To Prospective Music Student,

 

I would like to encourage you to study music with Karta Iglesias. From my experiences, I found Karta to be an exceptional teacher, both with his style of teaching, and with his philosophy of what to teach. When you go to a lesson, it is not 'his' lesson-plan that you have to cover, rather it's 'your' lesson-plan. Karta has an excellent ability to adapt lessons based on your reactions, moods, and interests.

 

The best way to put it is that Karta taught me to play music, not just how to play the guitar. I learned this as early as my first lesson. The first thing I learned was notes on the third string (g and a). I played through the practice song pretty good for my first time, though not perfect. Expecting to hear "good. Again", over and over until I got better, instead Karta told me it was good, but I should play it with more feeling, and emotion. I should vary the tempo, get louder and softer. Here I was, my first lesson, I could barely play 2 notes, but already Karta was showing me that I could still make music on a simple 8 measure practice song. Lessons like that not only made me a better player, but made learning to play much more enjoyable. How boring it would have been to just sit there and echo what was the paper.

 

After only a month of lessons, I was already playing along with cds, and records. Tom Petty was my first choice. I couldn't play exactly what they were playing, but that was ok. I was playing my own thing, along with the record. I was learning how musicians arranged and wrote songs. I was learning how to play songs I, liked, but by playing with the record, and listening to the music I wasn't just learning to mimic chord shapes for this song, but instead how to play with any song.

 

The lessons were always full of creativity, and always interesting. Karta wanted me to try something harder, even If I didn't think I was good enough yet. By doing this I was always kept motivated and interested, and progressed faster. After just a couple months, I was writing my own songs. I don't think I would have been doing that even after 2 years with another teacher.

 

I think I have made incredible progress over the last year, and I give credit to my teacher for much of it. Maybe even more importantly is that I have had a great time in making that progress. Even though I will be graduating college in May, Karta is the most irreplaceable teacher I have had in Ithaca.

 

Andrew Mehler