Guitar Teachers who give first lesson free? Big Mistake!

Posted on June 8, 2011 by wombat

Guitar Teachers who promote their business by giving the “First Lesson Free” may not be sending out the right message to customers?

One the one hand they may think that by allowing someone to try their (hopefully wonderful?) services on a single occasion as a freebie they will encourage them to come back and pay for a similar experience on a regular basis but when viewed from another direction maybe it looks a bit desperate?

If someone is so poor (or so mean!)  that they find themselves unable (or unwilling) to pay for a single lesson then the chances of their returning to cross our palms with silver week after week may be a little slim anyway?

If you spend some time thinking about what our students want from a guitar teacher it probably does not include a willingness to work for nothing because they can’t get enough people to pay them to teach?

Try asking any other skilled service providers (which is what we are and how we need to appear to our customers?) to work on this “first job free” basis and see what reaction you get. “If you plumb me a toilet in for free and I like it then maybe I’ll allow you to come back and fit an entire bathroom?” or “Fix my front teeth and I may (or may not) call you back later and have you work on the back ones” (if you ask the wrong dentist and you might need more work on the front ones than you thought anyway)?

You would not ask because you know that these people are professionals and that (if they are good at what they do – and why would you want to employ them otherwise?) they don’t need to work for nothing.

As  guitar instructors we need to foster the impression that we are more than happy to occasionally take time out of our busy lives (and practice schedules) to teach guitar just so long as our services and our skills are respected? If we do not regard ourselves as professional people with a skillset that should be valued then how can we expect our guitar students to take what we say seriously. We need to set ourselves apart from the (many) people who “play a bit of guitar”

There are loads of other ways to promote a guitar teaching business without having to resort to working for nothing. and if you click this link you will be able to check out a range of business cards for guitar teachers that can also be used as the basis for artwork for advertising in printed media or for website purposes.

If you are going to teach guitar and do not respect your own profession to the same extent that you do a dentist or a plumber then maybe it’s not the job for you?

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Don’t introduce Guitar Music Theory too Early!

Posted on May 30, 2011 by wombat

Music Theory For Guitar Teachers

It’s a good idea not to introduce guitar music theory to your students too early?

Introduce Guitar Music theory at the right time?Music theory is very important but to focus on it in the early stages of teaching guitar to a complete beginner  is not neccesarily the best way to help someone to become able to play the instrument?

In the early stages of study aspiring guitar players  need to be encouraged by developing their physical and technical abilities rather than be discouraged because they are introduced to a body of knowledge that (if we as guitar teachers are not careful?) can appear to be so complicated that it may even put them off playing.

Music theory is not complicated and your students should study it but not neccesarily within the first few months of a their  “journey”. They need to first feel that they are becoming guitar players. Imagine the frustration that they will experience if after a few months spent developing an understanding of the “nuts and bolts” of music theory as it applies to a guitar player (scale and chord construction?)  to suddenly realise that they are not really a great deal closer to making a noise like a musician than they were when they first came to you for guitar lessons? Such a realisation will most likely lead to one of two results?

1: They will become discouraged and give up playing the guitar?

2: They will find a guitar teacher who makes them feel that they are making progress?

For obvious reasons neither of the two options presented above are what we are looking for either as effective educators or as people who put bread on the table using money that we earn by helping people to become guitarists?

We should develop an awareness of just when aquiring a knowledge of music theory will become a tool that our guitar students can use rather than a hurdle that they have to get over and that point is (for me) when they have developed the dexterity to play and change between the eight chords in the basic CAGED System.

The chords (C A Am G E Em D and Dm) represent the easiest shapes for a novice guitarist to learn and mastering the ability to change between them using a few basic strumming patterns will just about put a guitar student in the place where he or she can derive benefit from knowing how it works (rather than just that it works).

At around about this stage (during a small section of each lesson – we are still spending most of each session continuing to develop physical skills) I introduce the concept of intervals of a whole and a half step on the guitar. I then go on to  use these intervals to construct a scale of C major (naming the notes as we go).

