Irish traditional music lessons on Skype, students wanted

[groovycelt]

Hello, Philippe Varlet here, offering Skype lessons for the following instruments: fiddle, B/C accordion, mandolin, tenor banjo.

Although I was born in France, I have been living in the US (Washington DC area) since 1977, and have been playing and teaching Irish traditional music here all these years. I recently started giving lessons on the internet using Skype, and although it's not absolutely equal to an in-person lesson, it's pretty close. It's an amazing tool which literally erases borders and distances, and it's easy to do. All you need is to have a decent webcam, and to have Skype, which is a free program, installed on your computer.

My teaching is done primarily by ear, but tune transcriptions can be used and e-mailed back and forth. I pride myself on helping students to become "thinking musicians," and on not just spoon-feeding tunes a few notes at a time. What you will learn with me is how to apply techniques, whether ornamentation, bowing, etc, to a variety of contexts, rather than just to one tune. By the same token, I put a lot of emphasis on not just playing the tune correctly (there are good and not-so-good settings of tunes), but also on learning how to improvise variations.

For more details, e-mail me at philvar@erols.com, or call me at 301-873-3850.

Best,

Philippe Varlet
http://irishfiddle.homestead.com/index.html