Music 101 - Guitar
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Helping people learn guitar is often thought of as a fairly fluid exercise, without a linear path to follow. It's true that some of what is covered in a given guitar lesson (particularly the early ones with a new student) has more to do with where that student is at in terms of their skill-set and what kind of guitar player they want to become.
But if you take away those two variables, there is a teaching structure that can and should be followed. It can be adjusted and tweaked, but you never have to go into a lesson without a clear overall picture of where your student is at, and where they need to go, in terms of topics and concepts being covered.
Think of it as going to a college class and being handed a syllabus. It tells you (usually) everything you're going to cover, when you're going to cover it and what you'll know when it's all over.
Most teacher's use that syllabus to craft their lesson plans, which is what we'll do here.
We'll use the structure to cover some practical advice for what a good guitar lesson should include. Topics versus Application
One thing I always like to draw a distinction between when it comes to learning guitar is topics and applications. It helps to put a little bit of skin on some of the other things we're going to talk about, so let's go ahead and define both, as they relate to guitar lessons:
Topics: Concepts or ideas that are new to the students -- Em chord, pentatonic scale, etc.
Application: The use of topics to create something musical -- tabs, songs or improvising.
Every good guitar lesson will have both of these elements, in one form or another. What's difficult, is getting people to know how to move from topical learning, into musical application.
This is part of why a lot of guitar lessons stop with learning chords and scales.
Learning chords and scales is fine, but it's just the beginning. You've got to do something with
those
Helping people learn guitar is often thought of as a fairly fluid exercise, without a linear path to follow. It's true that some of what is covered in a given guitar lesson (particularly the early ones with a new student) has more to do with where that student is at in terms of their skill-set and what kind of guitar player they want to become.
But if you take away those two variables, there is a teaching structure that can and should be followed. It can be adjusted and tweaked, but you never have to go into a lesson without a clear overall picture of where your student is at, and where they need to go, in terms of topics and concepts being covered.
Think of it as going to a college class and being handed a syllabus. It tells you (usually) everything you're going to cover, when you're going to cover it and what you'll know when it's all over.
Most teacher's use that syllabus to craft their lesson plans, which is what we'll do here.
We'll use the structure to cover some practical advice for what a good guitar lesson should include. Topics versus Application
One thing I always like to draw a distinction between when it comes to learning guitar is topics and applications. It helps to put a little bit of skin on some of the other things we're going to talk about, so let's go ahead and define both, as they relate to guitar lessons:
Topics: Concepts or ideas that are new to the students -- Em chord, pentatonic scale, etc.
Application: The use of topics to create something musical -- tabs, songs or improvising.
Every good guitar lesson will have both of these elements, in one form or another. What's difficult, is getting people to know how to move from topical learning, into musical application.
This is part of why a lot of guitar lessons stop with learning chords and scales.
Learning chords and scales is fine, but it's just the beginning. You've got to do something with
those