Giving lessons -- any experience with this?

[Eric***]

So this morning, I get a call from someone from the church where I play who wants to know if I give guitar lessons. He bought his daughter a guitar for Christmas, and would like to give her lessons.

I've given informal lessons to my bass-playing friend for a few months, and he's made decent progress. Of course, in that instance the lessons were free and we did plenty of BSing during the lessons, so I don't feel like it's directly applicable.

So the question: what do I need to know if I am to do this for real? What's a fair rate? How much should I know before I start giving lessons? I told him I'd call him back today once I had thought it over.

Any/all input is appreciated.

[wingsdad]

The rate may be market-driven, so I'd check out local rates for 1/2 hour lessons at mom n' pop music stores that offer them or post teachers' ads on the for hire/to gig message board, classified ads, maybe even your town's Parks & Rec Dept offers them.

As for what you should know... that's a tough one. Your approach/syllabus may depends on the age of the student, and somewhat on what types of music she may like to learn to play for relevance to hold motivation. If you don't have a plan, you can go with an off-the-shelf set if texts like the Hal Leonard series, if nothing else, for your own guidance, to steal ideas from for a framework to customize/personalize.

Regardless of either of those factors, besides teaching the elements -- names of the parts of the guitar, how to tune it by ear and/or by machine -- you'll need a metronome, to keep an accurate pace and to develop the student's internal clock.

Also, hand them a $2 foam stress ball to use as a finger/hand exerciser they can use when they're sitting around reading or watching tv or riding in the car. Don't have them waste money on some POS like a GripEase. Those are gimmicks. Tell them to buy 2 sets of strings instead.

And regardless of your syllabus or the music style, I always started kids off with a set of fingering/picking hand exercises to warmup with. Maybe you have one? I have one I didn't learn until I'd been playing almost 15 years, and when I was turned onto it, by a player 20 years my senior, I wished I'd known it from the start.

This absolutley needs to be the first 5 minutes of every lesson, and of every 'take home lesson'. Essential to developing good control of the right muscles and muscle memory in the fingers, hands, wrists and forearms, as well as coordination of the 2 hands. Stress the importance of the benefits (rewards) of slogging thru at least 5 minutes a day of these, that doing these will make the journey easier to navigate. Tie the exercise in to a couple of simple licks relevant to their taste in music as a dangling carrot.

If the kid doesn't buy into these, and you'll see this clearly after the first 2 lessons, drop them. Fast. Don't steal dad's money and don't waste your time. They don't care enough. If they 'get it', if they really do want to learn, they'll take you up on the dare and get with the program.

[Eric***]

The rate may be market-driven, so I'd check out local rates for 1/2 hour lessons at mom n' pop music stores that offer them or post teachers' ads on the for hire/to gig message board, classified ads, maybe even your town's Parks & Rec Dept offers them.

As for what you should know... that's a tough one. Your approach/syllabus may depends on the age of the student, and somewhat on what types of music she may like to learn to play for relevance to hold motivation. If you don't have a plan, you can go with an off-the-shelf set if texts like the Hal Leonard series, if nothing else, for your own guidance, to steal ideas from for a framework to customize/personalize.

Regardless of either of those factors, besides teaching the elements -- names of the parts of the guitar, how to tune it by ear and/or by machine -- you'll need a metronome, to keep an accurate pace and to develop the student's internal clock.

Also, hand them a $2 foam stress ball to use as a finger/hand exerciser they can use when they're sitting around reading or watching tv or riding in the car. Don't have them waste money on some POS like a GripEase. Those are gimmicks. Tell them to buy 2 sets of strings instead.

And regardless of your syllabus or the music style, I always started kids off with a set of fingering/picking hand exercises to warmup with. Maybe you have one? I have one I didn't learn until I'd been playing almost 15 years, and when I was turned onto it, by a player 20 years my senior, I wished I'd known it from the start.

This absolutley needs to be the first 5 minutes of every lesson, and of every 'take home lesson'. Essential to developing good control of the right muscles and muscle memory in the fingers, hands, wrists and forearms, as well as coordination of the 2 hands. Stress the importance of the benefits (rewards) of slogging thru at least 5 minutes a day of these, that doing these will make the journey easier to navigate. Tie the exercise in to a couple of simple licks relevant to their taste in music as a dangling carrot.

If the kid doesn't buy into these, and you'll see this clearly after the first 2 lessons, drop them. Fast. Don't steal dad's money and don't waste your time. They don't care enough. If they 'get it', if they really do want to learn, they'll take you up on the dare and get with the program.

Thanks for the tips, especially for that last part. That's very interesting.

BTW, do you happen to have a copy of the exercise you learned well into your playing career? I've wanted something like that for a while, but only have a couple with which I'm familiar.

[Monkus]

I have one I didn't learn until I'd been playing almost 15 years, and when I was turned onto it, by a player 20 years my senior, I wished I'd known it from the start.

so....er...whats the exercise? inquiring minds wanna know????

