Guitar:
Slide Guitar: (Level 2-4)
Come learn the seductive sound of the slide guitar! We’ll focus mostly on blues and mostly on slide played in open tunings. Slide guitar is a great class to take when your left hand fingers are sore, no calluses needed! You don’t need any previous experience playing slide, but you do need fundamental knowledge of the guitar.
Blues Slide Repertoire: (Level 3)
This class is for people who already play some slide, we’ll be focusing on learning a bunch of new blues slide pieces that focus on different slide techniques, such as right hand muting, left hand muting and fretting behind the bar.
Advanced Slide Technique (Level 5)
We’ll look at right hand muting in depth, and altered tunings. For students who have already been playing slide guitar.
Groove, Grunt, and Gimme (level 3)
Hidden treasures stolen from jazz, funk, and soul to make your blues irresistibly sexy. Dig a groove so deep you don’t know how to climb out of it yourself. Put some grunt behind your right hand to make your blues shout gimme gimme more! You should be competent at fingerpicking, know basic chords and some barre chords, and be able to make chord changes in time.
Tone Production: (Level 2-4)
Let’s look at how to make the guitar really sing, screech and howl. Often we focus on the left hand and forget completely about the right hand, so we play all the right notes but they don’t sound great. We’ll learn different pieces with the focus on how the notes sound using lots of different right hand techniques.
Basic Swing Guitar: (Level 3)
Learn three and four note jazz chords in the basic Freddy Green style so you can play sumptuous swing rhythm quickly and effectively.
Guitar Solo-ing for people who have no clue: (Level 2-3)
Do you freeze up when someone says ‘take it!’ Do you have no clue how to go from playing chords to playing single note leads? Do you worry that your guitar playing friends will start to talk behind your back? Come to this class and learn how to dazzle those same nay sayers with your new skills. We’ll start with building a solo out of just a few notes in a safe and un-terrifying way with just enough theory to have some comprehension but not too much to confuse.
Blues Guitar:(Level 3)
We’ll join some of the jazzier tones to your blues guitar riffs, licks and accompaniments. Some soloing, some grooving, some showing off! Come give your blues mood a lift! You must be comfortable playing twelve-bar blues in a number of keys.
Fretting Away Your Time: (Level 2-4)
Practicing techniques for your fretted instrument. How to get the best workout in the limited amount of time you have to play. We’ll do practicing together of scales, intervals and arpeggios, and investigate all aspects of a practice session, such as how to break down a difficult piece into manageable chunks and how to create a scheduling round robin to work though all the modules you want to touch on.
Beginning guitar: (Level 1)
Start right! We’ll learn fun easy songs and work on not learning any bad habits that have be later be unlearned.
Easy to pick, but hard to get off your finger – Fingerpicking (Level 2)
Forget about flatpicking! What we have here is buxom picking!! Get all those fingers on your right hand involved in the action! How to sound like a whole band with just one hand! Broken down into easy steps to create independence in those digits! Bass lines, horn parts and so much more! And this class will introduce the secret application of right hand muting to control your sound. All in a level two class, hurray!!!
General Music Classes:
Practice Makes Perfect:
How do you practice on your fretted instrument? This workshop will address making your practice sessions as fun and efficient as possible. Even if you only have ten minutes a day, it’s amazing what an efficient practice session can accomplish. Bring your fretted instrument and there will be lots of hands on practicing!
Performance: (Level 2-5)
Learn all the tricks to keep your audience awake, alive and loving your music! Being a great player is only half of the picture, you must also learn how to present it. We’ll look at how to build a set list, stage fright, humor on stage, dealing with sound systems and how to prepare yourself so you are at your peak when you perform.
Jamming Joy and Etiquette:
Hot jamming tips, how to gracefully handle too many guitars, and have mega fun! We’ll find out how to create interesting accompaniment on the fly and how to take solos that amaze! Geared mainly to guitar, but all are welcome.
Beginning Band Lab:
Do you want to play well with others? This class will work as a band lab, creating unique parts for everyone and dealing with the issues of keeping the beat, making space for all the players, fine tune the arrangements and make great music with others.
Songwriting:
Songwriting: (all Levels)
Give your songwriting skills a boost! We’ll do fun creativity games, talk about what makes a song strong and we’ll do exercises to improve your skills on the different aspects of writing, lyrics, melody and rhythm. Be prepared for lots of assignments.
