One of the world’s leading fusion legato players — and, for over a decade, one of its most listened-to teachers.
Tom has spent more than twenty years pulling apart what makes fusion guitar work, then teaching it — through courses, apps, and masterclasses — to tens of thousands of players from all over the world.
Tom picked up the guitar at fifteen, inspired by his father’s extraordinary fingerstyle playing. What began as fascination with rock guitar — fed by Steve Vai, John Petrucci, and Brett Garsed — soon deepened into something else: a pull toward the harmonic language of jazz and fusion, and a hunger to understand not just how those players moved across the neck, but why.
That pull led Tom to formal study, and in 2002 he graduated from Leeds College of Music with a degree in Jazz Performance. It was during this period that he developed his signature fourths tuning — a reordering of the instrument’s logic that would come to define his sound, and later, his entire approach to teaching the fretboard.
In the years since, Tom has become one of the most respected fusion legato players in the world, and one of its most sought-after teachers — through acclaimed instructional courses for his own site and for Lick Library, and masterclasses and clinics delivered on stages across the globe.
His playing has drawn admiration from peers who don’t hand it out lightly, among them Dweezil Zappa, John Petrucci, Brett Garsed, Greg Howe, Andy Timmons, and Tim Miller.
Tom was also one of the first guitar teachers anywhere to move his lessons online, recognising early the reach that digital and social platforms could offer. That instinct for where teaching was heading eventually led him, together with David Beebee and Mike Pattee, to found Trio Software — the company behind Solo, an iOS and Android app that has helped tens of thousands of guitarists master Tom’s Intervallic Function system and build real fretboard fluency. Solo went on to become the number one best-selling music app on the App Store, worldwide.
In 2024, Tom released The Ultimate Fretboard Visualization Course, weaving his teaching directly into the Solo app. 2025 brought Metric Flow — another chart-topping app, this one built to develop rhythmic skill — and, at the start of 2026, Trio Software released Resolve, an ear-training app and video course opening up new territory again. Across the apps, the courses, and the masterclasses, Tom has helped tens of thousands of musicians become better players.