Matt Fox

One of the earliest photos I have is of me resting on my father’s knee next to his record player with headphones perched upon my six month-old head. Another early memory is when my parents gave me my own, albeit a Fisher-Price, record player.  To this day, I still have the old LP player, and the two remaining plastic records have no grooves left on them from incessant use.  Once I hit the fourth grade, I began taking string bass lessons in school – an instrument I still play and cherish.  By the time I reached seventh grade, I got my first guitar and soon after came to love the song “All Along the Watchtower” from Jimi Hendrix’s, Are You Experienced? From this point, the seeds were sown for me to become a musician and it’s a path I follow to this day.

A musician friend once gave me the opportunity to teach lessons at a local music store. I was a little ambivalent at first, but almost immediately my students were picking up on my teachings and making good progress. After my first year at the music store, I soon realized the students who were making the most progress, both musically and technically, were playing the music that they wanted to. This in turn motivated me to look at the various styles and songs I was teaching and began picking out little riffs, licks and fragments that could be used to improve a student’s playing. Using pieces of popular music to teach various musical techniques helps to keep student interest levels high in contrast to some of the mundane exercises found in the pages of “method books."