When my students undestand this we look at using the first, third and fifth notes of the C Major scale to construct a C Major chord. Following on from there we look at constructing a couple of other major scales and chords (G and D since you ask?) using the same series of intervals. Next up its minor scale and minor chord construction and the differences (the flattened third) and similarities (the root and the fifth) between the two chord types.

From this point it is to be hoped and expected that the world of music theory as it applies to guitar hopefully does not seem so scarey to a novice player?

 

 

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Guitar Teacher’s Tips and Tricks: A Disclaimer?

Posted on May 19, 2011 by wombat

Guitar Teaching Tips and Tricks?

“There are many spokes to the centre of the wheel” which is just another way of saying that teaching people to play the guitar is ridden with variables and that no two teachers (or no two guitar students for that matter) are the same?

This section will contain a series of short (what I hope are) insights into the inner workings of the brain of a guitar teacher.

These tips and tricks are not designed to work for every guitar teacher in every situation. They are just things that (sometimes) work for me and might (sometimes) work for you?

Every guitar teacher is different. Every guitar student is different and therefore every lesson is bound to be at least slightly different.

There is another old proverb which states something along the lines of  “you can never step into the same river twice” and even though at the beginning of a lesson we might make assumptions about the likely behaviours and capabilities of our students we need to be able to adapt in accordance with the actual circumstances rather than just throw the same bunch of “stock” lessons at all of our learners?

Some guitar students will pick up particular concepts and techniques remarkably quickly but might struggle with technical or theoretical areas that we might imagine that they would take in their stride?

Whilst you need to have a plan for your guitar lesson it is important to be able to adapt (or even abandon) it should the occasion demand or the opportunity present itself.

You may find that a student needs to go back over some old ground that you thought they were comfortable with or it could be that you discover that they are more competent with regard to theoretical knowledge or technical ability than you expected at the start of the session.

The list of potential variables that exist at the beginning of any guitar lesson means that it is almost inevitable that the experience that you deliver to your guitar student will not be quite the same as the one that you thought that you would be providing at the start of the session?

For me, the key to teaching guitar is to work out the answer to the question “what is the best thing you can do for this person’s guitar playing within the next hour”?

 

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Teaching Guitar Requires No patience At All!

Posted on May 11, 2011 by wombat

TEACHING GUITAR REQUIRES NO PATIENCE WHATSOEVER!


Learning to play the guitar takes a little patience but teaching it requres only understanding. Understanding and patience are two completely different things.

I have (almost) no patience (you can ask my wife?). I will not even queue for beer and I like beer (again you can ask my wife?). If we decide that we need a new sofa I refuse to entertain the notion that the bloke in the furniture shop has to drum up a special order from a factory on the other side of the planet and that once nailed together my stuff must be loaded onto a ship and dragged halfway around the globe before I can sit on it and drink a beer (did I mention that I like beer?). I want the one in the window and I want it to be delivered tomorrow and If I can’t have it I’ll go to the shop next door and buy a different one.

Patience, in my book is in no way a virtue, it’s a way of justifying inactivity. So how come I get to make my living teaching people to play the guitar, an activity that most people think requires industrial quantities of patience?

Let’s take a look at this whole opatience thing? It is understandable (and desirable) for a guitar player to be impatient to get better. It is a disaster if the teacher shares this impatience.

If you spend an entire lesson willing your student to be able to play the thing that you have just shown to them then you (and they) will achieve nothing. Looking at another person’s fingers while they try to play music that is (at the moment) beyond them and investing any great emotion into it will hurl you headlong into an early grave.

Staring bug eyed at someone elses hands trying to do things that they are not  capable of doing because they have not yet had the time to work on it will lead to you to a life of wearing odd socks, weeping uncontrollably and shouting at traffic!
Allright, maybe I’m laying it on with a trowel here but you get the picture?

