Principal Instruments: Guitar

All students at Berklee College of Music enter with a principal instrument. The Guitar Department offers instruction in all styles, including jazz, blues, rock, metal, funk, fingerstyle, classical, world music, microtonal music, and the avant-garde.

Every major requires four semesters of private instruction, labs, and ensembles on this instrument. This fulfills your performance core requirement.

Specific majors, such as performance, professional music, and songwriting, require or encourage additional semesters in private instruction, labs, and ensembles.

WATCH

Find Your Style

The Berklee Guitar Department allows you to balance the technical with the artistic, all in service of helping you find your voice on the instrument. Shape your artistic path in a department that trained musicians such as Bill Frisell, Annie Clark (St. Vincent), Kevin Eubanks, Steve Vai, and Emily Remler, among many others.

Financial Aid and Scholarships

Learn about financial aid, scholarships, and others ways of paying for your Berklee education.

Alumni Story

Maddie Rice

Maddie Rice has proven to be a young musician to watch. As a 2014 Berklee College of Music graduate with a burgeoning pop-rock career in electric guitar, she was chosen in 2015 to be part of the house band for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. As a member of Stay Human, Jon Batiste’s band, Rice adds to the group’s unique blend of jazz, funk, and pop.

Meet More Alumni

Meet Your Mentors

Your Department Chair, Kim Perlak

Perlak, who served as assistant chair of guitar for five years, becomes the first woman to chair the department.

Meet the Faculty

Student Spotlight

John Mayer Shares the Stage with Student Songwriters

On a tour stop in Boston with his band, Dead & Company, songwriter and guitar titan John Mayer '98 visited the Berklee Performance Center (BPC) to hear original songs from six Berklee students.

What Will I Learn?

Berklee prepares you for today's music by building on traditional aspects of learning. In all instruction offered in the Guitar Department, emphasis is placed on achieving a solid foundation in the standard technical challenges of professional performance, including scales, chords, reading, improvisation, interpretation, and standard repertoire. Also included is intensive training in sight-reading and in the understanding of chord voicing.

Upon completion of the performance core, students will:

synthesize and integrate knowledge of contemporary and traditional styles into musical interpretation;
synthesize and integrate knowledge of posture, breathing, and instrumental technique into their daily practice routines;
demonstrate technical proficiency on their principal instrument;
demonstrate the ability to sight-read music in a variety of styles;
play music in a variety of contemporary and traditional styles;
play in ensembles of varying size, instrumentation, and stylistic orientation; and
apply knowledge of musical styles and harmonic practices in improvisation.

Entrance Requirements

Applicants must audition with their chosen instrument when applying to the college. Learn more about auditioning with the guitar.

Once accepted, you will audition with the Guitar Department during orientation in order to get your ensemble ratings. These are used for placement into private instruction and ensemble courses. Learn more about placement auditions.

Curriculum and Courses

Private Instruction

All students complete four semesters to fulfill their performance core requirement:

Performance majors have an additional four semesters.
Professional music majors and music education majors have an additional two semesters.

Instrumental Labs

Specialized guitar labs bring together players of similar performance levels and provide training in specific aspects of guitar performance. The labs cover a range of genres and styles, with titles such as Blues Guitar, Electronic Effects for Guitar, Jimi Hendrix Lab, Slide Guitar Lab, Wes Montgomery Lab, and many more.

Browse instrumental labs in our course catalog.

Ensembles

Through ensembles, you will hone essential performance skills and techniques. They help you to broaden your stylistic range, expand your network of musical friends and colleagues, and gain diverse group playing experience.

Ensembles are offered in multiple sections for varying levels of ability. You choose the group and style that appeal to you. Your eligibility is determined by ongoing auditions that measure your growth as a performer.

More than 350 faculty-supervised ensembles rehearse weekly at Berklee.