GFA

If you'd like to know a bit about me: my name is Sean Campbell, I'm from the south of England, and music has been the source of multiple transformative experiences in my life. When I was a child I would do things like learn the entire monologue at the beginning of Thriller by Michael Jackson, or jump up and down on my bed to Let's Dance by Chris Rea (only stopping to rewind the tape in order to do it again), or dance by myself to an Atari menu screen.
In March 2000, having taken 7 years of keyboard lessons in my boyhood in order to play the Doctor Who theme, I wanted to make the switch to guitar. In retrospect I had some good luck in my guitar beginnings: by no effort of my own, I came into close contact with guitarists who were better than me.
In 2004 I realised that I had been consistently spending more time playing guitar than anything else, and since I was at the stage when most people studied something, it seemed appropriate that I should study music. So in 2005 I began formerly studying Contemporary Music and Guitar at a music academy in Coventry, UK. After graduation, I applied for a year's internship there, which promised to provide further tuition, as well as coaching and tuition experience. I was also given the opportunity to play at festivals in Rouen, France; and Slovonski Brod, Croatia. This served to intensify my travel bug, which had been stimulated greatly by a move to Nepal and India for nine month at the tender ages of 18-19 in order to teach English.
Once I'd left Coventry behind me, I embarked on a teaching and playing career that took me to the Michigan, USA and Victoria, Australia, working at Summer camps, schools, festivals, workshops, and music academies. I played live on radio, went on tour, created courses, and coached young bands. These days I am more geographically steadfast, and run my own business entirely. I am also currently pursuing a solo gigging project on the side.
I have learnt that I am not the best guitarist in the world. I have met too many amazing musicians to retain such a belief, though I do strive to continually improve. But if I am to be candid about my strengths; I believe it is in communicating what I know to others, and empowering them to do what I can do. That is the skill that pays my bills.
March 2020 changed everything though. I lost about 50% of my students within a week, and had to switch to teaching online. In a desperate effort to hold on to my remaining students, I wracked my brains for ways to bring more value to them. I began leaving videos at the end of each Skype lesson to demonstrate and recapitulate the material covered. This soon got overwhelming as I was teaching different material to each individual student, and had to make multiple videos for every single lesson. Some students were also asking for diagrams to accompany the videos too! So I decided instead to opt for quality over quantity - instead of making makeshift stuff for students on an individual basis, I resolved to invest my efforts in creating extremely thorough, detailed static content, which I uploaded onto a platform called Notion, and invited my students to peruse. This was an unequivocal success, and improved my service immensely. On top of that, I found a few other uses for this online platform, for instance it provides a perfect means of setting goals and documenting progress, so that now, whenever a student logs in, they can immediately apprehend where they are on their journey: what material they've gained mastery over, and what is yet unfamiliar. I've essentially provided clarity - once the lesson is over, there is no question in the student's mind about what to practice, and in which areas he/she is advancing.
I have been adding to that library of content for years now and continue to do so. There is enough on there to appease a wide diversity of tastes and levels of experience. I am in fact so confident in the efficacy of this synthesis between detailed online instruction and one-to-one coaching that if you don't think it's superior to guitar lessons with your local guitar teacher, I'll pay the fee you spent on your last lesson with me towards tuition with that person.