Guitar Hall - Guitar Academy & Boutique

The teaching faculty at Guitar Hall is the best in the business in India. Here at Guitar Hall, with over a decade of experience developing courses relevant to the needs of the student and the ever-changing music industry, we have only the best team of professional musicians - all of whom are committed to helping you achieve your goals.Guitar Hall has the finest tutors in terms of playing experience,performing skills,ability to motivate and extract the best out of every student in the academy.

So whatever Guitar Hall Module you happen to be at, our teachers will be guaranteed to be of the highest possible standards. And, unlike many other schools, Guitar Hall teachers are full time professional musicians who regularly work and perform in their own right or alongside some of the greatest names and Rock bands in the business.

Dhruv rathod

Dhruv Rathod,the seniormost guitar teacher in Guitar Hall after Kiran Roy, teaching since 2004, was born in Mumbai but spent his early years constantly touring with his father, famous bollywood singer Vinod Rathod. It was probably during this time that he first inculcated music in his blood . He jokingly recalls singing  live onstage on one of his fathers concerts as a child artist and making the crowd go completely bersek with his performance. Having rubbed shoulders with all top bollywood singers of that time, he started training in keyboards at a very young age of 6 and in the process completed Trinity College Grades in keyboards.

He found his final calling in Guitars soon thereafter  and joined Guitar Hall eventually,having trained under Kiran Roy directly. While most teenage boys his age spent their time worried about horrid face acne and impressing girls via blinding their senses with ludicrous amounts of cheap cologne, a one “serious guitar player” had more important things on his mind:. 1) Becoming the finest Heavy-Metal and Rock Virtuoso to ever exist, and 2) Dorking out everyone on his path with his wry sense of humor! Like many boys interested in the world of “the raddest instrument ever :guitars”, Dhruv had his sights set on the Music of bands like Iron Maiden, Testament, Joe Satriani and Steel Dragon. OK, so maybe “Steel Dragon” isn’t very popular among many boys, but the point is: Dhruv came from a Heavy-Metal and Rock background, and there was much happiness in shredding.

Dhruv,currently working on several studio bollywood  projects is also working on his album with Kiran Roy. His speed of the light lead guitar display inspires every student at Guitar Hall and is an inseparable part of the Guitar Hall team.

MANGESH GANDHI

Mangesh Started learning guitar at the age of 18. Mostly a self-taught guitar player, taking help from a few guitar tutors during his journey. Originally he had set out to learn violin but picked up guitars because he couldn’t find a quality violin tutor  never looking  back after that, have been playing ever since. His music has been influenced by a wide array of bands and artistes with different genres and inclinations.

Bands like Pink Floyd, The Beatles, The Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bob Dylan, Porcupine Tree, Opeth, A Perfect Circle, Radiohead, Coldplay, Slipknot and Meshuggah have been pivotal in shaping his music recently. During his early years he learnt a lot from old Indian Bollywood classics. His music is simple and emphasizes on melodies than complexities. During late 2007 he formed a Hindi Alt-Progressive band by the name Coshish. Apart from writing and composing songs for the band he plays guitars and does the vocals too. The band Coshish have won many accolades from different sources for their music.

Mangesh has also composed background scores for short films and a documentary. Guitars have always been a device that has helped Mangesh to express his inner self through the music he makes.

Mangesh is currently working on a studio album of his band and also taking up composing projects. He has completed his graduation in science and diploma in biotechnology, and lately he has also completed a professional course in sound recording and reproduction from Bombay Univ.  Mangesh is also a budding sound engineer. Apart from making music Mangesh also makes mind blowing ice-tea and lemonades. He loves to read and is an avid traveler.Mangesh is definitely an asset to the Guitar Hall scheme of things.

 NEVIN KURIAKOSE

 Mumbai based ace guitarist and pedagogue Nevin Kurakose began playing guitar, keyboards and was passionate about music from a very small age and even used to sing. Belonging to a music family Nevin used to see his mom play the keyboard (Nevin’s mother is a renowned and prolific keyboard teacher in Mumbai) and then slowly gathered an interest in making music.

