Bill Swick

Bill Swick holds a Bachelor of Music and a master’s degree in music education from the University of North Texas.  He has been on the guitar faculty at Drake University, University of Nevada-Las Vegas, and just recently retired from the Clark County School District in Las Vegas, NV.

For the past twenty years, Swick was the music department chair and taught guitar for the twelve-time GRAMMY award winning Las Vegas Academy of the Arts and was the guitar task force chair for CCSD, the nation’s fifth largest public school district.  

Since creating the guitar program in 2001, the Las Vegas Academy Guitar Program was first in the nation to receive the coveted Gibson Education Award, the first to be featured in a guitar education promotional video created by Fender Music Instruments, received the Guitar Foundation of America Guitar Education Certification, received five DownBeat Magazine Awards, the first high school guitar ensemble to perform at a National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) national convention and the first high school guitar ensemble to perform at a MENC (now NAfME) national convention and first to perform at a Guitar Foundation of America international convention.

Swick has been featured in several national magazines including Teaching Music Magazine, Soundboard, Guitar Player, DownBeat Magazine, Just Jazz Guitar, American String Teacher and School Band and Orchestra.

Swick was awarded Teacher of the Year in 2014 and Top Ten GRAMMY Educator in 2016.  In addition, Swick has received the Teacher of Excellence Award for the last six consecutive years of teaching.

Swick owns and operates www.BillSwick.com and Guitarintheclassroom.com, both publishing companies specializing in guitar education material.  In addition, Swick publishes a weekly international newsletter for guitar educators in the classroom offering weekly lesson plans and weekly supplementary teaching materials.  He is also the inventor of the “Swickster,” a guitar with a specially developed fingerboard and teaching system designed to introduce and make playing guitar easier, fun and practical. 

 Swick’s book, Teaching Beginning Guitar Class:  A Practical Guide, published by Oxford University Press is currently their best-selling textbook on the subject of guitar education.  It is being used as the required text for many college guitar pedagogy classes. His newest book for Oxford University Press, entitled Building an Award-Winning Guitar Program, is now available.

Swick’s classroom guitar method books have received the J.W. Pepper Editors’ Choice Award for the past five consecutive years.