About Banger's Vibe one teacher, one room

tone first, theory second

Most guitar teaching runs in one direction: scales, then chords, then theory, and the promise that music will show up at the end. For a lot of players it never does. They can name the mode and still not sound like the record.

Here it runs the other way. You bring a sound — a record, a riff, a tone you cannot even name — and that is the lesson. One listen and we work out what is under the hood: which voicing it is, how hard the string is being hit, where the note sits against the beat, what the amp and the room are adding. Then we get it under your fingers. The theory arrives when it explains something you have already heard, which is the only time it sticks.

There is no fixed syllabus, but every session has the same shape.

• Start from a sound. Yours, not the book’s. The room, the amp, the reverb tail — before a single word of theory.
• Work backwards. Voicings, touch, time, phrasing: whatever stands between your hands and that sound.
• Leave with something. A recording of what was played, a voicing sheet and a practice plan for the week.

What gets worked on, over time: Tone, Phrasing, Voicings, Time, Improvisation, Dynamics, Ear training.

• Beginners, who get the room and the ear first, and are taught separately from experienced players.
• Players who are stuck — years in, plenty of exercises behind them, and still not sounding the way they want. This is who the approach was built for.
• Working players after new angles on tone and phrasing.

You can come one-on-one, or join a small group of three to four who play together every week. A group teaches what practising alone cannot: holding a rhythm part against someone else, listening, leaving space.

Lovem Mittal has been teaching guitar for 10 years. Banger's Vibe is not an academy with a rota of instructors — it is one teacher, so the person who hears you in the first session is the person who knows your playing in the tenth.

More about Lovem · clips from the room at @bangersvibe · Listen

Electric guitar has about seventy years of recorded history, and every decade solved the same problem — how to make six strings say something — in a different way. Sessions borrow from all of it. There is always something new to steal.

• 1950s — Chet Atkins, Les Paul, Scotty Moore. To steal: fingerstyle independence.
• 1960s — Wes Montgomery, Jimi Hendrix, Steve Cropper. To steal: octaves, chord-melody, rhythm fills.
• 1970s — David Gilmour, George Benson, Jimmy Page. To steal: bends with vibrato, scat-unison lines.
• 1980s — Pat Metheny, Mark Knopfler, Steve Lukather. To steal: intervallic lines, dynamics without a pick.
• 1990s — Jonny Greenwood, Bill Frisell, Jeff Buckley. To steal: space, ambient voicings.
• 2000s — John Mayer, Derek Trucks, Kurt Rosenwinkel. To steal: pocket, thumb-over voicings.
• 2010s — Julian Lage, Cory Wong, Tom Misch. To steal: right-hand time, chord voicings.
• 2020s — Mateus Asato, Isaiah Sharkey, Plini. To steal: melody-first phrasing.

The room

SCO No. 24, MC Building, BasementDistrict One, Sector 68Sahibzada Ajit Singh Nagar (Mohali), Punjab 160062Open in Google Maps

In the room

Amps provided, and a couple of guitars if you do not have one yet

Online

Live, two camera angles, low-latency audio — how it works

Hours

Any slot between 9 AM and 10 PM IST,weekdays and weekends