Joe Von Holtum, Guitarist

I’ve been a student of Arpeggiato for roughly two years, now, and I figured that I could probably take a moment to write up my experience with the school so far. I will mention, up front, that they’re not paying me for this review, or offering any sort of compensation at all. In fact, they’re not even aware that I’m writing it!

First and Foremost

I have nothing bad to say. If you are on the fence, considering taking lessons from them, I can tell you that my experience has been great and you should go for it.

I didn’t want to subject you to a bunch of details to get the point of the review if you weren’t interested. With that in mind, here are a bunch of details!

The Background

I have been something you could call a guitarist since roughly 2000. The vast majority of that time I’ve been self-taught. I had one brief encounter with an amateur guitar instructor in the mid-2000s and, truthfully, I didn’t find it that helpful.

Self-taught has been a necessity for me because I live in a very rural area in the upper Midwest of the United States. Put simply, there aren’t that many convenient opportunities for guitar instruction where I live.

In 2020, I purchased a classical guitar and a recommended lesson book on a whim. Given the events of that year, I thought it’d be a fine idea to delve into the guitar as a solo instrument and I had an impression that classical players had a great handle on that aspect of guitar. The book was helpful, but I soon hit a point where I felt like I needed some instruction. Classical guitar, as it turns out, is difficult.

Enter Arpeggiato

In autumn 2022, opened the case of my sort-of-neglected classical guitar, saw a broken string, and thought that this should not be how it ends. Research (ie – “listening to music”) showed me that there was plenty of rich and interesting music available for solo performers, and I wanted in on that action.

As mentioned, the area where I live doesn’t offer a great deal of convenient opportunity to make that happen. Because I’d spent a fair amount of time digging around for classical guitar stuff on YouTube, I was aware of Brandon Acker and his online music school.

I signed up.

Instructors!

There are a bunch of instructors to choose from and each have a few specialties that they offer. I was interested in classical guitar, but it’s not just a classical guitar school. If it has strings that you pluck or pick at, they have an instructor for you. If you’re interested in composition, songwriting, or even voice (as I see on the site at the time of this writing), they’ve got you covered.

The instructors are pros with impressive resumes. Each one has a schedule with various available time slots for your lessons and you can find someone who works well with your free time.

This brings me to…

My Instructor

Music isn’t my day job, and so I had to find someone that was able to work with my 8-to-5 schedule. This happened to be Marisa. I’ve been studying classical guitar with her since then. I have full confidence to believe that she is representative of the quality of the instructors you’ll find at Arpeggiato and so I’ll provide some details!

Marisa has been a fantastic instructor. I started with a shaky ability to read sheet music, a bare bones understanding of theory, and a lot to work on regarding technique. It turns out that you can make great strides on these things when you have good instruction.

First and foremost, she was able to work with my classical guitar technique to dramatically improve it. Posture, positioning, and plucking were the focus of the first few lessons and I receive occasional reminders when my technique begins to slip. She was able to explain why it was so important and why it will pay dividends to keep technique in mind as I progress as a guitarist. It should not be surprising that I am discovering that she was entirely correct as I work through more difficult pieces two years on. I have to call this section out as “first and foremost” because much of this has to do with injury prevention as much as it does with making music, and I appreciate this because I would like to be playing guitar pain-free for decades.

She has also selected pieces that are just exactly the right level of difficulty for my skills. Everything I’m playing feels as though it was meant to teach me the right thing at the right time. She’s fully transparent about the purpose of a given piece beyond the inherent musical value. Sometimes it’s to get experience reading a different part of the fretboard, sometimes it’s rhythmic work, sometimes it’s illustrative of good technique or interesting music theory. It’s much easier to work on something when I know what the intention is.

Most importantly, she’s an approachable instructor. I’ve never felt ridiculous for asking basic questions or something that might be obvious. Feedback and corrections on my technique have been presented in such a way that I don’t feel bad for having gotten it wrong. She makes it clear that you can send questions and videos for answers and feedback outside of the lesson. In fact, it’s encouraged! As mentioned, music isn’t my day job. If lessons felt like a chore, I wouldn’t have stuck with them.

Other Things

I will fully admit that I haven’t taken advantage of everything Arpeggiato provides.

There are occasionally student performances where you can gain confidence and experience playing in front of others. This isn’t something I’ve participated in, but I’ve sure thought about it.

There are masterclasses organized every so often, as well. I did, in fact, participate in a couple of these. One was a very informative session on composing for guitar and another was where I got feedback from Brandon Acker live after playing a piece. These were valuable experiences and I would not have had the opportunity to attend something like this locally.

Bottom Line

I am a much, much better player than I was when I started with Arpeggiato. I appreciate an entirely new dimension of the instrument, and I have opportunities that I otherwise wouldn’t have had. Could I have found an instructor that wasn’t affiliated with the school? Potentially, but they would be an unknown quantity. The biographies listed, along with any publicly available work they’ve done, were confidence inspiring.

My suggestion? Go for it.