About
Behind RIFFLEX: 25 years of teaching guitar
I’m Thomas Bressel. For 25 years I taught guitar with one goal: pass on everything I know, holding nothing back. RIFFLEX is the digital distillation of that experience.
Why some players get stuck and others don’t
I’ve had hundreds of students, and they taught me most of what I know. Over the years one question kept coming back: why do some guitarists hit a technical wall while others, who practice just as much, keep moving forward?
To answer it, I read extensively on the physiology and psychology of learning, then built a method and tested it in lessons. My conclusion: a technical block is almost always local. It isn’t “the fretting hand” that fails, it’s one specific motion, on one specific finger pair, in one specific context.
Background
My playing grew out of shred, rock, metal and blues.
- Three solo albums, with guests including Bumblefoot and C. Godin.
- The progressive death metal band Morzienda.
- Past endorsements with Vigier, Lâg, Brunetti, Rocktron and Guitar Pro.
Experience and teaching
- Eleven years working with Arobas Music, the publisher of Guitar Pro.
- Contributions to guitar magazines, including Guitare Xtrême.
- Teaching expert on the contemporary music committee of the CMF (French music federation).
- Author of an 8-volume method and a DVD on 8-finger tapping.
What RIFFLEX does with that experience
In a lesson, a teacher spots by ear and by eye where a student gets stuck. RIFFLEX does that work from your own numbers: it measures your hand, fits the tabs to it, compares your tempos exercise by exercise and isolates the motion slowing you down.
The goal isn’t to replace the joy of playing, but to teach you to assess yourself: know what blocks you, why, and what to work on first.