I see a lot of electric guitar media on here but very little acoustic. Do you teach acoustic guitar?

Yes, I teach all levels of acoustic guitar lessons. Electric is my first instrument and most of my music industry performances and credits are electric guitar based. However, I have played acoustic guitar for many years. You can hear some of my acoustic work by clicking on the link or music player below:

JIMMY CYPHER – Steel Flamenco

What is your teaching philosophy?

Teaching Philosophy Part I

Teaching Philosophy Part II

Do you do “in home” lessons?

Unfortunately, I am too heavily booked to do in home lessons.  All guitar lessons are held at my Atlanta or Marietta/Alpharetta lesson studios.  At present, my Marietta and Alpharetta locations are almost always booked with a wait list.  However, my Atlanta location  is conveniently located right down the street from Guitar Center’s rhythm city.   I manage my own studio, so I have extended evening and weekend hours.   As a result, I can usually find a time slot for lessons that works, is convenient for you and keeps you out of the horror of rush hour traffic.

Guitar lessons Atlanta directions from Atlanta

Directions from Alpharetta

Directions from Marietta

Do you teach young children?

Generally speaking, I teach ages 13+ (beginner) or 11+ (with 2 or more years experience on guitar or other instruments) .  The guitar is not the most child friendly instrument, mainly due to the initial pain experienced on the fingertips, small hands that cannot yet make certain stretches and the fact that nothing really sounds good on the guitar for the first 2-4 weeks. Taken together, most children find this to be very frustrating.  You can get around the stretch problem with a smaller scale children’s guitar but even then, my lesson curriculum starts with contemporary music fundamentals and moves warp speed.  Most of my clientele consists of those who have tried lots of other guitar methods and teachers but were not happy with the results.  For these reasons, I have learned that my teacher method generally is most effective for ages 13+.  There are exceptions to everything, however, and I have taught many gifted children in Atlanta, some as young as age eight.  If you have a younger child who really wants to ROCK and who has had some success playing other instruments, by all means give me a call.

Should I start out on the Acoustic guitar if I want to play Electric?

I’m not sure where this Urban Legend started – maybe with college professors in the 1950s who hated loud rock guitar “devil music” — but the answer is NO.  By all means, start out on the instrument you would like to play most.  Let’s dive into this a bit deeper and take a good look at this sentence:

In order to play the electric guitar, one must first learn to play the acoustic guitar.

Now replace the underlined words with:

In order to play the saxophone, one must first learn to play the tuba.

One can easily see the absurdity in the latter sentence but we are so accustomed to hearing this about guitars that this myth has become semi-accepted as fact. The techniques needed to effectively play acoustic guitar versus electric guitar begin to diverge in lessons around 6-12 weeks.  That assumes, of course, that the guitar lessons are being taught well and that the guitar teacher is qualified.

What should I bring to the first guitar lesson?

All you need is your guitar and if possible, a portable audio or preferably video recording device such as a smartphone.  If you don’t have such a device, no worries – I can record it for you.

Should I buy a beginner guitar method book before coming for lessons?

Nope.  Save your money. Most of those beginner lesson books teach 19th century songs that predate copyright and intellectual property laws.  As a result, the publisher doesn’t have to pay artist royalties and therefore their profit margin is higher.  Good for them; bad for you.  All you have to do is show up with your guitar and be ready to ROCK! I’ll show you everything you need to know and then some.  In all my years as a guitar teacher, I’ve never had a student complain that my lessons gave them too little to practice!

• Jimmy Cypher’s guitar work can be heard on the new DJ Ford album “Psychonaut.”

• Jimmy Cypher will be performing solo and also with KAHSINO at this summer’s LAND OF NOD Music Festival. The lineup features DJ Godfather, Messinian (Planet of the Drums) and Drummer KC. Details TBA!

• The new Kahsino promo video has been released.
  

I play the Coral Sitar intro and guitar synthesizer on this track and I’ve already been called in to record more remixes. As you might imagine, Ivan is now getting a great deal of interest in his album I am Peaceman. I played electric guitar on most of the tracks including the guitar standouts For What It’s Worth, Eve of Destruction, and Blowin’ in the Wind.

This is the first Billboard charting song that I’ve played on so I must say the whole thing is pretty surreal. We’re all very excited.

