Kirk Lorange - Site founder

Hi, fellow guitar enthusiast.

I started playing the guitar a long time ago: at age 12 in 1961. That was the year I heard Hank Marvin playing the tune 'Apache' (thanks, Hank) and I've been hooked ever since. I've been earning my living with my guitars since 1968.

I'm Canadian, but I have lived all over the place. My childhood was spent in Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba and Belgium. My family returned to Canada in 1963 where I finished High school and started traveling again, back to Europe. I lived in London during the early seventies where I recorded an album with a fellow Montrealer, Dwight Druick.

In 1975, I moved to Sydney Australia and began playing on various recording sessions there... album tracks, movie soundtracks and more TV and radio commercials than I could count (discography below). I also played in too many bands to mention and I recorded and produced a solo album of my own songs called 'No Apostrophe' (see below) which received great reviews and went top 15 in Perth and Adelaide.

As a self-taught player, I spent many years sifting through all the bits and pieces of the musical puzzle that I had been collecting: scales, chords, harmony, melody, modes, etc. Studio musicians need to be able to invent parts on the fly, to be able to improvise different ideas and to do so quickly. What I knew must exist, and what I eventually found, was a simple way of collating all those elements together on the fretboard ... a very basic but all-powerful visualization 'trick'. I have always given lessons on a casual basis, but about fifteen years ago I started staging workshops where I passed on that 'trick'. I wrote a 6 page booklet for those workshops, and that booklet grew into PlaneTalk a couple of years later and I've been self-publishing it (and the full-blown package it has grown into) since then.

I moved from Sydney to Tamborine Mountain (near Brisbane) in 1997 to be closer to my first three kids Danny, Rohan and Astrid who lived in Byron Bay. It was then and there that I registered the name GuitarforBeginners.com and created this site. It has been a 'work in progress' ever since. My partner Clancy Mullins joined me in the effort in about 2002. She is the code guru, runs the huge community, keeps everything up to date and running smoothly. I do the lessons and answer questions as best I can.

In May 2004 we moved to Canada and stayed for a year in British Columbia. Upon my return to Tamborine Mountain, I put together a DVD of my favorite kind of guitar playing: Slide Guitar. I'm a little unusual as I play in Standard Tuning.

I also started marketing my own brand of brass slides, made to my specs.

In 2007, I became dad to little Georgia Lily Ann Lorange.

And that's it in a nutshell! Thanks for dropping by.

Kirk Lorange — January, 2012

PlaneTalk - The Truly Totally Different Guitar Instruction Package
My YouTube Channel
My Soundclick page
My personal site