Jack Sanders

Years ago when I was at CalArts.  I studied with Miroslav Tadic and he had me play something for him and immediately came up with this analysis.

“Your left hand is completely compromising your playing.  You have to address your fingers and your pinky or you’re never going to get to where you want to go.”

Correcting that was a lot harder than I thought it would be.  It turns out that I had YEARS of bad habits ingrained in my muscle memory and adapting to proper technique was a real struggle.

Enter Jack Sanders.

Jack is a brilliant luthier (check out this video and this interview I did with him on his builds) and also an incredible teacher.  He happened to be teaching at CalArts my last semester and so I took lessons with him that completely changed how I approach guitar.  So much of the things that I assist students with in terms of hand tension, positioning, posture and attack now came directly from things Jack and Miro and I worked on.

Guitar Salon (a cool blog that has been kind enough to repost several of my rantings) has uploaded several mini lessons that Jack did for them that use scales as a diagnostic for left and right hand technical issues.

The advice he gives is gold, and well worth your time.

KoriSoron comes to Boston

In other news – KoriSoron is making its Boston debut at Johnny D’s on Wednesday October 21st on a VERY early show (we go on at 7pm) opening for Bob Forrest (Thelonius Monster / Dr. Drew).  Ticket info here.  Facebook here.

We’re really excited to be playing this show.  As a preview, you can see some Al DiMeola / Vlatko Stefanovski inspired improvised soloing on “Drowsy Maggie” here.

And we hope to see you there!