Like many players, as a teenager Hugh started out as self taught in the blues/rock style and comfortable with a loose and semi-improvisatory style of playing. Once he decided on a career as a serious session musician he quickly realised that to be successful in this area he would need more formal skills. He rapidly became a fluent sight reader, writer and transcriber of music and embarked on a serious study of music both in practice and in theory that continues to this day. His early studies of plectrum style were with Ron Moore and he later studied composition with Oliver Hunt.