Using the Senses for Songwriting:
One of the best ways to anchor your song in your listener’s body is by using the senses to get your point across. Many songwriters use lofty ideas, but they rattle around in the listener’s minds without a place to land. Kick your songwriting into high gear by using the senses! Be ready for homework!
Arranging for Songwriters: (Level 2-5)
Many songwriters have lovely words and melodies that are deadened by repetitive humdrum arrangements. In this class we’ll look at ways to make your songs stand out and sparkle. Oriented mainly for guitarists, but all instruments are welcome.
Writing Melodies with Key Changes
This class is for people who understand some music theory and are comfortable talking about keys and how to escape them. We’ll use jazz tricks to get out of more predictable melodies and keys, oooh! Fun for those who like puzzles!
Using Archetypes for Songwriting:
This class is for established songwriters who want to play around with archetypes. When is an archetype a stereotype and when is an archetype a way to convey a lot of information in a small amount of space? Come and find out!
Singing Repertoire:
Swing Jazz Vocals with Kristina Olsen:
This is a vocal repertoire class. We will start every class with a gentle vocal warm up and then launch into learning some great swing songs. We’ll learn about 18 songs throughout the week and talk about vocal styling and ways to excite your tone. And we’ll do a bit of harmony singing on a few swing songs as well. All of this will culminate in the incredibly fun swing dance!
Blues Singing: (All Levels)
Learn how to get a growl in your voice and how to use one of the most expressive forms of singing. We’ll learn songs as well as learn voice placement techniques to get a bluesy rather then classical sound from the voice.
Choir:
Learn choral parts to a number of Kristina Olsen songs then perform them with her in concert. This is a new body of work that is being tried out in Canada in 2025.
Dance Classes:
Pushme Pullyou or The Physics of Partner Dance with Kristina Olsen: (All Levels)
Learn universal lead and follow techniques so you can dance with anyone to any music! This class is appropriate whether you are a total beginner or an experienced partner dancer. We will explore where the lead comes from and how the follow can best react to the signals from the lead and move as one body instead of two separate ones. You do not need a partner to come to class!! You just need a flexible mind and a desire to dance! This class has been the surprise hit at swing camps in Canada and the States.
Dance for Musicians: (All Levels)
Did you know you are required to take one PE class at music camp? Ha ha, just kidding. Learn universal lead and follow techniques so you can dance with anyone to any music! Musicians are used to moving small muscle groups (fingers) with great precision, come to dance class and learn to move large muscle groups to the beat. Do you play dance music? A great way to really understand the driving rhythms and tempos of dance music is to dance it.
The Engine of Swing: (All Levels)
Where does the energy come from in swing dance? We’re going to take some basic moves and break them down into detailed lead and follow techniques as you use your partner’s momentum to make it easy and fun to swing dance. No partner necessary, everyone will have a partner!
Dance World Peace:
Find world peace within dance as we explore the roles that both the leader and the follower experience. Instead of the typical “you’re doing it wrong” or “the teacher said to do it this way” dialogues that crop up in regular dance classes, by having everyone switch back and forth between the lead and follow roles, each dancer becomes aware of the difficulties of each side. We end up with much more compassionate and cooperative urges to help their partner of the moment. The follow becomes the ultimate zen buddhist, staying only in the moment, tuning in to the slightest signal from the leader, without predicting where that lead will take them. The leader lives in an opposite world, where he or she is in the past, the present and the future as they choreograph the dance. Their goal to interpret the music and is take the follower on a sublime ride.
We also work on tuning into the group as a whole on a subliminal level, doing exercises in sensing the movements of the dancers in the room without using sight. Also there are trust exercises, and the skills that result from this class are applicable to any social graces. Learning compassion in dance is just a metaphor for compassion in the larger world.
PushMe PullYou Techniques applied to Argentinean Tango Dance:
Tango is reputedly the hardest of the couple dances. That is because every step is lead, the follow can never guess where the lead is going to take them. We’ll use swapping lead and follow to understand the other role, and there-by become much more graceful and compassionate in the role we want to dance. In the serious tango dance salons in Argentina, a man can only lead a woman after he has proven to an advanced male partner that he can both lead and follow the dance well.