Thames Ditton · Surrey · KT7
Music lessons in Thames Ditton — starting with a tune you love
I am Tom Ashton. Tell me the piece of music that made you want lessons, and we will work out together what it takes to play it. Everything else — the technique, the reading, the theory — arrives because that tune asked for it.
Why me, rather than one of the marketplaces
There are plenty of places online that will match you with whoever is nearest and cheapest. Here is what you get instead.
One teacher, all the way through
Not a rota. The person who teaches your first lesson is the person who takes you through Grade 5, and who knows in week thirty what you found hard in week three.
Several instruments under one roof
Families rarely all want the same thing. A child on ukulele, a teenager on electric guitar and a parent returning to piano can all be taught here, and often on the same evening.
We start from the music, not the book
Grades and exams are here if you want them, and plenty of my students take them. But nobody arrives wanting to be good at page fourteen. They arrive with a tune — so that is where we start, and the syllabus fits around it rather than the other way round.
The other half of the week
I write music for film and television — and I play
Teaching is not the only thing I do with music, and that is rather the point. Writing to a brief means taking pieces apart for a living — which is the skill I hand to a student who turns up with a song and no idea where to start.
Both halves are available to hire, so if you are here for one of those rather than for lessons, you are in the right place:
- Music for film & TV Original score, played on real instruments — sitar, tabla and dilruba through to cello and violin — rather than assembled from a sample library.
- Live music Weddings, functions and pub gigs, solo or as a duo. Standards through to classical and Spanish guitar. Booked direct, no agency in the middle.
Where I teach
Lessons happen in Thames Ditton. The villages either side of the river and the Kingston side of the A3 are all a short drive, and lessons work online anywhere.
On the doorstep
nought to two miles
Thames Ditton · Long Ditton · Weston Green · Hinchley Wood · East Molesey · Hampton Court · Surbiton · Esher
A short drive
two to five miles
Kingston upon Thames · Hampton · Hampton Wick · Teddington · West Molesey · Claygate · Hook · Tolworth · Chessington · New Malden · Berrylands · Hampton Hill
By arrangement
five to eight miles
Walton-on-Thames · Hersham · Cobham · Oxshott · Twickenham · Ham · Richmond · Wimbledon · Worcester Park · Ewell · Epsom · Sunbury-on-Thames · Weybridge
Free tools, free to use
Built for my own students and left open for everybody. No signup, nothing to install, and they work on a phone.
Tuner
Tuner
Hears your instrument through the microphone. Guitar by default, with bass, ukulele, mandolin and a dozen more behind the picker.
Rhythm
Groove trainer
A step past a metronome: build a pattern, play against it, and hear where you are early or late.
Aural
Interval ear trainer
The aural half of every grade exam, and the part candidates leave until last.
Things worth understanding
Written for my own students, presented here free in the hope people find it useful. If you’d like to run through it with an instrument, why not book a lesson.
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What is a dilruba? The bowed voice of North Indian music Bowed, fretted, and strung with more sympathetic strings than most people have fingers. What it is, what it sounds like, and why it very nearly sings. -
What is counterpoint? Two pieces that will teach you to hear it Several melodies at once, all of them meaning something. Two recordings, a few timestamps, and what to listen for in each. -
Guitar scales and modes: the only shapes you need, and why the chords decide Four movable shapes, one set of notes, and the reason the same seven notes can sound wistful, bright or Spanish without you moving a finger differently.
Start with a first lesson
Tell me what you would like to play, who it is for, and roughly where you are. I will come back to you with times and we can take it from there.
Get in touch