Margie's Music Teaching Blog

Margie Mirken
Multiple instrument personality-type:
5-string banjo, guitar, Irish harp, ukulele, mandolin, fretted dulcimer.

I have taught the above instruments for 30 years
to beginners
to advanced players
to the great majority who are somewhere in the middle.

I teach mostly folk and roots styles. But fundamentals are fundamentals, no matter what style or instrument. Everyone needs a great big boxful of them.

Contact me through Shade Tree Instruments.

Co-owner of Shade Tree Stringed Instruments (in Southern California for 35 years, now in the Gold Country Sierra foothills); active performer, currently in the folk quartet Three Times Through.

I teach all styles on the five-string:
Bluegrass
clawhammer (frailing)
folk and Pete Seeger-style
classic (nylon-strung)

Some of my students play new folk or even various rock musics; we melt those trad styles right into the new sounds.

If I had to choose just one style to play, I wouldn't. I'd go on playing it all!

Contact me through the Shade Tree website link, above.

I come to Irish (or lever) harp as a guitarist and accompanist, so I teach differently than a 'normal' harp teacher might. My harp students generally already play some pieces out of books, but want to learn to play 'off the page', improvise, or play in a band.

We close the book and open our ears. It's a new world of harp fun.

I start with American vernacular roots styles -- Mother Maybelle Carter, Travis picking, and the blues of the old black gentlemen. I teach the trad tunes, or lean those styles up against more modern music. I have a knack for making music theory sit down and raise a polite paw.

Read my opinions on teaching girls and ladies to play guitar in the Hal Leonard Beginning Guitarist's Handbook.

I teach dulcimer as a front porch art. Sure, there are notes and chords and theory which I can and do teach -- dulcimer is the best teacher of modes that there is!! -- but it's also a wonderful instrument for simple, natural music-making.

I teach both strumming and finger-picking styles, primarily in D-A-dd (Do-Sol-Do) tuning.

Whether sitting in a formal lesson or seminar, or sharing a post-concert glass of wine around my kitchen table (I produced Shade Tree's concerts for 15 years!), I've studied and discussed music with many fabulous players and teachers. So when you study with me, you are also connected! I'll see how complete I can make this list: Banjo: Bill Keith, Alan Munde, Tony Trischka, Bob Carlin. Guitar: Martin Simpson, Dan Crary, Happy Traum, George Kahumoku, Jr., Steve Kaufman, Mark Hanson. Dulcimer: Lorraine Lee, Janita Baker, Karen Mueller, Mark Nelson. Harp: Kim Robertson, Sue Richards, Grianne Hambly, William Jackson.