Brief History -

G’day, I’m Tom Croston. I was a student at the Learning Lounge for over six years and in 2007 I jumped at the opportunity to take a position teaching here. I was honoured and excited to take on this new challenge. I started playing the guitar at the age of 8 as a youngster with a nylon string acoustic guitar. Over the following ten years I’ve experienced a diverse range of musical styles and ensembles. I have recently finished school at Knox Grammar, leaving as DUX of the music one course. As a result of that I was also asked to teach at Knox. Over the years I’ve played in many bands, the first of which was called ‘Homebrew’, followed by ‘Boundary Road’ , ‘Colatia’ and currently 'Rockets' who are often gigging around town. During my years as a student at the Learning Lounge I had the privilege of being taught by Mike Gordon, Dave Lynch and Chris 'Riz' Hallowes. Alll three of these teachers showed me a dynamic and varied approach to ideas and methods available to teach music.

My Educational Philosophy -

I think that having learned guitar from different teachers I can offer a student a wide range of approaches to a piece of music or style of guitar playing. I want all my students to appreciate that to understand how things work makes playing more enjoyable. I always try to explain the theory of music by using material the student relates to but also to help students learn to be self expressive and to improvise and possibly write their own compositions.

Styles of Music Taught -

I like to teach mainly rock and heavy metal along with some blues and funk etc. I don't really teach any classical or jazz styles.

My Musical Interests -

At the moment I’m a big fan of progressive rock, bands such as Dream Theater etc. Over the years I was always a fan of technical guitar players like Slash from Guns ‘n’ Roses, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani as well as Garry Moore and especially; Eddie Van Halen…the list goes on.

Click here to find out more about"Rockets"