He still remembers his first lesson on the keyboard taught by his mom when he was very young and the C major scale learnt when he was in school. Since he was never a good student in school, he  had to spent a lot of time reading his school text books to gain those golden 35/100 marks to pass so he could never really spend much time for music and practice.

 Then came college and the same story continued, but then he started gaining much more interest in guitar and he had seen some of the musicians like Kurt Cobain, Steve Vai, Michael Angelo Batio, and his great influence would always be Steve Vai and Michael Angelo and since then he has been trying to master the Guitar to their level.

 The rock bands that he follow are Nirvana, Doors, Bullets for my Valentine, Cradle of Filth, Megadeath, Children of Bodem, System of a Down, Eagles, Led Zappelin, Queen, Pink Floyd, ZZ Top.

 He used to listen to all these bands and always had dreams of being a musician but never got the opportunity in college instead his other interest flourished; football. He was selected to play for his college at the university level and so music took a back seat again.

 But after his college he worked in a call centre and then in shipping company but never felt the satisfaction in what he was doing because they were some ways just to earn money not at all something of his interest. All this while he somehow used to practice on the guitar and it has been very much a part of from the age of 12.

 He had been in search for a proper Guitar class for a very long time where he could learn A to Z about the guitar but could not find a proper teacher and since his mom was a professional in keyboard she was very particular about him learning guitars the proper way. He learnt the staff notations from his mother & wanted to learn a lot more with regards to the guitar leads and go further and deeper in the guitar and his mom herself recommended Guitar Hall to him after learning Guitar Hall’s track record in Mumbai. What followed next was an intensive training period for Nevin at Guitar Hall which changed his life and before long he was appointed the Guitar Hall teacher which he rightfully deserved.”For me the environment also very important and I could get all that and more in Guitar Hall. “ Nevin says.

Aman Gujral

Aman is truly an asset to the Guitar Hall team.

KIRAN PATIL

Kiran was born in Satara,Maharashtra  in 1984 and the family emigrated to Pune.Pune became his home and it was in the initial year in Pune at the age of 18 when he bought his first guitar and taught himself to play by ear. It did not take long for him to realize that a wealth of knowledge could be gained by being able to read music. But he was unable to find any quality guitar teacher or school in Pune who could teach him sight reading. After his Bcom graduation, his family shifted to Satara again and its then Kiran heard about Guitar Hall’s reputation in imparting quality training in Mumbai. Wasting no time Kiran started attending guitar lessons at Guitar Hall travelling 17 hours every week from Satara to Mumbai and back. Enrolling for Guitar Hall’s courses on early 1998, by the end of 2009 season, he had gained a good proficiency on that instrument mastering all 4 Guitar Hall Modules. Kiran’s regimen was about 7 to 8 hours of practice on non Guitar Hall days. Perhaps needless to say, his guitar playing had come a long way. Within a short time, he was at the point where he could play, read and write the music that he was learning by ear.

It did not take him long to begin a Guitar Hall Center at his hometown Phaltan in Satara District.And Guitar Hall Satara on launch had a record number of admissions on the first week itself. Currently Kiran Patil is a source of inspiration for hundreds of his Guitar Hall Students at Satara.Sole inspiration for Kiran Patil is being able to deliver quality music education at his own hometown which he painstakingly attained while studying at Guitar Hall Chembur for 2 years.

Running India’s Topmost Guitar Training Institute Guitar Hall in Satara,Kiran Patils story spells grit,courage,determination,hardwork and proves anything is possible in this world if you have the will and you are ready to spend sleepless nights working towards it. The entire Guitar Hall team salutes Kiran Patil.

