Shred Guitar School Offers Pieces to the Guitar Pick Puzzle
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| Leigh Williams |
Wednesday, July 20, 201
By ARRISSIA OWEN Reporter
Leigh Williams experienced an epiphany. As he stood at an Iron Maiden concert as a Welsh 14 year old watching guitarists Dave Murray and Adrian Smith shred through power chords, he saw his future as a guitar hero.
Williams sequestered himself in his room, told his parents to hold all calls, and went to work learning everything he could teach himself about playing electric guitar.
“I thought, ‘What an amazing job,’” recalls Williams, now a Moonridge resident and owner of Shred Guitar School. “You get to travel the world, get paid for it and do something you love.”
Williams soon enrolled at the Musicians Academy of London, with the help of the unemployment office. Upon graduation, the owner of that school recommended Williams head to Los Angeles to study at the Musicians Institute of Technology.
But the aspiring musician had to come up with the pounds to make it happen. He enlisted the help of the local media before turning to the Prince Charles Trust, which awarded him a grant to follow his dreams to the Sunset Strip.
After graduating in the early 1990s, Williams joined some heavy metal bands, recorded albums, toured and lived the life he dreamed of. Then he discovered his true calling—teaching others the technical side of guitar, which he does while continuing to record and perform his own music.
Williams started out an instructor at Sam Ash in Westminster, Calif., before venturing out on his own, opening Orange County School of Music nearby. He had 10 instructors working under him, and plenty of satisfied students.
Right about then, Williams started spending time in Big Bear Lake, camping with his son, Zack. He decided to leave the rat race behind for the serenity of the mountains, buying his home in Moonridge and commuting to Orange County for work.
As technology advanced, he was able to figure out ways to commute less, building a studio at his home and turning to the Internet to teach. With the advances in web cams, two years ago he was able to move his business entirely online.
Shred Guitar School is a comprehensive guitar instruction website that enables Williams to teach students around the world. He uses a high-definition web cam with live and pre-recorded lessons available for subscription-based clients. The music-theory heavy lessons are tailored for beginner, intermediate and advanced players, and he makes himself available for inquiries.
Students start out learning about notes, moving on to major scale formulas and different chord types through popular songs. They can then move on to more complicated scales and speed picking to syncopation and arpeggios.
Williams breaks down lessons in a way so that his students understand why AC/DC’s “Back in Black” is a typical blues progression with a hard rock feel, why that particular song is so darn catchy—not just how to play like Angus Young. Then they can apply that knowledge to writing their own riffs.
“It’s structured,” Williams says. His students need to learn the basics before moving on to fret board mastery and studying solos by guys like Randy Rhodes and Steve Vai. “People can get overwhelmed by jumping the gun.”
Aside from the heavy metal side of shredding, Williams is working on two more sites tailored to different music styles, including rock and blues guitar playing. He tabs favorite songs as requested by students with scales and effects explained, even offering diagrams of favorite guitar players’ gear setups.
“It’s like a jigsaw puzzle,” Williams says. With dedication, his students will realize how all of the technical aspects of guitar playing work together to get to the point they can shred like the masters.
“Knowledge is power,” he says. “It will all fit.”
For more information about Shred Guitar School, visit www.shredguitarschool.com.
Contact reporter Arrissia Owen at 909-866-3456, ext. 142 or by email at aowen.grizzly@gmail.com.
For the original story, click here: http://www.bigbeargrizzly.net/news/business/article_23bba356-b288-11e0-9fd1-001cc4c03286.html
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