Graham Baines

Are you an adult who never learned to play music? If that's you, you're in the right place, and I'll let you into a secret... it's not that hard!

I'm Graham — a performing arts educator from the UK with 20 years' teaching experience in international schools. But I've also taught adults outside the classroom, and I've now taken that part of my teaching online, to help adults who always wanted to learn something musical but never quite got the chance. Now's your chance.

My teaching credentials come from two decades in international schools — including setting up and running a whole-school performing arts program at a top international school in Thailand: DJ stations, music-production studios, jam rooms, dance studios and karaoke rooms. Students there produced everything from digital content, to pop-up performances at breaktime, to whole-school shows with rock bands, dancers and a school DJ crew.

After 5 years at the school, I decided to take some time to develop an online ecosystem for supporting learners with music production, and performance.

Adults who sign up to my classes get full access to this ecosystem, with all the resources, as well as 1-to-1 guidance on their music production journey.

Away from the classroom I'm a musician and DJ: I've played drums for 40 years, gigged professionally in a jazz/funk band across the UK and France, DJ a weekly live stream, and picked up the ukulele a few years ago — so I know exactly what being a beginner feels like, at any age.

These days I make music with AI tools, curating and engineering every track to be clean and DJ-ready — and I love mixing genres to discover brand new styles. Let me guide you through the learning process.

Lessons with me start from one question: what music do YOU love? From there we build real skills — beat production in GarageBand or your DAW, DJing with live loops or a controller, drums, uke, songwriting — at your pace, around your taste, with plenty of laughing along the way. And it's never just a music class: if you're working towards a performance, we'll weave in elements of dance and drama to polish it — should you decide to share it. Sharing is always your choice.

Or, if you just want to make some ringtones for your iPhone, let's do it!

Student-centred, always. You choose the direction, and I bring the structure, the encouragement and two decades of classroom craft. Expect short demos, lots of hands-on doing, and small wins every single lesson — confidence is the key and we will build it together.

It's completely normal to feel self-conscious picking up an instrument for the first time as an adult — shy and self-conscious learners are included and thrive in my classes. You decide what to share and when you're ready; no obligation, ever. We enjoy the process of learning.

Every adult learner is different — some want structured, methodical progress; others want a producer-to-producer vibe from lesson one, dissecting tracks you love and recreating their techniques. We'll find your pace together. Between lessons you'll get optional practice missions and, for production students, access to the LAPECHE music library — my own collection of original tracks, stems and MIDI to remix, deconstruct and learn from.