 Kenil Sanghavi

Born 1987 at Mumbai, Kenil began learning guitars at the age of 12. He did well and when he was 19 he realized the need to learn music from a seasoned teacher and that made him join Guitar Hall to learn music under the expert guidance of Kiran Roy. Soon after in his quest for excellence, he completed the intermediate Guitar Hall Modules. Through this,Kenil began his journey into an unprecedented study at Guitar Hall that challenged his ability in ways he never thought possible. Learning at Guitar Hall changed and reshaped his musical life in a way that set his goals toward a greater world view: “My problem was that I needed to expand my musical endeavors. I fell in love with Guitar Hall, and the results just floored me at how great the modules and syllabus were! After that, I decided to venture into advanced modules at Guitar Hall, and that lead me to investigate styles of music which I never thought I would be learning.” Kenil fell in love with Guitar Hall, and began a study in what he calls “The hardest form of guitar music to ever grace my fingers.” Eventually after he completed all the Modules at Guitar Hall Kenil’s  love of teaching music lead him to start teaching at Guitar Hall. “Teaching is bit of a selfish job: I get to do something I genuinely love, while learning more about myself, bettering my teaching skills, and my playing ability. Simply put, I have the best job in the world and it’s an honor teaching at Guitar Hall.”  Kenil now spends his time teaching at Guitar Hall and performing with his Rock band .Kenil was named top in his class at Guitar Hall for music study, composition and virtuoso guitar performance.

 Mathew Joseph

Mathew Joseph ,the latest guitar virtuoso to join the famed Guitar Hall Crew was born on 11th June 1986 and started playing guitars in 2002.

 Music has always been Mathew’s passion since early childhood and all his energies were directed to learning, practicing, and composing music. In his early college years, which he attended at Saint Xavier's, he was an ardent fan of English literature and thus took up a BA in English Literature. Mathew also wrote a number of short stories and he hopes someday to get back to writing more seriously. Around this time Mathew was also playing with a classic rock band called Crimson Dawn. Somewhere during his second year BA the dream to pursue music full time materialized through his band SummerPintJunkie and he quit college and headed off to Pune with the band to perform a series of concerts. After a few months they came back to Mumbai, and since then they have done numerous shows (Mood I, I Rock etc) around the country and recorded four of their original compositions which you can hear on the site   http://www.myspace.com/summerpintjunkie

Apart from Completing All Guitar Hall Modules,Mathew has done five courses viz. Rock Guitar, Blues guitar, Guitar Scales, Guitar Chords and Basic Improvisation from the Berklee online school, Boston for which the school awarded their Professional Certificate in Guitar. This program gave him a sound footing in music theory. Music Recording is also one of Mathew’s interests and he uses his Pro Tools home setup for the occasional recording sessions. Mathew is a guitar/gear junkie to the core and is constantly researching and checking out new guitars and equipment. Mathew’s current guitar is the Godin LGXT and his effects units are as follows; Boss GT 10, Eventide Modfactor and TC Electronics Nova Drive. Mathew also love playing football.Mathew is an inseparable part of the Guitar Hall teaching team.

OAIS HALIM

Oais didn’t even realize his passion for music until his parents noticed him recreating tunes he heard on the television, on a battery operated toy piano he got for his 4th birthday. He was in Kuwait with his family then. Finding a music teacher there was like finding a needle in a haystack. They managed to find a teacher who was good in Indian classical music on the keyboard and there began his initial training. After the Gulf War in ’92, Oais shifted to Mumbai with his family, he continued his lessons in keyboard with a different tutor who had merits in western music.

When Oais turned 10yrs, he was told by someone that music is discouraged in his community and he can only have it as a hobby and not as a career. He strangled his passion and decided not to look back; he did many things to compensate this passion, sold display boards, repaired computers, worked in an IT firm, in an adventure company as an outdoor expert, in a Tour consultancy firm. But he couldn’t find anything that could equal that lost love.

After years of hidden discontent and unhappiness, he realized that the void he felt could not be fulfilled by anything other than music, so he joined Guitar Hall to study music. Oais has interests in varied genres, Classic Rock, Metal, Jazz, Fusion, and Flamenco. Trained directly under Kiran Roy and Dhruv Rathod ; Oais now has graduated onto the elite panel of Guitar Hall tutors.Oais can usually be found as a positive conduit for music with his Guitar Hall students, friends and family . Being a great player does not make that person great teacher, and visa-versa. Oais is a rare breed of both.

