Lars J.

I have many continuous decades of professional experience, performing mainly on guitar and electric bass, and vocals. Hundreds of international school students have studied guitar and bass with me.

My major at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee was music theory & composition. In the many years since, I've composed and arranged for a large variety of ensembles, including full orchestra. I know all the necessary rules of harmony and notation, from both training and experience.

I've helped about 10 students, I think quite effectively, to increase their skills in Classical Guitar style. The ones I helped the most were neither beginners nor advanced. As an experience performer with modest (but decent!) classical guitar skills, I have plenty of good advice for intermediates. And my arranging skills are advanced, so I've composed some nice classical guitar arrangements for my students.

I have been a member of a variety of professional bands, for so many years, I can no longer count them, as lead guitarist and vocalist, also as electric bassist. Please see my LearnZone video, where I provide samples of the many styles I can perform and teach. I wonder why steel-string acoustic guitar has no place on this LearnZone list of instruments. I have lots of experience with that too.

Along with my guitar teaching practice, I've had a dozen or so ukulele students. Though I wasn't keen on the instrument years ago, I've come to love it, almost as much as my mandolin!

Someone gifted me a beautiful vintage American mandolin 30 years ago. For some years, I specialized in providing accompaniment for my voice, using only mandolin. Nowadays, I use it to play Irish-Scottish trad tunes at the session. Sometimes the tempo is a bit too fast for me, but I can usually keep up with those hotshots!

I played bass with many professional bands, often casual gigs with no rehearsal. I have taught electric bass to beginners, and to advanced students who needed to learn more about how to survive when the bass player is expected to be fluent in many different styles, which I do claim to be.