Online Lessons

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I love communicating music. Whether that’s getting beginners started on their first instrument or helping professionals hone their craft, the joy and excitement is the same. My students have included first-timers, hobbyists and professional soloists, aged 3 to 84. What’s important to me is where you want to go; if you have a goal we can find a way there.

I have been a professional multi-instrumentalist and composer for more than a decade, touring and recording globally. I’ve played for Tiny Desk Concert, Jools Holland, Glastonbury, The Globe Theatre, The Barbican and composed everything from orchestral scores to parts for the latest alt-j album.

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Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, Deafinitely Theatre

Disciplines Taught

  • Guitar, Ukulele and Bass
  • Singing
  • Composition and Songwriting
  • Piano and Keyboards
  • Percussion
  • Music Theory (Classical, Jazz, Pop and Folk)
  • Hammered Dulcimer

Book a Lesson

To book your half-price taster lesson, or if you have any questions, please email me at JonWhittenMusic@gmail.com

Or Click Here

FAQs

What are your rates?

Half hour lessons cost £35, one hour lessons cost £54. First sessions are always half-price. Book yours here.

I also offer a limited number of subsidised half hour slots, available to driven students for whom my standard rates would be prohibitive, and made possible by community donations. To apply for a slot or make a donation to the scheme, please click here.

I’m 30/50/70/90, am I too old to start learning to make music?

I promise you are not, and if that’s your excuse for not getting started then you’ll need a better one… It can be daunting, I know. It’s easy to compare yourself to prodigious six year olds on youtube, to think you’re starting too late and you’ll never catch up. But it’s not a race, it’s a parade, a carnival.

That said, it’s human to fixate on destinations, so let me offer a new one: you, having mastered some basics (which I promise you can do) alone in a quiet room, hearing yourself make music that is perfectly and uniquely and irreproducibly yours.

There are so many instruments! Which one should I pick?

If this is you, feel free to drop me an email, it’s always a conversation I’m up for having.

Consider what kind of music you’re listening to, when and with who you’re thinking of making music, how much you want to invest in a first instrument (singing costs nothing, you can start learning drumming for the cost of a pair of drum sticks) and so on. If you get stuck choosing between a couple then we can do two of weeks of each and see what suits you best.

The most important thing to remember is this isn’t a blood pact. Your answer can absolutely change and time invested in music is never time wasted. My first instrument was saxophone and it’s the only one of my instruments I’ve never played professionally.

Blog

2016-2018

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Pete Drake

Unf! Guys! From 1964, sounds like something I wish Daft Punk, The Avalanches and/or Wax Tailer would release. Just unf! If, like me, you just wish it was three minutes longer then that’s something I’ve done Pete Drake was a steel guitarist, and his gimmick was making the steel guitar ‘talk’ by putting the speaker…

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Playing on alt-j’s Relaxer [Vid]

When alt-j’s An Awesome Wave came out on SoundCloud I looped it. For weeks alt-j’s An Awesome Wave it was the only sound in my North London flat besides me shushing people who tried to talk over alt-j’s An Awesome Wave. A couple of years later I was playing my first show in New York, feeling pumped…