21st Century Guitar Teacher (2)

Fast forward to 2004.  My teaching style hadn't changed much, but I had moved house and was about to become married and a father for the first time.  I had also wound up my previous business and was effectively unemployed.  The decision was made to become a full time guitar tutor and in early 2005 we had the garage converted into a teaching room.

 

All that was missing was a regular schedule of talented, hard-working students.  Where was I going to find them, I wondered.  As still mainly an issuer of information, I'd often feel, after a first lesson, as when I first began teaching, that what the student needed was practice, not lessons.  They already had enough information to improve, if only they would put the hours in to understand and master that information.  I'd suggest students got in touch when they were ready for more, and that would be the last I saw of them!  This was not conducive to building a regular teaching schedule, but I was uncomfortable at the idea of trying to milk students for money when I wasn't offering solid improvement in return.  It became very clear that if I wasn't going to flounder miserably at this, I had to learn to make people better at playing guitar.

 

Following this realisation, over the past 7 years, literally forcing people to improve, sometimes against their will, has become my speciality.  I view the best lessons as being  similar to a gym session, with a punishing trainer demanding more from every repetition.  Lessons are no longer merely a discussion, handing down of information and a suggestion of what to practice.  Lessons are practice, supervised, correct beneficial practice! 

 

Anyone can use the internet to find a chord chart or tablature for any song they want to play.  They can likely find videos to show them someone else doing it.  All for free!  What the internet lacks is information on how to get one's fingers and mind to do it, how to fill in the gaps of understanding that stop students playing the music they enjoy in the way that they want to. What is missing is better understanding of how to practise.  Hence, put simply ...

 

 

The role of the 21st Century guitar teacher is to teach students how to practise!

 

 

Next time we'll look at the product of good practice ... Improvement!!