New school of music site for Southend

A new and exciting school of music in Southend launched its new site this week, and Longpier.com has been given a first look at how Ed Rotheram claims his approach can change the way you learn music. We caught up with Ed, founder of the Guitar Ministry enterprise, and got his thoughts on how music education can change for prospective players in the Southend area.

Ends can also mean beginnings. For Ed, this month marks the end of his first year of full-time guitar teaching, and also the end to his course in Music Education, from which he will receive a level 4 Associate Teacher (Learning and Skills) qualification. Far from dwelling on the end of the first year however, Ed is now looking to press on and focus on the beginning of his next challenge – the rise in provenance of his Guitar Ministry enterprise.

Ed has enlisted the help of John Kevan, an Essex-based design consultant, to help him realise his corporate identity, and to provide clients (potential and current) with a modern, welcoming, easy to navigate home on the web. Ed explains the rationale:

“I wanted to create a site that was fresh, modern, and durable, a site which you would want to put in your favourites and keep revisiting. John’s vision and input steered me towards the ‘elements’ of the site – what people would be looking for from me. This was an important factor, as all too often websites can come across as being for the benefit of the author and not the reader.”

With much of Ed’s business coming from students requiring individual lessons, Ed has made this a key element of the message of the site.

“Students – especially beginners – need to feel that they are in an enabling environment in which they are the centre of the activity. The student-teacher relationship needs to be one with trust, openness and respect – and if a student feels that they aren’t understanding any aspect of the process, they need to feel that they can raise this. A relaxed, friendly, calm environment will lead to increased self-confidence for the student, which will ultimately mean an increase in their overall ability.”

Facilitating students with different approaches to learning can be one of the major hurdles in teaching, but Ed is calm and relaxed with his approach.

“Students naturally learn in different ways – some need to read straight from TAB or chord sheets, others play by ear, others by trial and error – you have to adapt to suit their way of learning. One thing common to all students I’ve taught is that understanding can be cemented by placing music into context. Playing a riff on your own is all very well, but playing it to a backing track with all the other parts of the band playing with you really helps you understand where you fit in with the music.”

In order to facilitate this, Ed provides a wealth of resources to meet the needs of students, and to help with practice times. Online resources in the form of instruction sheets and chord charts are coupled with bespoke backing tracks to assist with students’ practice times. Ed explains the necessity of good resources here:

“With so many free directories and music libraries on the net, discerning accurate versions of songs can be a problem for students who are just starting out. Type “Summer of ’69 chords” into a search engine and you will get hundreds of thousands of results. Given that these sites rely on submissions, many of these transcriptions will be incomplete or incorrect. If I am teaching a song, I want my students to be able to access accurate and coherent music, together with a workable backing track. Creating these myself, I can adapt a song’s tempo, meaning that we can slow a song or a riff down a bit while learning it.”

The site has been neatly rounded off with a regularly updated blog and news feed. Here, Ed hopes to expand the musical minds of both prospective and current students, as well as providing a fresh, relevant viewpoint on aspects such as enhancement of music appreciation, songwriting and technical ‘how-to’ guides.

Ed is keen to stress that the single best way to press on with your journey down your path in music education is by playing regularly and developing your ability on your instrument. Regular lessons and productive practice times provide you with a solid base from which to grow. To find out how Ed’s approach can help you get the best from your instrument, visit www.guitarministry.co.uk