Apart from music, Oais loves cross country motorcycle tours and makes lip smacking chocolates.

 MAX CLOUTH

 Born 1985 in Germany, Max Clouth is a virtuoso guitarist with a profound education in improvised music.

Starting with classical guitar training, he changed to violin for 5 years to finally return to the guitar at age of 15. He played and composed for the rock band KISMET which played numerous concerts and received a nomination in an international band contest. At the same time Max composed pieces for solo guitar and small ensembles; one of his compositions for guitar and orchestra was performed in 2004 as his final school project.

In 2004 Max also started to perform with various jazz, blues and rock artists.

In 2005 Max enrolled at the Mainz University to study jazz guitar, classical guitar, bass and arranging with guitarists Marc Oliver Klenk, Norbert Scholly, bass player Ralf Cetto and pianist Jesse Milliner.

In 2008 he changed to Dresden University where he graduated in 2009.

Parallel to his official studies Max started to learn Indian classical music with violinist Indradeep Ghosh, sitarists HK Shah, Shamim Ahmed Khan and Nayan Ghosh.

Max has been performing with guitarist Torsten de Winkel (ex Pat Metheny Group), Indradeep Ghosh (violin), Omprakash Pandey, Nirmalya Roy and Niraj Kumar (tabla), Rafael Sotomayor (Chilean hangdrum innovator) and many more instrumentalists, singers and dancers from Germany, France, South and North America, Spain, India and the arabic countries.

SANTOSH MALIK

Santosh Malik is an avant-garde guitarist with roots in Indian classical music. He began playing guitar at the age of eighteen. By the age of twenty two he was getting recognition from local professional guitarists as a guitar improviser of accomplished technique with an unmistakable touch, a highly individual tone and an inventive use of slides and pull-offs.

Santosh Malik was born in 1979. No one in his family was at all musical and Santosh seemed impressed by the classical music that surrounded him, with him having taken classical vocal training since an early age. There was a family tradition of creativity — woodworking, art, writing — and in his teens Santosh’s inheritance of this creativity began to show itself in guitars. He has performed stage shows with top singers as a vocalist. Doing stage shows Santosh also taught classical vocals at Nalanda Music & Arts College for three years. Feeling the need to take his guitar playing to the next level,Santosh shifted base to Mumbai to study guitars at Guitar Hall in 2006. Sometime after his first year of study at Guitar Hall and to everyone’s amazement, he suddenly became a technically accomplished guitarist. He began to develop his own touch and tone on the strings producing a sound rather different than others. He became adept at sculpting the guitars voice. Very often students who were at Guitar Hall would linger if Santosh were playing, and paid him very nice compliments which prompted him to take up studying music very seriously. By 2009 he completed all of the Modules and began teaching at Guitar Hall. Eventually his teacher and mentor Kiran Roy gave up on lessons at Guitar Hall and simply invited Santosh to jam with him.

BHUVAN MORJAL

Bhuvan, born in Rawatbhata Rajasthan in 1986 is the latest young guitar virtuoso to join the Guitar Hall teaching team . Bhuvan and his family
moved to Mumbai in 2003, before which he's spent his formative years
at various places including Rawatbhata, Hyderabad and Shillong. The
stay at Shillong had an essential part to play in his love for guitar
and finally making up his mind to pursue it seriously while he
listened to the North Eastern artists playing on local radio. Although
his family history shows no signs of music or art, he and his siblings
evolved into artists on their own, pursuing what they loved the most.
He found enormous mental peace in the notes of his acoustic guitar he
painstakingly acquired at an age of 18. Bhuvan always found interest
in percussion and instrumental music more than vocals which eventually
lead him to pursue musical instruments with utmost interest. Bhuvan's
interest in instruments is not limited to guitars. He also
experimented with a keyboard he got at the age of 19 and practiced to
play his favorite music on it, eventually being capable of pleasing an
audience with his keyboard performance as well!

