I’m with the two posters on the bottom. This guy’s a nutjob. I did about five lessons. He was usually loaded and had the memory of a goldfish. One time as I was tuning and warming up, he told me to come in and listen to a lecture on pentatonic scales. As soon as he finished, he turned on me and started ranting that I hadn’t tuned up or warmed up and was wasting his time. Huh? Then there was the time, on lesson 2, that he ranted that I hadn’t learned any scales. Of course, he hadn’t actually taught me scales yet. Lesson three, he was pissed that I couldn’t play Brown Sugar. I mean, seriously? Bar chords for a first song? I went to the Old Town School and never looked back.
Dante B.
Classificação do local: 5 Chicago, IL
I first started taking lessons from Mike Powell in the early 1990s. After a while, I gave up guitar in favor of other pursuits(and consequently stopped taking lessons during that period — my decision to stop playing had nothing to do with him). I returned to Mike P. in early 2008 to hire him to play my wedding and to help me prepare to serenade my wife during the reception(which was a complete surprise to her, and it went off great). Mike is the only teacher I have ever worked with, so I can’t compare him to anyone else. Nevertheless, I hold him in high regard as a musician and as a teacher who is flexible in guiding a student in whatever direction he or she wants to go as a guitarist — he’s not someone who’ll simply follow the lesson plan prescribed by the Hal Leonard guitar instruction books. Depending on the style of music you want to learn and/or the guitarists you’d like to emulate, Mike can teach you what you want to know. Furthermore, the technical work done by Mike on guitars, bass guitars, amplifiers, etc.(set-ups, repairs, fine-tuning) is one of the best bargains for people playing stringed instruments of all types in Chicago. Even if you never take a lesson from him, you can benefit from the service & repair work offered by Mike and Chicago Guitar Lessons staff. Mike is a character — no question or debate on that point — but in 20 years of knowing Mike Powell I’ve never seen the person that is described in the negative reviews listed here, and if anyone wants to contact me directly via Unilocal or e-mail(dante[-dot-]bacani[-at-]gmail[-dot-]com), I’d be happy to provide a reference and answer any questions or concerns you may have.
Kris A.
Classificação do local: 1 Chicago, IL
I signed up for guitar lessons with Mike and attended four out of ten paid for lessons when I realized he was 1) not teaching me anything and 2) scaring the bejeesus out of me. He did nothing about gripe about ethnic groups and people who had ‘wronged’ him in the past. He tuned my guitar. That was the ONLY thing he did to help me. He also refused to give me a refund for my unused lessons when I told him I was done taking lessons. I never got into a fight with Mike myself, because I am completely non-confrontational, but it was a horrible situation. One of my friends, however, who also took lessons from Mike, was sworn at over the telephone by Mike. He is psychotic.