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Posted

I'm strongly considering giving guitar lessons. What are some things you feel that a teacher needs to have a strong grasp of before pursuing this?

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

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Posted

Over the past 20 years I've been butchering the guitar, I've had a few lessons here and there, and will throw in my $.02, as a student.

First thing I would want is a teacher with legitimate qualifications. If not a teacher with a successful teaching practice already established, with references, then at least a new teacher with a professional background.

I guess what I'm saying is the rawest newbie expects everyone to be better than he or she is, so merely the virture of being a good guitar player isn't enough. And the divide gets more narrow from there.

For example, I have a friend who's much better than me, and plays area bars in a blues band, but couldn't explain the intervals of a major triad. He thought he might start teaching, and when I pointed out his weakness in theory, he said, "Well only beginning students." Nope. :)

Other than qualifications, I dunno...Professionalism? I had one teacher that wasted 10 minutes of every session painfully filling in chord diagrams with a pencil. Why not have preloaded in the computer?

What else? Keeping the student's goal in mind. I'd say that's huge, and maybe unrealistic, but....it's really frustrating to get the impression, a couple hundred dollars into lessons, that the teacher still is extempor...extempa-- {censored} it -- making up stuff on the spot every lesson, or getting sidetracked, without the "big picture".

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Posted

Originally posted by bnellor

I'm strongly considering giving guitar lessons. What are some things you feel that a teacher needs to have a strong grasp of before pursuing this?


Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

 

 

 

You might want to start by telling us what you have a strong grasp of.

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Posted

Thanks for the input stk, and good point bassmantele. So here's where I'm at.

I've been playing semi-professionally for the last 11 years. Doing the weekend warrior thing playing covers and originals. I have a good handle on rock n roll style playing. I can play some blues but I have limited experience with jazz and country music. I can read music (thanks to piano lessons in my youth) and can read TAB of course. I have a good understanding of the pentatonic scale and continue build up my abilities with the major scale and minor scales (natural, harmonic, melodic). I have begun to understand the modes and I'm continuing my work on those. I'm also working on arpeggios as of late.

I want to feel fully confident in my own abilities before I start giving lessons, so I've been working on things that i consider my weaknesses as noted above. Are there other areas I'm overlooking?

Thanks again for any input you guys have.

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