The electric guitar has advanced far beyond the time when someone could teach himself (or her) to become a world class player. If your ambition is to become a competent actor and a competent musician, you need a competent teacher. Even if their goals are more modest, you can reach those goals more quickly, easily and efficiently with the appropriate teacher's guidance. Much of the information needed to learn about playing guitar (and music in general) is available from many different sources. There are hundreds of books, instructional videos, CD-ROM and, of course, the Internet. Although much information is readily available, there are a lot of incorrect, incomplete and otherwise bad (this is especially true for a lot of information found on the Internet!). You need the help of an excellent teacher to teach you how to understand and apply the correct information. You can save a lot of unnecessary frustration and disappointment by studying with a good teacher. Remember that textbooks, CD-ROM, instructional videos and the Internet can not answer your specific questions. We can offer advice about his playing, songwriting, ear training, etc. Do not play your game and point out any mistakes or defects that may be present. Some textbooks are great and I've seen some CD-ROM very well there too, but still needs the help of an excellent teacher to guide you through everything and help you develop your abilities and musicianship correctly and efficiently. Great teachers manage and schedule new materials and effectively explain their importance and meaning. A teacher should encourage you when you are doing well and correct when you make mistakes. Good teachers will show you how best to organize your practice materials and show you how to effectively manage their practice time (this is crucial to their progress!). They help you build your confidence level (even if they are aware of this happening). A great teacher will help you be safe with their technical skills so you can execute difficult techniques on your guitar comfortably. These teachers emphasize creativity (composition and improvisation) and achievement. Great teachers want to ensure that you fully understand what you are learning and most importantly, teach you how to apply giving detailed explanations and encouraging them to ask questions when something is unclear. A good teacher sincerely cares about your musical growth and development. An experienced and competent teacher will take you far beyond what I could learn on their own. Unfortunately, guitar teachers are not licensed and there is no organization that oversees or regulates. Anyone can say what a good teacher and there are many people who make this claim. The number of competent teachers, however, is limited. This brings us to this crucial question: how can a student find, choose, and then accurately evaluate a guitar teacher? Here are some questions you should ask any teacher you are considering studying with. I have also included my own comments to each question: 1) Can you tell me about your teaching experience? Can I see your resume or credentials? How long have you been teaching and approximately how many students they have taught during this time? At least three to five years of teaching experience is preferred – certainly no less than one year of experience. I prefer a teacher who has taught a moderate to large numbers of students. It takes time for a teacher to really learn to teach well, and the main way that someone learns to teach is by teaching for a while. Students at a new teacher are like experiments. These teachers are learning to teach on the job by trial and error. They need time to learn to teach, and some mistakes in the beginning of their careers. You do not want to be one of the first thirty to fifty students. That a new teacher increased their experience by making mistakes with someone else. 2) Do you teach private lessons or group classes? You definitely want private lessons, unless you are a beginner or are enrolled in a music course in college. You will learn much more about the guitar in a one-on-a particular class or a correspondence education program. 3) What styles of music do you teach best? Be sure to ask this question before telling the prospective teacher what style of music you want to learn. A lot of teachers claim to teach all styles well. Be careful with this. Do not be impressed by someone who says he or she can teach every style of music too. If you really want to be a great rock guitar, take lessons from a rock teacher, not a blues or country player who aims to teach all styles well. Get you a good rock teacher. If you want to learn various styles of music that are not similar (like country, classical and heavy metal) take lessons from more than one teacher for each of those styles. Unless you are a beginner, you are better off with a skilled teacher in his style of music, not an apprentice to master of all trades. 4) What is the cost of lessons? The teachers are excellent in demand and usually already have a bunch of students. These teachers often are not cheap. I can tell you that rates are good teachers in the U.S. Midwest (where I live) is between $ 16 – $ 24 per 1 / 2 hour private lesson (rates may be different in your state or country). There are a handful of teachers offering correspondence lessons for students living in the same state or country, as the teacher. Typically, these classes are less expensive in the long run (read more about correspondence lessons later). In general, do not look for the teacher with the lowest rates available, usually get what you pay. If you can not pay higher rates for a very good teacher, ask the teacher if you can take classes at one every two months instead of taking weekly lessons. 5) Can you tell me how to teach the lessons? This is probably the most important question you can ask a teacher. The answer to this question can help determine if a teacher is competent, because it really is a trick question. Anyone can say they have been teaching for 100 years, have had 10,000 students and the cost is $ 1,000 per lesson, because they are the greatest teacher of all time. But an inexperienced teacher can not trick you with his answer to this question (unless he or she is reading this article.) If a prospective teacher who does not know you, your musical knowledge, his guitar technique, his tastes music and musical goals tries to explain how he or she will teach you, this is not a competent teacher. Even the best teacher on Earth could answer this question if the teacher does not know about you, your goals, your level of play, his knowledge of music theory, etc. So what would an experienced and competent teacher say to you when you ask the question? Well, I can tell you what to do when a new prospective student asks me this. I explained to him or her that I can not formulate a lesson plan for anyone until I learn much more about the game of student goals, musical tastes, knowledge of theory, etc, for my students of correspondence (whom I see face to face), I submitted a long list of questions about everything you need to know about your background music. This