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In this episode of the Start Teaching Guitar podcast, I’ll be sharing the results of an informal poll I did with some guitar students on an online forum. I asked them one simple question:
“If you’ve ever taken guitar lessons before, what do you wish you could have told your guitar teacher if you would have had the guts to say it?”
The answers were very revealing, and I hope they’ll give you some great insight into what your students are really looking for in their guitar lessons.
I go into MUCH greater detail about each item in the podcast, but here’s a rough outline for you:
What Your Students Want You To Know (But Are Afraid To Tell You)
“Briefly demonstrate the goal, then spend the time I’m paying for showing me the building blocks. Not the other way around…”
“Do you know the difference between fully teaching someone something on the guitar, and just ‘showing’ someone something on the guitar?”
“I have had great teachers and poor ones. The great have no judgement on music and show respect for all types versus jealousy or bitterness that some music is too simple or the original musician is not that talented. The great impart the passion for music in all forms.”
“I have had a couple of guitar teachers (as an adult). One was not really a good match for me and after lessons for a while (a couple of months) I decided to find a different teacher. I didn’t really have to say anything. Here in the Boston area there are tons of guitar teachers. You do have to spend the time finding the right one for you.”
“It would be nice to see more focus on one specific area of guitar playing rather than throwing a bunch of non-related exercises at the student. The most effective teaching I’ve had, in school or otherwise, has always started out basic and moved toward more advanced. This seems obvious. So guitar teachers, instead of asking me why I’m not practicing the multiple-octave-string-skipping-tapping-and-sweep lick you’re showing me, why not instead outline a clear set of routines I can use to test the waters on while working up the ability to play something that advanced?“
“My guitar teacher is an AWESOME player. He does flamenco jazz, but he doesn’t make a great teacher (he’s a performer before he’s a teacher).
I told him my long term goal was to solo. Every week he throws a different scale at me. It’s been a few months, and I can play tons of scales, but I still can’t solo much of anything. He’s not good at connecting the dots. He taught me speed exercises and scales for soloing, but I feel like that’s all we’ve done. He never connected the scales with soloing.
I’m teaching myself how to solo at home now. I throw on an Al Di Meola album and play solos on top of everything until it sounds right. I’ve learned more through the Al Di Meola songs than at a lesson.”
“Instead of writing down tabs for scale, exercises and modes during the lesson, do it once and make copies for all of your students instead of wasting costly lesson time. Make your one-on-one lesson time with students efficient and more cost effective for them. Give them a game plan and tell them what they will be learning during the course of a series of lessons and demonstrate by playing what they should be able to play at the end of a set course of lessons – if they practice and understand the teaching objectives. When they learn the notes on the fret board, tell them to vocalize the notes they play while they are playing all notes on each string, scales and modes. It would nice to have a series of video clips showing past students’ progress at monthly intervals to help set expectations for new students. Help them learn how to set up their guitar properly – the basics.”
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Great podcast! There seems to be so many teachers out there that push their own agenda on their students. I was on this one forum where they were talking about reading standard notation. I mentioned how for students that are not into learning this there are other ways to teach them the benefits of reading music like learning the notes on the neck and learning to subdivide beats without actually teaching them to read music.
I was bombarded by all the teachers that gave me comments like “do you student a favor and teach them to read music” or ” It’s your job to teach them the language of music”. The best one was ” If you don’t know how to read standard notation you are illiterate” I would then try to reason with them and try to explain exactly what was mentioned here. It’s about the student and not their ego. You need to cater your teaching towards the students goals. If a student hates reading music it doesn’t make any sense to keep drilling it into their head. You need to find another way to teach them the skills you learn from reading music or just drop it completely. At least in the rock genre you do not need to learn to read music to become a great guitar player. Let’s just say this didn’t go over very well on this forum.
I unfortunately let myself get frustrated and got a little vocal about it but I couldn’t stand the close minded self-serving attitude of ignoring what the student wants and trying to shove their morals and goals down the students throats. Of course they would never divulge this but I would be very curious how many students they actually have and what their retention rate is.
it’s about the students goals! Not yours! Great podcast!
Thanks, Don! I know what you mean…I’ve seen that attitude, too. To be fair, it’s a little different if you teach jazz or classical guitar…in that case, reading would probably BE one of the student’s goals.
But you are 100% correct…that attitude of superiority exhibited by too many music teachers probably does cost them a lot of business. A wise person once said that you have a choice: you can be right all the time, or you can have a successful business…but not both. :)
Yes I totally agree about the jazz and classical. I mentioned this. I explained that if you play jazz, classical or looking to become a studio musician then you really need to learn to read music. I kept repeating that I’m strictly talking about the rock genre and even then it’s a great thing to learn providing that is what the STUDENTS goals are!
Oh well! What are you going to do?