Our guitar teaching is based on principles long held in music and, strangely enough, the martial arts. Each lesson is structured in the following way:

1. Warmup exercise.
2. Stretch exercise
3. Left hand strengthener or right hand exercises.
4. Chords
5. Reading music and theory.
6. Songs, improvisation and style development.

This begins at the very beginners level through to the end of "Guitar Manual 3" (which will be available online by November 2005). Our aim is to teach you how to teach yourself and there should be nothing written, improvised or arranged that you will be unable to understand and adapt to your own musical expression after sufficient study and practice of these manuals.

It was Socrates who said "What we learn to do, we learn by doing.", and nothing could be more appropriate for the guitar. Learn from the greats and then go out and PLAY and so, express yourself.

Here are a couple of examples of pages from "Rock Guitar Manual 1", "Guitar Manual 2" and Rock Guitar Manual 1 CDROM (whose text is the same as "Rock Guitar Manual 1").

Rock Guitar Manual 1

Here are 2 pages that outline the approach to learning the Guitar that we at WAX know can work for you.

Page 21 - gives you a famous sound from which many hits are derived and what chords are involved and how to play them .... BUT, and just as important, is how to think about playing chord progressions/ movements in the future... even at an early stage, this sets up your own options and releases you from other peoples ideas

Page 25 - Reading music is the key to being able to take music from all over the World and all throughout History... it is like reading off the Net or from books . Our "Rock Guitar Manual 1" starts off teaching Reading Music in a systematic way that embodies all of the principles you learn progressively in these Manuals: the mix of good Left Hand/Right Hand techniques that build as you move along."

Supplementary Lessons for Rock Guitar Manual 1

"If you download these pages you will find a "Bridge Lesson" that relates to "Rock Guitar Manual 1" (book and CD - ROM) and "Guitar Manual 2" as a sort of "Bridge" ..... it is a Lesson laid out in the form of the Lessons given in the Books and ROM and is additional to those books, so for anyone who has already purchased them, here is some more information / solos / reading etc. for you..... for those who haven't, this Lesson will give you a better idea of what is in the Books and ROM : if you like what you see, then move to our Products Page to Order your copy. The pages are in Adobe Acrobat .pdf format and the Reader for them may be downloaded on this page ."

Bridge Lesson 1
Bridge Lesson 2
Bridge Lesson 3
Bridge Lesson 4
Bridge Lesson 5
Bridge Lesson 6

Guitar Manual 2

Here are 2 pages that show how much you have progressed by the time you reach this point in "Guitar Manual 2".

Page 40 "The Aim of our teaching is to teach you how to teach yourself" and Page 40 is this in action . As a Teacher, I am often asked how to work out what scales and/or chords to play over a passage of music and my answer is that to work this out you need to know what musical questions you have to ask yourself. The "Pause for thought Page 40" is a part of teaching yourself this skill and one that progresses through the Manuals until there is not a chord or progression that you will not be able to improvise at will.

Page 43 is a page that outlines "Power Chords" and their uses, where they come from, how to work them out, what they are, a progression to solo over and so on ...."