About us
Good Vibes Music Academy has been 20 years in the making. It has grown out of my passion for teaching and my personal mission to help and nurture young people to find the joy in making music.
I taught and worked with some of the worlds best in classical music for over 20 years. Now, using that experience I want to bring the same level of professionalism, dedication and creativity into the rock and pop world.
Growing up, I was never a natural musician; playing didn’t come easy to me and every step was difficult. But what kept me going was my growing love of music and some inspirational teachers. They made learning fun, kept me making progress through the really difficult stages and, perhaps most importantly, they believed in me. I’ve come to discover that I was one of the lucky ones. Not all students have that experience and find their passion, find their motivation, or find their connection with music.
Things like software, technology and recording are so important now. They help keep students engaged and inspired with their learning and provide them with skills for the future. That’s one of the reasons a forward-thinking approach is at the very core of everything we do at Good Vibes.
The big change happened when I started to see that the way to really get students engaged with their learning was to make it relevant to them.
This was about creating a link between nurturing their musical interests and equipping them with the skills they need to achieve the goal they had the first time they picked up or sat down at the instrument.
No one wants to go into lessons looking to be the next Angus Young only to be presented with Mary Had a Little Lamb in sheet music!
At the time I couldn’t see anywhere that was offering lessons focused on modern music but was also serious about things like technique, musicality & creativity.
I decided that the only way to make real change in an industry that had been static for such a long time was to do it my way. In true rock’n’roll style, I wanted to fight the system!
I started incorporating more modern music into my classical teaching. I saw the engagement and reaction I got from students. Their progress, enjoyment levels and longevity went up across the board.
I thought, what if there was a music school that had a real focus on the balance between fun and progress? Modern music and traditional technique? I evolved my teaching around the core principles of relevance, engagement, assessment and language which eventually developed into the REAL teaching lens, and these have become the foundation of not only my teaching but all the teaching at Good Vibes.
Keeping a focus on making lessons relevant and engaging. Having a clear understanding of how to assess students progress and thinking about the impact our words have within our teaching keeps our students exploring new music, expanding their skills and inspires them to keep playing!
At Good Vibes we know there is a direct link between how much a student plays and their progress. We see it as our job to keep them playing as much as possible.
We aim to achieve this through lessons at our fantastic high-street studio and in schools, through our workshops and performance opportunities and through each of our brilliant pro-musician teachers.
In short…
We want to inspire everybody to make music.