The point of a guitar lesson is not that the student goes away from it able to play something that they could not when they walked into the room an hour earlier. The objective is that they go away with something to practice which will mean that they are better when they next walk into the room. Understand that and you will see that (for the teacher anyway) patience plays no part in the process.

If students find everything that you show them easy don’t kid youself that it’s because you are a fantastic guitar teacher. Your guitar teaching most probably (to use the modern vernacular) sucks? Why should somebody pay you to show them things that they can do already (they already have tribes of internet tab monkeys for that)?

If however, at the end of a lesson with you they go away with a few things to work on that they understand and can almost play then you are doing it right. If they then return able to play those things then they are doing it right (remember that teaching is about learning and that the most important role in the process is that of the learner and not that of the teacher).

The job of teaching guitar is largely about three things

  1. Developing Technical Ability
  2. Helping the student to develop a workable theoretical framework
  3. Developing Repertoire

If you spend an hour paying attention to those three areas you won’t need to watch your students practicing (I love teaching guitar but I refuse to waste my life and other peoples money watching someone practice it – once they understand what they need to practice by themselves it’s time to move on with the lesson).

Our guitar students do not pay us for our patience, they pay us for a plan. I’m off to lie down on my sofa (possibly via the fridge?)

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Guitar Chord Shapes for Kids: Don’t teach to many “cheater’s” chords?

Posted on January 15, 2011 by wombat

There are loads of guitar chord shapes for Kids but the reality for me is that if you teach them too many “cheater’s” chords at the beginning then you run the risk of confusing them (never a good idea?) after just a few weeks of study when they are ready for the full versions of the shapes in question.

Below you can take a look at a guitar teacher’s video that I put up on youtube. It explains an approach to teaching chord shapes for children that will prevent them from having to stretch too far during the early stages of playing. Although as I said earlier there are lods of these three and four note chord shapes I have found that I only really feel comfortable teaching three of them (G Em and C)? This is because that (hopefully) after a few weeks of study a teacher is obliged to teach the “full” shapes and students have to “unlearn” the “cheaters” versions? This can be confusing for children as they then have to forget some of the stuff that you just taught them?

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The Pentatonic Minor Scale: Why it’s the Guitar Teachers Favourite Scale?

Posted on December 3, 2010 by wombat

The Pentatonic Minor Scale for Guitar Teachers

The Pentatonic Minor is perhaps the guitar teacher’s favourite scale as it can provide an easy gateway to soloing for our students?

minor pentatonic guitar teaching handouts
guitar pentatonic minor scale for guitar teachersFor Guitar Teachers the Pentatonic Minor Scale is one of our “bread and butter” resources.
It is perhaps the scale that we can most easily use to introduce the concepts and principles of improvisation (particularly in rock/blues styles) on the guitar as it contains notes that lend themselves readily to techniques such as string bending and vibrato etc.

The minor pentatonic scale is in some ways a little bit dangerous because it sounds so (maybe even too?) good? Once beginners start to develop a bit of a facility with it? Many (even quite experienced) guitar players can sound pretty professional in some circumstances without much more than the ability to wander around the scale and bend a few notes here and there.

That said the use of the minor pentatonic is a great way to help our guitar students believe that they are capable of developing the facility to solo and improvise on the instrument.

The scale formulae for the pentatonic minor scale is as follows

Root-b3-4-5-b7

Of those note the 4th and the b7th are particularly suited to being “bent”

The guitar fretboard diagram (above to the right) is taken from one of our guitar teacher’s printable handouts and shows the minor pentatonic scale formulae along with information relating to which notes can be “good to bend” in a blues or rock situation?

Below you can also see some other guitar teacher’s student handouts relating to the minor pentatonic scale. They show the A minor pentatonic scale extended to cover several areas of the guitar fretboard

minor pentatonic guitar teaching handouts
For more stuff dealing with how a guitar teacher might choose to  teach soloing using the pentatonic minor scale see our page looking at how to use guitar backing tracks and the minor pentatonic scale extended to cover the entire neck of the guitar

 

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