John McCarthy (guitarist)


John Frederick McCarthy is a musician, author, educator and creator of the Rock House Method system of learning. Since 2001, The Rock House Method has sold more than three million instructional programs of which McCarthy writes, composes, and demonstrates in. In the past McCarthy has written columns for Guitar School magazine and in June 2009 began writing a monthly column titled "Metal Rising" in Guitar Player magazine. As owner of the Rock House School of Music since 1981, McCarthy has developed a curriculum for learning to play music that covers guitar, piano, ukulele, drums, bass guitar, singing, child music development and music theory. His awards and accolades include CTNOW "Best Place to Learn Music" award 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, Music & Sound Retailer award for "Best Tools for Schools" 2013, Music Merchandise Review "Best Instructional Product of the Year" 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012.

Educator

John McCarthy began providing music lessons at the age of 15 and created the first complete rock guitar instruction series on video in 1986. In 2000, John designed the Rock House Method accelerated learning system that combined instruction in video and book form with an on-line support system. In 2001 John began the mission to take "The Rock House Method" to masses.
John currently has authored over 60 instructional method books, 58 instructional DVDs and 1 instructional DVD rom. John designed and developed a Disney Learn Guitar method featuring the songs of Hannah Montana and High School Musical released in 2009 on DVD-ROM. In addition to his own instructional books and programs John has worked with many of the greatest musicians in the world creating personal instruction programs featuring the Rock House Method, Alexi Laiho, Alex Skolnick, Kiko Loureiro, Jeff Loomis, Bernie Worrell, Oli Herbert, Michael Paget, Rusty Cooley, Dan Jacobs, Rob Arnold, Doug Wimbish, Leo Nocentelli and Dave Ellefson are some of the collaborating artists.
John owns and has been running the Rock House School of Music currently with two locations, West Haven and Wallingford CT. Rock House School of Music is a full service music school offering instruction for guitar, bass, piano, drums, singing and ukulele. In March 2019 the school won the CTNOW award for "Best Place to Take Music Lessons in CT" they also won previously in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018.

Musician

John began playing guitar at the age of 6 inspired by listening to the vast album collection of his older brother and sisters and states this as the reason he has a wide range of music genres in his vocabulary. When John turned 8 he already had a band playing local camps and parties and at 15 was playing across the tri-state area in clubs. At 15 John opened his first music school called Rock House School of Music. He stayed motivated to further his music studies learning to play Piano, drums, bass guitar, ukulele and sing.
In 2006 John recorded his first solo release "Drive" a full length guitar centered instrumental album. Doug Wimbish of Living Colour fame produced and played bass on the album. Other players on the album include Will Calhoun on drums, Bernie Worrell on keyboards, Leo Nocentelli on guitar, and Jordan Gengreco on keyboards.

Future

John McCarthy continues to write instructional books for his Rock House Method brand. The Rock House School of Music is expanding and adding locations and John McCarthy plans to franchise his award-winning schools around the world. John McCarthy launched an interactive online learning platform called Rock House U. RockHouseU.com is an interactive learning platform that contains video, audio, text and graphic images along with interactive learning tools to make a complete learning system geared for the future.

Body of work

Instructional books