July Update – My First Live Workshop!
James on nerves, live teaching, and one student who wouldn’t give up on her first song — plus every June lesson in one place.
This month, I did something I’ve never done before with GoodGuitarist: I taught my first live workshop.
I’ll be honest… it felt a little surreal.
I’m so used to filming a lesson, working on it, editing it, and making sure everything is exactly how I want it before anyone sees it. But with a live workshop, there’s no editing. No second take. You just have to show up and make it happen in the moment.
And the night before, I was definitely feeling it. I woke up several times, thinking through the lesson, wondering how it would go, and feeling that same nervous energy I used to feel before performing.
But once we got started, something changed.
Even though nobody was physically in the room with me, it really did feel like we were all there together. People surprised me with great questions. It turned the session into more of a two-way street, and we ended up producing an excellent lesson together.
Playing guitar live in front of people is similar.
At first, you only feel the nerves. You overthink everything. You wonder if you’ll mess up. You imagine all the things that could go wrong.
But then you start playing.
You focus on the next chord, the next strum, the next beat… and suddenly you’re not thinking about the nerves as much anymore. You’re just doing the thing.
That’s what this workshop felt like for me.
And now that I’ve done it, I can say for sure: I loved it, and I’ll definitely be doing it again.
What would you like to see? I’m thinking workshops, Q&As, song-focused sessions, technique help, and so much more – it’s powerful when we can get together in real time.
Membership Updates
This month, members picked up 2 new full play-alongs.
New Play-Alongs
🎸 Join the Academy Here →
🌟 Student Spotlight: Sara Perlerup
Meet Sara — Swedish songwriter, Nashville regular, and living proof that picking the “wrong” first song can turn out very right.
Watch Sara tell her story, from a cracked guitar in Egypt to a stage in Nashville →
Getting the Songs Out
Sara joins us from her home, backing onto a lake, with a music studio she built herself, painted blue, sitting right beside it. There’s a stage out front too, built with help from friends over more barbecues than she can count. She made it happen close to Malmö, in the south of Sweden.
The guitar wasn’t always part of the picture. Sara played a little as a teenager, then stopped. She moved to Egypt for a while, and her guitar dried up and cracked in the heat. She went without one for years.
“Then Covid came and it was boring,” she says. “So I decided to buy a guitar for myself for a birthday present.”
Her first song choice was not a modest one. She picked Eric Clapton’s Tears in Heaven, a song known for tripping up players with far more experience than a total beginner. It took her about three months to get it sounding right.
“I said, that’s the one I’m going to play, and I wouldn’t give up,” she says.
That stubbornness led her to James. She found his free tutorial for the song online and worked through it piece by piece.
“He explains everything in a very good way, and he breaks it down into little pieces,” she says. “You get to learn part by part. You learn it and it sticks.”
Once she made it through Tears in Heaven, Sara decided she needed a better foundation and signed up for GoodGuitarist for good. The real turning point wasn’t a chord or a technique. It was the moment she could sing and play at the same time, which had been her goal from the start.
“I have a lot of songs in my head, and I need a way to get them out of my head and into the world,” she says. “The guitar will help me with that.”
Not long after, a new neighbor named Peter moved in next door, someone who plays just about every string instrument there is. Sara had just come back from a guitar workshop in Nashville when she met him and asked if he wanted to play together. He assumed she wouldn’t follow through, but she showed up with her guitar the next day, and the two of them have played together most days since.
Together they became Blue & Bright, and their album, Our Lonely Worlds Collide, sits alongside five singles on Spotify, ten songs in total. The earliest tracks are acoustic only, later ones bringing in more instruments, landing somewhere between country and soft rock. Some of it was recorded in Nashville, with help from Jason Roller, a guitarist who plays with the band Alabama.
Nashville has become something of a second home for her playing. She’s returned for guitar workshops there, sharing a stage with members of Deep Purple and Bryan Adams’ band. On one trip, she talked her way onto a rooftop above Broadway and played for whoever happened to be around.
“You have to put yourself out there,” she says. “Take the opportunity.”
She’s headed back to Nashville again in July, to play a set of original songs at a guitar shop called Tone Central Station.
For anyone just starting out, her advice is straightforward.
“It’s not going to be super easy, but don’t give up because it’s really worth it,” she says. “Just keep practicing. It’s going to get better, and the more people you can meet up and bring together. It brings a lot of joy. So just keep it going. Don’t stop.”
Sara built her studio by hand, then built a band, then built a reason to keep going back to Nashville. It started with a guitar she almost gave up on before she had really begun.
Check out her EP “Our Lonely Worlds Collide” on spotify.
Inspired by Sara’s story?
→ Explore the GoodGuitarist Academy
→ Already a member? Share your story here — you could be our next featured student.
What I’ve Been Teaching Lately
Here’s a look at the lessons that went out this month, broken down by song lessons and non-song lessons.
Song Lessons
Non-Song Lessons
Coming Up Next
Here’s a look at what I’ll be working on next:
- A Fretboard Trick I wish I’d known earlier
- Hey Jude – Easy Strummer
- Hey Jude – Fingerstyle
- 2-Finger Chord Switching Trick
- Common Mistakes of Fingerpicking
That’s all for now!
– James