He started learning guitar by self and attended some complementary guitar classes in his college where he pursued his B.A. His guitar practice continued and what lied in store was intense formal guitar training under Kiran Roy in Guitar Hall which gave him solid direction & foundation. With the completion of his training with Kiran Roy, he found what he always strived for, the position to share his music, his art, his passion with prospective guitarists. Bhuvan finally joined Guitar Hall in November 2009 as a guitar trainer working with the famed Guitar Hall team.

Satyendra Chauhan

Mumbai based guitarist and pedagogue Satyendra Chauhan was born on 27th June '84.He
began playing  guitar in his formative years but his musical appetite quickly led him to study guitars at Guitar Hall under the expert guidance of Kiran Roy. He has had the privilege of studying with other Guitar Hall teachers such as:  Dhruv Rathod,Santosh Malik,Oais Halim,etc. Always keeping an open mind and humbleness about him has helped him to keep learning new things on, and about the guitar.

Satyendra studied MSC in Swami Vivekanand College and loved music since his schooldays but parents urged him to study well. Satyendra Likes Pink Floyd, Guns and Roses, Metallica, System of a down, Eagles, Oasis. Despite the academic and professional achievements of Satyendra , he still has a personality and is a down-to-earth and fun guy. Satyendra believes you should have internal motivation, and passion to play guitar, and most definitely, it should be fun!

As with his playing, Satyendra will find new ways to show you how to get the most out of your time learning guitar! Satyendra is a blessing to the Guitar Hall team.

 UDIT KAPOOR

Udit Kapoor, born in Mumbai in 1991 had a sense of music from a very early start. It was at a very young age that his parents observed him playing xylophone and did not take long to realize that he had an ear for rhythm. He was passionate about music from a very small age and would sit for hours on the dining table, meal kept on the side, playing with his little fingers and recreating musical beats he heard on TV. That’s when his parents decided to train him in tabla.

Although his family pedigree shows no signs of music he seemed to have music inculcated in his blood. He was highly encouraged by his mother to take his passion for percussions seriously. Apart from percussions, he also enjoys creating tunes on the keyboard and has a keen interest in playing the six strings.

After 5 years of training in tabla, he decided to move on to the next level. He knew he wanted to learn more. At the age of 17, he started learning drums under the guidance of three of the finest drummers of India, Gino Banks, Vinayak Pol and

Jai Row Kavi. He also became a part of his college band and started taking part in intercollegiate band performances.

His deep interest in music like jazz and blues has been highly inspired by renowned artistes like Dave Weckl and Vinnie Colaiuta.

Udit always wanted to share his passion and art with prospective learners. Apart from music, Udit loves to play soccer. Like any other teenager of his age, this little chap enjoys everything except studies. He has a dream.....and the dream is to make it big in the music industry.

Tanmay Bhave

Tanmay Bhave, instructor at Guitar Hall, began his musical journey at the tender age of twelve, where he realized a passion within him to play the guitars.  He then started taking lessons from a local teacher.  At the age of 14, after only 2 years of playing the guitar, Tanmay, through the advice of his father, signed up for the Guitar Hall Module 1.He wrapped up the 3 months course in 1 month! From that moment on,Tanmay began a musical path that’s redefined guitar learning. In the heat of his studies Tanmay would spend as many as eight hours a day practicing and learning everything he could pertaining to the guitar.  Since the early days of his studies, he has always had a passion to teach others how to play guitar.  It was this desire that led Tanmay to share his knowledge and talents at Guitar Hall.

Today after many years of learning music at Guitar Hall,Tanmay is on the Guitar Hall Wall of Fame on the elite panel of Guitar Hall teachers. Tanmay was very much inspired and influenced by old school rock and he knows how to use the guitar with great tones, rhythms, dexterity and soulfulness.Tanmay always has fresh, surprising melodic ideas as well a great chops.  

Tanmay Bhave is now part of this great Guitar Hall team and has an influence on young guitarists. His music teaching is worth studying carefully.