About

Nicole Neal A.Mus.A

I am a classical guitarist based in Melbourne, Australia. My passion is purely and simply for all things classical guitar.

My background

I started studying the guitar in the UK at the relatively ripe old age of 13 or 14 (after having first studied piano and clarinet), with the great British guitar pedagogue Peter Nutall.

photo-me-guitarMoving to Australia in my mid-ish twenties, and after a bit of a hiatus from the guitar, I continued guitar performance and pedagogy studies with the well-respected (and one time teacher of Slava Grigoryan) Ron Payne. I then continued on my higher level studies with the inspirational Ben Dix of the Melbourne Guitar Quartet. In recent years I have also studied in masterclasses with the likes of Slava Grigoryan and Phillip Houghton.

My guitars

I play two Australian-built guitars:

* 2008 Allan Bull spruce top

* 2012 John Price cedar top

Objective of this blog

One of my key objectives for this blog, which I’ve steadfastly stood by in its nearly 5 year history, is to help others – help you – if and where I can, by sharing my own knowledge, my own lessons learnt and experiences, to shape and follow your own path of learning on the guitar.

I also want to help breakdown the idea that classical music is some rarified and “special thing”. Yes, it is special in that all music is special, but not special in that it should be accessed by only a privileged few. Classical music and classical guitar is for all; it’s for you. Have fun with it. Enjoy it. Learning to play the classical guitar is a wonderful journey of self-discovery and self-development.

 

12 thoughts on “About”

  1. You have a nice blog and good ideas to help students and teacher. I have nominated you for the Blog of the year 2012 award. If you do not already know what needs to be done, you can find the instruction in my last post. Good luck!

    Reply

    1. Hola Nicole !!!
      Antonie Field here – great to meet up the other day and wow, what a great blog – well done! 🙂
      Look forward to contributing and checking out what happens here.
      🙂 Speak to you soon.
      Antonie

      Reply

  3. Keep up the good work – educating future Classical guitarists is a great thing to do, as it is an instrument we love so dearly. But I do see a terrible curse falling upon us Classical guitar lovers, which must be combatted, and that is the curse of TAB. I am very surprised that (at least here in the UK) so many people are simply refusing to learn to read music and only learning to play guitar through TAB Understandable in rock guitar or accoustic guitar, where music is less nesscasary, but now it’s beginning to take hold in CLASSICAL guitar! Theyre are now Classical guitar book available in TAB as well! Do you find this a very bad development? And do you have a strategy of dealing with this? I hope you will join me in trying to reverse this sad development. I hope that reading “proper” music is still alive and strong over there,

    Reply

  5. Hi, Such a pleasure to read about your passion for Classical Guitar. I would really like to feature you on our hobbies website, and introduce Classical Guitar as a new hobby to our visitors. Hope you may be interested in helping us. cheers, Graham…..www.yourhobby.co.uk…..

    Reply

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