You can view the Billboard charts rankings at this link:

http://www.billboard.com/#/charts/dance-club-play-songs

Also, The same sitar/guitar synth parts appeared in Tony Moran’s ultimate dub mix which was #13 on the charts for the week of 3-18-2011. You can listen to it here:

http://blog.promotion-us.com/sir-ivan-hare-krishna-tony-morans-ultimate-dub-single-13-on-the-billboard-dance-chart

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Live rock guitar over electronic dance music

Hear Jimmy’s original music on My Space

Jimmy Cypher is an early Atlanta pioneer in the emerging genre of “Rocktronica” which features live guitars over electronic dance music. After listening to his original guitar tracks, students are often surprised initially to discover Jimmy’s vast vocabulary of traditional rock, blues, metal, funk, reggae, pop, and country. One of the challenges of playing guitar over electronic music (and why few guitarists do it well) is that it requires an impeccable sense of timing, groove, and phrasing. The “looseness” in feel that fuels classic rock and blues simply will not work in most cases with electronica. Tighter timing is required, but it still has to dance around the beat to sound “organic.” Perhaps the closest comparison is Latin rhythms, particularly Brazilian percussion styles. As a result, Jimmy developed an understanding of timing that allows him to compare and contrast the varying “feels” in a variety of genres, put it under a microscope and explain it to his students in guitar lessons in a way that allows them to tweak their own feel for a given musical style or situation.

“Guitar playing varies greatly by genre with respect to feel and groove. It is often said that you have to “live the blues” or “live flamenco” in order to play it convincingly. However, with modern technology and the right approach in guitar lessons, you can examine what makes one’s playing sound “black,” “white” or “gypsy” and better express yourself as an artist in your genre of choice. In the end, I think most would agree that the quality of the music is what matters, not the cultural or ethnic background of the player.” This can be effectively conveyed in lessons and after some work in the woodshed focusing on the right things, guitar students can start to unlock to these previously elusive grooves, and make that “soul” or authenticity a part of their guitar playing.

Rare is the Atlanta guitar teacher who can convey such things in lessons… a product of Jimmy’s early background in classic rock, blues and shred guitar combined with many professional years spent producing, recording and performing demanding electronic, hip hop and pop tracks. “Often in Atlanta studio sessions, producers will solo my guitar performance and then digitally edit the “imperfections” in timing. Then they play it back over the rest of the track and now it sounds ‘perfectly’ lifeless. Then I ask them to undo the edits and listen again. Usually they give me a puzzled look, smile and keep the original.”

The influence of Carlos Santana and David Gilmour is perhaps most on display in Jimmy’s original guitar work, as this sense of extended groove and ethereal atmosphere works well over electronica. But make no mistake, guitar lessons involving everything from Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Guns-n-Roses to today’s metronomically precise extreme metal artists, modern pop and R&B are deftly managed in Jimmy Cypher’s hands. It is his ability to transfer that knowledge to his students that make his lessons fun and rewarding for so many and have made him a “first call” Atlanta session player and guitar lesson coach.

Players in today’s guitar market have discovered more and more that in the digital age, simply being a good guitar player is no longer enough.  With the rise of home based digital recording studios, digital guitar amplifiers, duplication and so on it is now possible to have digital replications of many classic guitar amplifier tones at your fingertips. You can also produce your own music, record it, release it, and distribute it on your own record label for pennies on the dollar compared to even just 10 years ago.  This can be good and bad news for students in guitar lessons who will soon become aspiring Atlanta artists in their own right.  For with the new ability of indie musicians to do all these things, comes the expectation from your potential audiences that in fact you will.

Without record label funding (to the degree it even still exists!) it is very often not cost effective to hire out these services.  However, if other Atlanta area bands have self produced and distributed great sounding recordings, people will wonder you have not?  Like the American job market as a whole, sub specialization (i.e. “I am a great guitar player and that’s my one thing”) is a thing of the past.  Diversification of skills is essential in today’s music industry – whether you are “in the game” going for the rock star Grammy, or performing and recording as a serious hobbyist.  This frequently becomes a topic of discussion in guitar lessons and at the Atlanta studio. I am often able to demonstrate to aspiring guitar players the many helpful tips that result in great sounding demos… all while saving students thousands of dollars in trial and error mistakes for the price of a few guitar lessons!  My lessons continually stress that using a few formidable pieces of gear with the right production techniques does not have to break the bank. In fact it is often said in the recording industry that “it’s the wizard, not the wand.”

I became a music producer of necessity, for at the time, I could not find anyone else who could nail the Rocktronica sound I heard in my head or if they were out there (i.e. Andy Wallace, Tom Lord-Alge), they were far out of my price range.  And when I finally did grab the bull by the horns, and literally dive into the mixes instead of relying on others, it saved me much money, frustration and headaches.  And I am very pleased with how it turned out.  You can hear some of my self-produced guitar tracks on the music page.  Or go straight to My Space Enjoy!

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