June 19, 2026

A bit of my personal philosophy and thoughts on teaching technique and strategy was on the agenda today. The approach, sometimes referred to as The Hogan Guitar Method around here, is based on using songs to teach techniques and skills. Most people pick up the guitar because they want to play songs they like. There are hundreds, no thousands of songs that are great learning tools. It is not important, in the beginning particularly, to learn everything that happens in a song. Great examples of these are Don’t Fear The Reaper and Babe I’m Gonna Leave You, where working hard on just two measures will take you a long way.

Today I mentioned a bunch of songs that will teach every guitar student a lot. Some of the songs mentioned and demonstrated included Walk Don’t Run, Roxanne, Lucky Man, Nights In White Satin, Comfortably Numb,Teach Your Children, Mr. Bojangles,Friend Of The Devil, My My Hey Hey, Wish You Were Here, Birthday, Day Tripper, Dust In The Wind, Brain Damage, Behind Blue Eyes and I’d Love To Change The World.

There were partial instrumental stabs at Walk Don’t Run (at the beginning) and Wish You Were Here (near the end).

Neil