MUSIC
Music Maker With a simple invention, career musician James Lenger, now a resident of Sunset Beach, puts his students on the fast track to learning guitar. BY MELISSA SLAVEN WARREN | PHOTOGRAPHY BY LAURA GLANTZ
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Career guitar teacher James Lenger put his alone time during the pandemic to good use. He learned how to sew and finalized a couple of patents for his inventions, including Strum Perfect. During his nearly 30 years of teaching guitar (that’s 90,000 private lessons), Lenger watched his students apply a “death grip” to their strumming hand, making it difficult to get the sound they were looking for.
James Lenger in his home studio
“Most students, especially beginners, focus all of their concentration on finger placement,” Lenger explains. “And they struggle to make their rhythm sound relaxed. The strumming hand is what gives their playing its character.” So, Lenger came up with a solution. He first began working on Strum Perfect two years ago. The device locks the forearm in place, isolating the back-andforth movement of the strumming hand, allowing students to Summer 2022
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