Frederick Noad, guitarist, lutenist, teacher and writer, was born of British parents in Blankenberg, Belgium, but settled in the USA, were he had gone to work for the British film company J. Arthur Rank. A cutback in Rank's plans decided Noad to turn instead to the guitar, which he had begun to study in his teens (he also studied violin and piano). Deciding to remain in America, he launched Playing the Guitar in 1963, a series of instruction books that found a ready response. Around that time, when I began to play the guitar, his were the books to get, and I have happy memories of the two volumes of Solo Guitar Playing. These are still selling well and impressing a new generation of guitar students with their well-researched, com-monsense approach to a difficult instrument. In Los Angeles, Noad opened a guitar centre modelled on that of Len Williams in London. Segovia heard him play and recommended him for a scholarship to Segovia's class in Santiago de Compostela, which he attended in 1962. He subsequently studied composition with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. In 1966 he presented the first of 26 televised guitar lessons, adding a further 13 in 1968. His research, during which he travelled to Europe, resulted in publication by Ariel Music. In 1981 a new series of video lessons, ‘The Guitar with Frederick Noad', was an immediate success. Like his earlier TV lessons, they introduced the guitar to tens of thousands of receptive people who might otherwise have lived out their lives in ignorance of the instrument.
It could be said that Frederick Noad, who became a faculty member of the University of California and of the California Institute of the Arts, came to the guitar virtually by accident. Energy and dedication brought him personal success, but his prime purpose was the enlightenment and education of others. He was a catalyst in a small world where catalysis is justly prized; he made things happen, and as a result countless human beings benefited. It may be a truism to say that he will be missed, but men like Frederick Noad always are missed. (Colin Cooper, Classical Guitar magazine, February 2002)