Category Archive

I hope you find the new site easier to navigate and easier on the eyes. Let me know what you think, especially if you find any bugs. Thanks!

After a few readers said they didn’t like the white-text-on-brown-background in the last design proposal, I did some research about text readability. I was surprised to discover that there isn’t consensus, except that high contrast is good. I did find one almost decade-old study claiming that green-on-pale-yellow was most readable, but I’ll save that color scheme for my next gardening …

I’m redesigning my site in preparation for launching my eBook next month. What do you think so far? Click for larger image

Up early this morning working on my almost-finished book for guitar teachers, which I’m tentatively calling Rob’s Totally Awesome Guitar Teaching Handbook. Yesterday I came up with this introduction to a section on teaching your students to play safely (I mean avoiding tendinitis, not avoiding spearing their bass player with a Flying V) by taking frequent breaks: Was the summer …

Brett and I discussed the popularity of Wesley’s “Folsom Prison Blues” video, some of the tricks I use for teaching guitar to young kids, and I got in a little rant about the bankruptcy of American culture. Here’s an .mp3 of the 40-minute interview.

Brett Singer of Babble Radio (an online talk radio program associated with the parenting magazine Babble) will be interviewing me this Friday about the popularity of what has come to be known as the “Folsom Pwison Blues” video. I hope I get a chance to talk about some of the interesting issues this video brings up: How should music be …

Yesterday, my student Wesley’s little “Folsom Prison Blues” video got almost 100,000 views on YouTube, and his parents and I were flooded with attention from the media. It’s been exciting, disorienting, and a little worrisome. The internet, especially, is such a brutal force—and by the internet, I mean the way people act on the internet. The general public, from the …

More footage from this Spring’s Coffee Shop Jam: Wesley, who just turned five, performed “Folsom Prison Blues” with a soulfulness that would have made Johnny Cash weep. Many people, including my mom, are unsettled by a kid this young performing such grim material. But I don’t see it as a problem. For one thing, you can’t keep water from running …

I hate flying with my guitar. Approaching the ticket-taker at the gate with my Martin in hand always feels like I’m leading it to its death, dreading this: “Oh, I’m sorry sir, it’s a very full flight, but we can hand-check that for you.” Thankfully, so far I’ve always been able to shoehorn it into a coat closet or once, …

The coffee shop jam is the most awesome thing I do as a guitar teacher, and this past Jam, on May 30th, was even more awesome than usual. This was partly due to the venue. The Columbia City Theater, a mid-sized music club in southern Seattle, has a glorious sound system and a three broadcast-quality video cameras. We’ve come quite …