Looking for Zoom guitar lessons?

Hi, I’m Tad Dreis, and I’ve been teaching remote guitar lessons online using a webcam for fourteen years. These days, I mostly use Zoom, a free program which allows us to see and hear each other, live, in real time, from any location in the world, using a webcam.

If you’re interested, please give me a call at (603) 762-9378 or email me through the Contact page.

How Zoom Lessons Work
It’s just like an in-person lesson. I’m sitting in front of you, you’re sitting in front of me. You ask me questions, I answer. I play something for you on the guitar, you watch and listen, then play it on your guitar. I give you feedback. There’s a slight time delay, which prevents us from playing simultaneously, but call-and-response works fine. You may want to have some scratch paper available to take notes by hand, and I’ll email you PDFs or text documents for songs and exercises, which you can either view on-screen during the lesson, or print out. I also record video and audio demos for students, so you can review how the parts look and sound. Here are a couple of examples:

Time Zone & Schedule
I’m in New Hampshire, on the east coast of the USA, so my time zone is the same as New York City (Eastern Standard Time). For folks outside the US, my time zone is GMT -4, -5, or -6, depending on Daylight Savings. Please be sure to let me know your region and time zone when scheduling lessons.

Generally, I teach Monday – Friday from 5:30 – 10:00pm, but I have some flexibility if your time zone is incompatible with those hours.

Payment
I accept payment online via Paypal, Venmo, and Zelle. My rates for Zoom guitar lessons are $50 for an hour, $35 for a half-hour, payable monthly. Click here to purchase lessons.

What You’ll Need

Computer + High-Speed Internet Access
In a Zoom guitar lesson, you’ll get a smoother picture, better audio, and fewer dropped calls if your home Internet connection is high-speed. Plug directly in if you can, rather than using WiFi.

Zoom
Zoom is free to download, install, and use. Just head over to the Zoom website, click on “Sign Up Free,” choose your operating system (PC, Mac, or Linux), download and install it.

You’ll create an online login using your email account, then download and install the software. Once it’s installed, you’ll start it up, test your webcam out, and you’re ready to go.

I’ll send you an email link for our meeting, and you can click it to join the lesson.

Headphones
Your webcam will pick up your voice, and you’ll be able to hear me through your computer speakers, but it can be helpful to wear headphones to hear more clearly. Earbuds or headphones used for normal music listening will work fine.

Guitar
Oh yeah, having an instrument would be helpful, wouldn’t it? Acoustic and electric guitar are both fine.

Speaker Dock or Boombox
To use jam tracks in a lesson, you’ll need a speaker dock or portable boombox, along with an MP3 player or CD with our jam tracks.

Printer
It’s handy to have a printer available, so that if I send you a worksheet or song during your Zoom guitar lesson, you can easily print it. It’s also possible to view worksheets onscreen during lessons, but I recommend printing worksheets out and keeping them in a lesson folder or binder. Call me old-fashioned :)

Contact Me
(603) 762-9378
Send me an email.