Jon MacLennan | |
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Background information | |
Birth name | Jon Andrew MacLennan |
Born | Tarzana, California | March 23, 1987
Genres | Classic rock, jazz, blues, pop |
Occupation(s) | Studio musician, composer, producer, instructor |
Years active | 2003–present |
Labels | Suspicious Love Productions |
Website |
www |
Jon MacLennan is a Los Angeles-based musician, composer, producer and music educator. MacLennan's session work includes playing guitar on Julian Lennon and Steven Tyler's song, "Someday", from Lennon's album, Everything Changes (2013), [1] and backing vocals on Jamie Cullum's album, The Pursuit (2009). [2] He's also played guitar on songs for Holly Knight, Mark Spiro and Tim Miner. MacLennan's original song, "Fallin' Deeper", [3] is featured in the Twentieth Century Fox film Marley & Me: The Puppy Years (2011) soundtrack. [4] MacLennan's published works include: three self-produced albums, [5] two instructional music iBooks, Melodic Expressions: The Art of the Line (2012), [6] Play Ukulele (2012) and hundreds of instructional workshop videos on his YouTube channel [5] with over 1.48 million views. [7]
MacLennan began his professional music career at 16 completing session work for Grammy Award-winning mixer Tom Weir. His first album, Suspicious Love (2006) was recorded at Weir's Studio City Sound in Studio City, CA. MacLennan also secured television work with 20th Century Fox Television and the Disney Channel during his teen years. [5] MacLennan earned a bachelor's degree in Ethnomusicology from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with emphasis in jazz guitar in 2010. His mentors include: Carl Verheyen, Tim Pierce, Kenny Burrell, Jimmy Wyble, Tamir Hendelman, Ron Anthony and Wolf Marshall, [8] the author of Hal Leonard's Wolf Marshall Guitar Method and Power Studies. [9]
It's like having the book come to life... As a guitar player and as a guitar instructor, it's like having a dream come true. [...] As far as I’ve seen, he's the first one who's done this successfully.
— Wolf Marshall (Guitarist, educator, author, lecturer), Daily Bruin [6]
Melodic Expressions is an interactive instructional iBook for advanced guitar players. The iBook contains more than 90 pages of content pertaining to different musical genres [8] and focuses on the "...language of the music," according to MacLennan. [6] The iBook is divided into three sections, "Major", "Minor" and "Dominant" [14] musical phrasing with genre specific core-elements, rather than formal scales and drilled exercises. Each page includes a slow and fast tempo playback with the lead guitar in the right speaker and the pad guitar in the left speaker. [15] After-market iPad accessories are available to enable the guitarist to plugin to the iPad directly and play along with the left, right or both tracks. [14]
Jon has been creating instructional DVD guitar courses since 2012. Listed below are some of his top selling DVD courses.
Suspicious Love (album)
No. | Title | Length |
---|---|---|
1. | "Suspicious Love (I think I like it)" | 2:44 |
2. | "Good To Know" | 3:39 |
3. | "The Fighter" | 4:11 |
4. | "Crazy Love" | 2:50 |
5. | "Don't Go" | 3:07 |
6. | "Big Time" | 5:02 |
7. | "You Don't Know" | 2:57 |
8. | "Kind To No One Blues" | 2:55 |
9. | "S.P.F." | 2:56 |
10. | "On My Mind" | 4:12 |
Dreams (album)
No. | Title | Length |
---|---|---|
1. | "Start All Over Again" | 3:38 |
2. | "Someday" | 4:30 |
3. | "Dreams" | 3:16 |
4. | "Lesson Learned" | 4:17 |
5. | "Fallin' Deeper" | 3:09 |
6. | "Christmas Day" | 3:17 |
7. | "Footsteps in the Sand" | 3:08 |
8. | "Peace" | 3:51 |
9. | "Cheating Woman Blues" | 2:53 |
10. | "Until the End" | 3:47 |
Songs from Box Canyon (album)
No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
---|---|---|---|
1. | "Nobody Cares When You Live in L.A" | MacLennan | 3:19 |
2. | "New Life" | MacLennan | 3:02 |
3. | "In My Arms" (feat. Heather Youmans) | MacLennan/Youmans | 4:12 |
4. | "Fallin' in Love" | MacLennan | 4:00 |
5. | "A Time and a Place" | MacLennan | 2:38 |
6. | "Bottle of Dreams" | MacLennan | 3:19 |
7. | "I Want You Back" | MacLennan | 3:34 |
8. | "We Are the Future" | MacLennan | 4:20 |
9. | "Without You" | MacLennan | 4:18 |
MacLennan, a UCLA alumnus, plays his 12-string Rickenbacker electric guitar alongside Steven Tyler on Julian Lennon's new single, "Someday," set to be released via iTunes today. The three recorded the track at the famed NightBird Recording Studios in West Hollywood...
MacLennan worked as a private guitar instructor for the Los Angeles Pierce College Department of Music and also independently instructs several students via SKYPE, which allows him to instruct students from all around the world. With a YouTube channel currently containing more than 250 videos and 1.3 million cumulative video views, his online lessons and performances have become a viral success.
'(MacLennan) was one of my most promising students and did things far beyond the call of duty. His material tends to reflect that,' Marshall said. 'As far as I've seen, he's the first one who's done this successfully.'
"Melodic Expressions: The Art of the Line," an interactive guitar instructional iBook for the iPad to be released later this month at the iBookstore.