Three Nights.
One Legendary Guitar Experience.
Escape to the shores of Loch Lomond for three unforgettable nights of guitar, great food, whisky and music with John Goldie.
 Strictly limited to 15 seats.
Join the Zoom callThis isn't a conference. It isn't a packed guitar camp. It's three days completely immersed in the guitar.
It's an intimate, small-group experience where you'll learn directly from John, play alongside him, perform with him and spend three days completely immersed in the guitar.
How the three nights unfold
Your time on the loch shore
Welcome to Loch Lomond
Arrive at the Lodge on Loch Lomond, check into your private balcony room and settle in with one of Scotland's most spectacular landscapes outside your window. That evening, we'll come together for our welcome dinner.
Dinner, whisky & an intimate performance with John
After dinner, pour yourself a dram and settle in for something very special. John will perform an intimate private set exclusively for our retreat group, sharing the music, techniques and stories behind his playing. No big stage. No crowds. Just a handful of guitarists, John, great music and a whisky on the banks of Loch Lomond.
Today we dive deep into the acoustic guitar and start turning it into an instrument that can stand completely on its own.
Fingerstyle solo blues
Learn how to combine bass, chords, melody and rhythm simultaneously to create a full solo-guitar sound. You'll explore John's approach to fingerstyle blues and discover how to make one guitar sound like an entire band.
Show your stuff with John
After the workshop, it's time to put what you've learned into action. Play alongside John, try out the ideas from the session and get live guidance and feedback directly from him.
An introduction to bluegrass
Change gears for an introduction to the energy, rhythm and vocabulary of bluegrass guitar. Explore flatpicking, melodic ideas, rhythm techniques and the sounds that give the style its unmistakable character.
Show your stuff with John
Grab your guitar again and put the techniques into practice with John. This isn't about sitting and watching someone else play. You'll be playing.
The evening performance
Before arriving at the retreat, you'll choose one song you've always wanted to perform. You'll have time to prepare it in advance, and during the retreat you'll get the opportunity to perform your song with John accompanying you. Your song. John Goldie playing alongside you. A small audience of your fellow guitarists. A memory you'll take home with you long after the retreat is over.
Day three moves from acoustic guitar into lead playing, improvisation and harmony.
Lead guitar phrasing: escape the pentatonic box
Knowing a pentatonic scale is one thing. Making it sound like music is another. John will show you how he approaches phrasing, melody and movement across the fretboard so you can stop running through familiar scale shapes and start creating solos that actually say something.
Show your stuff with John
Take the concepts from the workshop and immediately put them into practice. Trade phrases, improvise and get John's input on how to make your playing sound more musical.
Jazz chords, substitutions & playing the changes
Now we open up an entirely different side of the guitar. Discover how John thinks about chord progressions, substitutions and harmony, and, crucially, how those chords tell you what you can play when improvising. You'll begin connecting chords and lead guitar rather than treating them as two separate skills. The goal isn't to turn you into a jazz theorist. It's to give you a new musical vocabulary you can take into blues, rock, acoustic music and your own improvisation.
The final show your stuff
One final opportunity to put everything together with John. Take what you've learned across the retreat and play it rather than just talk about it.
We'll finish our final evening together over dinner, drinks and guitars. Then it's time for the final performances. Each guitarist gets their moment to perform their chosen song with John for the group. No pressure to be perfect. The entire point is to experience what it's like to make music alongside a world-class player, and leave Loch Lomond having done something you'll remember.
John Goldie
John Goldie is regarded as one of the finest fingerstyle guitarists in the world, celebrated for a rare ability to weave melody, chords and bass lines together on a single guitar, all at once.
A founding member of Spirit of Django alongside jazz legend Martin Taylor, John has spent a career moving fluidly between jazz, blues, Celtic and folk, sharing stages and studios with some of the biggest names in music.
Now he's opening the door to a small group of players for something he's never done before: three full days, side by side, on his home turf.
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"Come learn the guitar the way I did, surrounded by people who love it as much as you do."
What's Included
Everything, taken care of
This is a strictly limited small group, so you get all the benefits of a more personal, immersive experience.
Three nights' stay
Accommodation on the shores of Loch Lomond for the full retreat.
Guitar with John
Hands-on sessions learning John's technique, repertoire and approach.
Great food & whisky
Meals and whisky shared together each evening, part of the experience, not an add-on.
A performance with John
You'll play alongside him, a genuine, once-in-a-lifetime moment on stage.
An intimate group
Kept deliberately small, so every player gets real time and attention.
The Highlands
Three days away from everything, in one of Scotland's most beautiful settings.
Private balcony room
Your own comfortable private balcony room for the length of the retreat.
Play with John after every workshop
Put each session straight into practice, playing alongside John himself.
Prepare and perform your own song
Choose a song before you arrive and perform it with John by your side.
Reserve your place on the loch
It's an intimate, small-group experience where you'll learn directly from John, play alongside him, perform with him and spend three days completely immersed in the guitar.
Before you reserve your spot
No. The retreat is built around small-group attention, so John shapes each session to the players in the room. Confident intermediate players get the most out of it, but the focus is on musicality and technique, not on arriving with a set skill level.
The retreat is strictly limited to 15 seats, so every player gets real time with John, both in the workshops and playing alongside him.
Bring your own guitar and anything you play with day to day, capo, picks, a spare set of strings. If you have a song you'd like to prepare for the evening performance, come with it rehearsed. Everything else, from meals to whisky, is taken care of.
Three nights in a private balcony room, all meals, the welcome whisky evening, four guitar workshops, every play-along session with John, and your own performance alongside him. Travel to and from Loch Lomond isn't included.
There's real breathing room built in. Workshops and play-along sessions are spaced around long meals and time on the water, so it never feels rushed between sessions.
Reserve your place on the loch
Three nights of guitar, food, whisky and music with John Goldie. The group is strictly limited to 15 seats.
Join the Zoom callThe Loch Lomond Guitar Retreat with John Goldie  · 22–25 March 2027