helps me determine the best way to start. I also urge students to send me a tape or CD of your game with a variety of game in him so I have a clearer idea of what areas need improvement. Obviously, for my private students (whom I see face to face), you can simply ask the questions that I should respond. And I can hear the students play in front of me. Only after all this can be (or any other teacher) truly know how to teach each student. It seems obvious that one should not teach a 13 year old boy who has never played guitar before and wants to learn to play alternative rock the same way that you would teach a 27-year-man who has been playing for 16 years and wants to become a virtuoso in the style of Steve Vai or Yngwie Malmsteen. In addition to the above questions, here are some other things to watch out for: When students are wondering how to approach a certain technique or how to mark the correct selection or as effectively mute strings that are not supposed to sounding, the advice of some teachers is to do what feels natural to you. Sometimes what you may think it's the natural way to keep the left hand can not be the right way at all. It is the teacher's job to know such things. The teacher should teach, not what you can do what you want to do. For most things, there is a right and wrong way and you'd better learn the right way from the beginning. A teacher may have some talented students, but this does not mean that the teacher is good. This may seem like a good criterion for evaluating a teacher, but the fact is that players sometimes advanced students were already well before taking lessons from the new teacher. The only time you can judge the teaching skills of teachers, based on your playing skills of students, is where the advanced students who have been taking lessons from the same teacher since they were beginners. Some teachers tell their students to learn from as many sources as possible and then allow you to sort through everything and decide what works best for you. How are you supposed to decide that? What does a student know what the best fingering is for a particular scale? Students usually do not know how to determine what is the correct way is. This is one reason why they have a teacher. It's your job to teach these things. That's why we are giving the teacher your money! Do not assume someone is a good teacher just because he or she can be an excellent player or has good credentials. I know plenty of competent players with advanced degrees in music I do not think they are good teachers. I was fortunate to have some truly great teachers, but I had some incompetent ones too, on the road. Every time I realized that a teacher was not good, I looked for a new teacher. The following elements are not necessary for someone to be a good teacher, but it is certainly to your advantage to have a teacher who, besides teaching you about guitar and music, can help some of these ways: 1) Guitar Pedagogy – It's about learning to teach guitar. If one of your goals is to be a guitar or music teacher, then you would benefit greatly from a teacher who can show you how to teach a variety of techniques, music theory, ear training, composition, improvisation, etc. You also need to learn about how to deal with a variety of personality types. Each student is different. Each student learns and understands the information in different ways. It is important for any teacher to understand this. You need to know how to explain the same information in different ways for you to teach all students well. 2) Recording advice – The best to be as a musician, the more likely you want to record your guitar. If you have little or no experience in this area, then have someone who can help is particularly useful. 3) Music business – If you're recording, release and sell your own CD, now or in the future, a huge amount of information of commercial music that will have to learn if you want to earn some money. Some teachers who have launched their own CDs, and promoting themselves, may be the best source of help for selling your CD. You can also learn other things like how to set up gigs for the band and how to get the press to write about you. Now that you have a better idea of what to look for a teacher, the next question is, where do you find a good teacher? This depends on whether you are looking for a tutor to teach you privately (face to face) or if you are looking for a tutor to teach through correspondence. Both are good and there are advantages to both ways. If you are looking for a tutor to teach face to face, check out these places first: Contact the music department at universities and colleges near you. Even if you can help directly, usually can refer to someone who can help. You can then test the local music shops (where they sell guitars). Most stores offer music lessons. And most teachers find here are not of the highest quality, but sometimes there are great teachers you can find in these stores. When you call one of these stores, ask to speak to the manager or owner. Find out from him or her exactly who are the most qualified teachers for you (your music style and skill level). After obtaining the names of teachers, make arrangements to speak with each teacher in private. Ask teachers for all the questions we have gone higher. If you are dissatisfied with any of the teachers, keep looking. If you are looking for lessons by correspondence, the search will be a little different (and these lessons are usually a little cheaper in the long run). You can search the Internet for these teachers and you can also contact the universities (anywhere in the world). The best thing about correspondence lessons is that you can take lessons from teachers in the world (that teaches through correspondence)! What is sought in a correspondence master is someone who has been doing this kind of teaching for a while, someone who always lets you ask questions about your lesson via e-mail or phone (no extra charge!). I personally do not think that courses (like CD-ROM courses) are a good idea because they do not provide private and individual instruction needed to learn in the most efficient. Although correspondence lessons are not face to face, lessons should be personalized for you, your skill level, his musical knowledge, his music style and their musical goals. Stay away from one size fits all method or the cookie cut style courses. Each person is different and is on a different level, has different musical goals, and likes different music. So the experience (either face to face or correspondence) should be specifically tailored to their needs. After teaching guitar and music for over 11 years, I can tell you that using the information above can make a big difference in finding a high quality teaching experience. An incompetent teacher can seriously hamper their ability to fully develop his guitar and music skills. If you are not progressing well, but is spending too much time practicing, find another teacher. I invite you to sign up for my free newsletter is filled with valuable guitar instructional resources!
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