Jazz guitar Teacher

TREFOR OWEN

Internationally Acclaimed Jazz Guitarist, Educator, Author and Event Organiser

Trefor Owen is one of the foremost guitar teachers in the U.K. He has over twenty years’ experience teaching at the highest level both in Britain and the USA. For eight of those years Trefor was an Associate Lecturer at the highly acclaimed Leeds College of Music. Also, for the last twenty three years he has been a visiting lecturer at Liverpool Community College, and for seven years has taught at Wigan and Leigh College.

Amongst his numerous college and private students there are many Jazz guitarists, and also rock guitar players wishing to introduce new ideas into their style of music and some of whom wish to progress to Jazz. Trefor has bridged the gap from “Rock to Jazz” by capitalising on their existing knowledge – the Pentatonic and Blues Scales together with his unique chord method the Hendrix Chord.

He has pioneered a method of utilising the Pentatonic and Blues Scales to improvise over Jazz standards by identifying pivotal notes of the Major, minor and dominant seventh chords.

The Hendrix chord is used to facilitate (from a practical point of view), all the altered and extended chords that the guitarist will encounter. It is the perfect introduction to the “Locked Knuckle Technique” which is a method of left-hand fingering based on forming Major, minor and dom7th triads, (root, third and seventh), in which the rootnote is always fingered with the second finger. In addition the Hendrix chord gives easy access to the m7b5 chord, (half-diminished), which is the most misunderstood chord in harmony.

This method gives the guitarist the facility to form many chord forms out of one basic fingering pattern, thereby “Establishing Economical Chord Forms”, thus giving economy of movement.

(Not all chords can be fingered with the second finger on the bass-note, but many can).

Trefor Owen has written over twenty studies, each one relating to specific areas of learning Jazz guitar. Each study is self-explanatory and can be obtained as a “Distant Learning Package”. At each one to one tutorial session every student is given the opportunity to obtain a study relevant to the material covered.

Trefor is a great believer in having a “Base to Build From” which establishes a solid foundation for the improviser and can help to eliminate guesswork, and become a useful safety net. A safety net, or fallback system, becomes useful when things go wrong on the bandstand and will help the improviser, who must have the ability to play the time and the harmony from the front, to re-establish the harmonic framework. Also, a “Base to Build From” will give musicians the confidence to bring new ideas into their playing.

Trefor Owen is honorary director of the North Wales Jazz Society which, since its formation in 1990, has presented numerous world renowned Jazz artistes. See http://www.northwalesjazz.org.uk/
Co organizer with Maureen Hopkins of the North Wales International Jazz Guitar Festival/Summer School and the highly popular Jazz Guitar Weekends at Glyndwr University, Wrexham.
He has also formed a JAZZ GUITAR CLUB which is held on the last Thursday of the month at Bijou, Massie Street, Cheadle Village, Cheshire. See http://www.myspace.com/jazzguitarclub