beginners to advanced
Jazz guitar performance

musical styles I teach

Jazz
The first player I heard was Django Reinhardt. I was about eighteen, and did not have a clue about how to go about finding out what he was doing. I was staggered to learn that he did it all with only two healthy left hand fingers. Next I came across Joe Pass, his chord/melody album ‘Virtuoso’. I now understand how to play chords and melody simultaneously on the guitar, but I didn’t then.

I started to listen to Pat Metheny, Pat Martino, Mick Goodrick and Bill Frisell, and after that I really got into all the electric jazz players, the ones who have been influenced by rock and blues, eg: Mike Stern, John Abercrombie, John Scofield and Scott Henderson. I have learned a lot about playing in a legato, flowing style, from listening to the incredible Allan Holdsworth.

My favorite non-guitarists in the jazz world include: Joe Zawinul, Wayne Shorter, Weather Report, Mike Brecker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Chic Corea and Thelonius Monk

Even if you are not interested in playing straight-ahead jazz or jazz-rock, I can help you ‘jazz up’ your playing, to make it sound fresh both melodically and rhythmically.

Blues
I love playing blues. When I was sixteen I bought some old vinyl LP’s of some American country blues artists – Big Bill Broonzy, Robert Johnson, Lightening Hopkins, Brownie McGhee, Reverend Gary Davis. This captured my imagination, and I still listen to this great music. I was into only acoustic music at the time, but later got into electric blues by listening to Cream with Eric Clapton (check out the long improvisation on ‘Spoonful’ on ‘Wheels of Fire’), Fleetwood Mac with Peter Green (eg 'Oh Well'), Tony McPhee and The Groundhogs (see 'Split'), and Rory Gallagher with 'Taste'. I learned all of the riffs on his first albums (eg ‘Live Taste’, ‘On the Boards’, and ‘Live in Europe’).

Rock
Led Zeppelin is the first name that comes to mind. I started with Led Zep IV, and learned all of the riffs on that album, and the other early ones. A friend lent me the Jimi Hendrix masterpieces ‘Axis: Bold As Love’ and ‘Are You Experienced?’ I had thought that Jimi only did the high-energy distorted playing ('Purple Haze'), but realised that his carefully crafted chord work was revolutionary at that time (see the classic 'Little Wing'). Other great rock players who I have listened to and learned from include Santana ('Abraxas'), Ritchie Blackmore with Deep Purple, Keith Richards, and the wonderful sonic maestro Jeff Beck ('Blow by Blow'). I am not a specialist in the two-handed tapping thing, but every so often I enjoy stepping on Chorus and Distortion and playing an Eddie Van Halen-type riff or two (see 'OU812').