I was asked to write something about teaching guitar for jemsite.com

[mark wein]

http://www.jemsite.com/blog/43-general/738-guitar-teacher-diaries.html

:)


What do you guys think?

[Robert]

Good job Mark! You da man.

[mark wein]

Good job Mark! You da man.

Thanks! :D

[jpfeifer]

Mark,

That was an excellent article that you wrote about teaching guitar. I can relate to most of what you said. I taught guitar out of my home for several years, but recently had to stop doing it when my day job started becoming too demanding of my time.

But the things that I noticed about teaching guitar were much the same as you described. I found that teaching helped me to improve my own understanding of concepts, and also helped me to focus on the fundamentals. I spent hours going back and creating my own exercises, transcribing solos, learning new tunes, etc. all to make more interesting lessons for the students. It was forcing me to learn things that I would not have done otherwise. It also helped me to distill some of the more complex things down to a form that could be easily taught. It's one thing to be able to apply some musical concept for yourself, but you really have to know it well to teach it to someone else.

I'd like to return to guitar teaching one day when my career and family demands are not as high as they are now. I am hoping to do this as a second career one day.

Great article again.
-- Jim

[mark wein]

Mark,

That was an excellent article that you wrote about teaching guitar. I can relate to most of what you said. I taught guitar out of my home for several years, but recently had to stop doing it when my day job started becoming too demanding of my time.

But the things that I noticed about teaching guitar were much the same as you described. I found that teaching helped me to improve my own understanding of concepts, and also helped me to focus on the fundamentals. I spent hours going back and creating my own exercises, transcribing solos, learning new tunes, etc. all to make more interesting lessons for the students. It was forcing me to learn things that I would not have done otherwise. It also helped me to distill some of the more complex things down to a form that could be easily taught. It's one thing to be able to apply some musical concept for yourself, but you really have to know it well to teach it to someone else.

I'd like to return to guitar teaching one day when my career and family demands are not as high as they are now. I am hoping to do this as a second career one day.

Great article again.
-- Jim

Thanks!

I'm going through the whole process again as I start recording the CD for my book. Suddenly I have to play REALLY in time :D

[jpfeifer]

You know, I always thought that I had pretty good timing and feel until I started doing some recording projects for some other people. It really humbled me. I decided that I would never practice without a metronome ever again in my life :-)

Then one of the engineers told me, "it's the guitar players job to rush, they all do it" -- yikes.


-- Jim

[mark wein]

You know, I always thought that I had pretty good timing and feel until I started doing some recording projects for some other people. It really humbled me. I decided that I would never practice without a metronome ever again in my life :-)

Then one of the engineers told me, "it's the guitar players job to rush, they all do it" -- yikes.


-- Jim

I'm fairly obsessive with time since its my biggest weakness. One reason why my book makes such a big deal about it, I guess. If anything it will be great practice for me :)