By Sarah Tomlinson

For all those people who have a guitar at home gathering dust because they’ve never had the discipline to really learn how to play it, or those who have picked up a few tricks from their musical friends but are lost when it comes to working out more sophisticated songs on their guitars, Rick Peckham has the course for you. A guitar veteran with decades of experience as a teacher and professional musician, culminating with the release of his critically acclaimed CD, Left End, he knows that the best way to inspire students is to engage them with the music they love. His 6-week course helps guitar players bring greater dynamics and expression to their playing, whether in jazz or rock ‘n’ roll, and gain a greater feel for their instrument by learning how to visualize chord structures anywhere on the neck of the guitar. “We are really trying to get away from the idea of thinking of grips on a guitar, and more thinking about voicings in a musical way,” says Rick Peckham, who teaches the online course Guitar Chords 101. “In all styles, there are chords, and some chords are used more than others, but there is really a basic foundation of triads and 7th chords. And so the idea of this course is to make it so that people will be conversant with those chords, and so they can be used in any style.”