SearArts

Introduction: Folk singer/radio broadcaster Dave Sear teaches folk banjo and guitar for folk singers. NYC West 57th Street and Great Neck, NY studios. Did you ever want to sing and play the songs of Pete Seeger, Woody and Arlo Guthrie, The Weavers, the Carter Family, Doc Watson, Leadbelly, Sonny Terry, Big Bill Bronzy, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, early Dillon, James Taylor, Leonard Cohen, Tom and Harry Chapin, Don McLean, and the other singers and players of "the great folk revival"? Folk singer/radio broadcaster Dave Sear takes his students through the vast literature of American folk music from the American revolution through today, directed by their individual interests and preferences teaching beginning to advanced techniques on the folk 5-string banjo and guitar, starting with chords and simple strums and then adding bass runs and other variations to make their accompaniments more interesting. All these can be accomplished without a music reading skill, and the average student usually comes out of the first lesson singing and playing a song of his or her choice. These simple techniques can be applied to singing all of the songs sung by the singers listed above. In time, a banjo student can learn to play square dance tunes like Old Joe Clark and Cindy, Southern Mountain model music like East Virginia and Pretty Polly, blues, frailing, double picking, claw hammer, and a raft of other styles. A guitar player can go on to arpeggio strums, two, three finger, and Travis picking, which are all still basic repetitive patterns that can be easily learned and that so many of the singers like Judy Collins and Tom Paxton and others listed above use to accompany their songs. Dave always asks his students to come in with a list of songs they know and like, and the music begins there and grows with Dave pulling from his extensive repertoire additional songs that leaves his students singing, playing, and with a deep appreciation of our country's vast body of folk music and the people who created it.