Guitar Performance Berklee College of Music

Overview

Key features

Through elective coursework, you can choose to immerse yourself in a specific style or study several different ones, such as blues, rock, jazz, R&B, and more. Additionally, you will learn the fundamentals of how today's music industry works. Each semester, you'll work one-on-one with a Berklee College of Music professor in private guitar lessons that require the same proficiencies as the campus-based program.

Upon completion of the Guitar Performance major, you will be able to:

• Put your knowledge of harmony, ear training, and rhythmic concepts into practice
• Incorporate digital technology into your guitar practice routines, live performances, and recording projects
• Collaborate with other musicians remotely on recordings
• Construct and play pentatonic, blues, major and minor music modes, melodic minor, and harmonic minor scales and their modes in any key within any musical context
• Build and recognize triads, power chords, diminished triads, augmented triads, 7th chords, extended chords, and inversions
• Examine lead sheets and play chord voicings and melodies in a variety of musical styles
• Develop an extensive repertoire of techniques, including tremolo, rasgueado, harmonics, pull-offs, hammer-ons, slurs, percussion, and electronic effects
• Perform rhythm guitar with a solid rhythmic foundation as it relates to different styles and time feels, including blues, rock, funk, jazz, Latin, and other styles
• Improvise over a variety of different chord progressions and musical grooves
• Play and compose in a variety of nonstandard tunings