George Marios has a truly individual voice on the guitar — the kind that makes you stop and listen even when you can’t quite identify what he’s doing. This masterclass from the 2021 Modern Guitar Summit explores how he developed that vocabulary and the mindset he used to expand his creative reach beyond conventional rock playing.
What you’ll get out of this lesson
You’ll hear George talk candidly about his musical journey — from a small city in Greece to the Leeds music scene and eventually London — and draw out the practical lessons about developing an individual voice, embracing new environments, and going towards creative discomfort rather than away from it.
Origins: Hearing Tom Quayle for the First Time
George’s story begins in Greece, around age 16 or 17, when a friend sent him a MySpace link to Tom Quayle’s playing. Hearing someone that accomplished who wasn’t a household name broke a particular mental block: the assumption that extraordinary playing is the exclusive territory of the famous. That discovery catalysed his decision to apply to Leeds College of Music, and the moment his application was accepted, he immediately messaged Tom to book a lesson on the same day as his audition. The combination of musical ambition and direct, practical action is a theme that runs through everything George talks about.
Sometimes we need to go towards the fear and adversity because you come out of the other end, and you’re a better person, stronger person.
Developing an Individual Vocabulary
George’s approach to building his playing vocabulary isn’t about following a prescribed method — it’s about relentless curiosity and cross-pollination. He spent years studying with and jamming alongside Tom Quayle and other players, absorbing ideas and then processing them through his own musical personality. His hybrid intervallic approach — the kind of run that makes listeners do a double take — grew out of that combination of influence and individual exploration rather than from a systematic study of theory divorced from playing.
Going Towards the Fear
One of the most useful things George shares in this masterclass is his experience of moving to London with very little money and a great deal of uncertainty. Rather than framing that as hardship, he frames it as the necessary price of growth. His advice — “go towards the fear and adversity” — isn’t bravado; it comes from lived experience of making a genuinely risky move and coming out the other side with a richer musical and personal life. For any guitarist considering a big step — moving cities, going full-time, committing to a new musical direction — this section of the masterclass is worth revisiting.
Expanding Rock Guitar: The Mindset
The title of the masterclass is “Expanding Rock Guitar,” and the expansion George is talking about is primarily a mindset one. It’s about refusing the ceiling that any particular genre or style seems to impose, and instead treating every musical encounter — a new teacher, a different genre, a jam in an unfamiliar idiom — as raw material. George’s own playing reflects the influences of players across jazz fusion, rock, and beyond, but it doesn’t sound like an imitation of any of them. That’s the result of genuine integration rather than surface-level borrowing.
Taking it further
If you want to engage more deeply with what George is talking about, seek out recordings and videos of the T42 collaborations between George and Tom Quayle. Listen not just to what they’re playing but to how they interact — the way ideas are passed back and forth and transformed. That conversational quality in musical collaboration is something George speaks to directly in this masterclass, and hearing it in practice is the best way to understand what he means.
Your homework
Identify one thing in your playing that you’ve been avoiding because it feels too unfamiliar or too difficult — a style of music, a technique, a harmonic concept — and spend at least twenty minutes this week going towards it rather than away from it. You don’t need to master it. The point is simply to make contact with it without retreating. Notice what happens to your curiosity and motivation as a result.