Pennyland Music More Information

A Bit About Pennyland Music ...

Hello, my name is Pete Normanton. Thanks for visiting my web site. I set up Pennyland Music in 2003 as a small teaching and recording studio. I have been playing guitar for over 55 years and have played professionally and semi-professionally for over 40 of them. I am a qualified school teacher having taught physics and maths.

I also present a range of one-day music workshops at The Stables Theatre in Wavendon, Milton Keynes covering “The Basic Principles of Music”, “How to Make Up Chord Sequences”, “Guitar for Absolute Beginners” and “Guitar for Improvers”.

Throughout my many years playing of, I have often been disappointed by the poor standards of music teaching I have come across and have been frustrated by the unnecessarily complicated and elitist ways in which music is often taught when all most students want to do is to learn to play along with songs they like without having to understand lots of obscure terminology they will never use or need. I taught guitar on and off from the late 60’s . In 2003 when I retired from the world of telecoms until 2020 I developed my own method for teaching guitar to show just how simple music - because music really is very simple. It’s the way it is taught with its confusing terminology that makes it sound complicated! So I developed my own teaching course called “Learning HOW to Play Guitar” with the emphasis very much on HOW covering only that theory and terminology students need to know to allow them to play what they wanted to play. But many of my students wanted to study the guitar more seriously and wish to delve more deeply into guitar playing theory and techniques to obtain their examination grades - but they don't want to follow the traditional Classical Guitar route. For these students, I cover the relatively new London College of Music Popular Music Electric Guitar syllabus. This is taught with the aid of a range of excellent exam preparation publications readily available from the LCM covering music exam grades. Although I have now ceased giving guitar lessons, I do still teach music theory for those wanting to take the LCM music theory exams.

I have also met many people who wanted to have a go at recording but who didn’t know where to start or how to go about it – and they couldn’t afford large studio and producer fees anyway. So Pennyland Studio was created to address this. It is aimed at providing a tailored service for singers, instrumentalists and small bands (sorry guys, no drums!). Not only do I offer people a recording service, I can also offer them their own arrangements and productions - all put together with them in the studio. Incidentally, there is a huge difference between simply recording someone and arranging and producing them!

For those wanting to set up their own recording studio at home, I also teach music technology and recording techniques and help people design and build their own home studio.

Pennyland Studio will not make me a fortune. But it was never intended to. It is a modestly priced studio with a range of services intended to help others develop their talents to the point where they just may be able to go on to bigger and better things.

And if you’re wondering how much it costs – everything is priced the same at £30 per hour, whether this be for teaching, arranging, producing or just recording. Maybe I can help you too.