[wingsdad]

Thanks for the tips, especially for that last part. That's very interesting.

BTW, do you happen to have a copy of the exercise you learned well into your playing career? I've wanted something like that for a while, but only have a couple with which I'm familiar.

Sorry for the mess, but all I have is this scrawly thing for the (assumed left) fretting hand; Missing is the rest of the picking hand part. This only describes using downstrokes. But that's simple and flexible: you can start as I wrote it here, with all downstrokes going up the neck from Pos. I to Pos. V, and then use upstrokes going back down from V to I. And then, for the second trip up and back, go with down/up, down/up for each of the 4 fingered frets in each position.

If alternating down/up too hard to handle, go baby steps: teach the student to just go with only downstrokes until they're comfortably clean with those, then they can go with all upstrokes, then got with alternating them.

It's really 'modular' in that sense.

The key to the whole thing is to emphasize starting by playing it slowly, as slow as necessary to fret and pick each note cleanly. Then, as this coordination develops, increasing speed will come. Eventually, it becomes an absent-minded thing...variations like picking up speed with each trip up the neck add interest.

Also, stress to stay 'up on the tips'...don't lay the fingers across the board.

As for the right (picking) hand, it may not be 'good form', whatever that means, but start the student in the habit of NOT moving their right hand all over the place and using their wrist, not their forearm, by having them lay the side edge of their palm on the bridge behind the endpins of an acoustic or saddles of an electric. Don't have the hand flying all about. Teach pivoting the wrist to do down/up's.

If the hands/fingers are too small to reach all the way up to the 6th string while maintaining the arch to stay on the tips, then stick to only the strings that can be reached and stop there.

It's so simple. But when you think about it, you realize it teaches all the essentials short of barreing chords.



I hope it's legible enuff. If you or a friend are good with handwriting analysis, you may determine that I belong in a strait jacket, but I already am, so...

[wingsdad]

Here's a couple of more things I 'stole' from the same guy who taught me the finger/hand exercise that go in-hand with it to form the first set of intro lessons:

Those 'hand symbols' in the far right column are studio cat shorthand; e.g.: to silently tell the others to play in the key of C, you hold up your thumb & forefinger forming a 'C', and for the key of A, you'd hold 3 fingers pointed down, indicating 3 sharps. I didn't get why sharps were pointing fingers 'down' and flats were 'up', but it worked at least in NYC in the 70's.

You also notice no music reading translations. Most of us didn't know how to sight read because we never learned how to read, just how to play by ear. We read charts that told us what number chord to use with stroke slashes indicating the beats on each, in whatever key had been dictated by a hand signal from the leader.

Again, sorry for my scrawl and less-than professional presentations.

[Eric***]

Excellent. Thanks!

I thought I wrote this already, but I guess not:

Seems like rates around here drift from $20-$25 for a half hour. I suppose I'll have to figure out if I'm going to visit the student's place for lessons or what.

[wingsdad]

... I suppose I'll have to figure out if I'm going to visit the student's place for lessons or what.

Going to them is worth a premium rate equivalent to the gas money for traveling to you. So if $25 is the top-end, go with that, don't lowball and sell yourself short. Besides, perception is reality in marketing.

Thanks for the tips, especially for that last part. That's very interesting. ...

The point with that is that if the fledgling considers this exercise too tedious or boring, or they're really not interested in learning to play, just going along with daddy's vicariousness, then they won't bother with it in between lessons.

You'll know if they worked at it or not between the first & 2nd lessons when you start off the 2nd lesson session. You schmooze a bit as you tune up together, asking how the week went practicing the exercise, and you break into with them to warm up, saying aloud each note yourself, as each finger is laid down in succession, and they display progress with it or not. If they're just as fumble-fingered as the first time they attempted it in your presence, they dropped back 15 & punted.

Don't call them out on shirking. Keep the criticism constructive. Don't be a prick about it. Give them a chance to prove that your assessment could be wrong. Instead, be subtle. Assign the task for the coming week between lessons of reciting the notes on the fretboard as they go, like you just did. (that's what the chart is for).

When you convene for lesson 3 and they can't do at least the first 2 strings with some dexterity and verbalized knowledge of the notes, they've made it clear they didn't do the assignment and indicated they lack the desire, resolve and/or most importantly, self-discipline. Or they think you're a dork. It's not going to work out with you as their teacher because you're obviously a detail-oriented guy and you'll be supremely frustrated.

So that's when you can lay the blunt end of the hammer on them. Cut them loose.

Of course, all of the above is only applicable if they didn't call you after lesson 1 and quit anyway.

[Eric***]

Update: I discussed this with my wife, and while I think it would be a good experience for me and some extra cash, I think I'm going to have to scale back on a lot of things in the coming months to make time for home renovations and other activities.

I called the guy back and told him I couldn't in good conscience take on a student if I was going to run into a time crunch shortly anyway, so I advised he seek lessons elsewhere. I wanted to go through with it, but I think it would just cause my additional stress shortly.

Thanks for the input -- I think I'll probably be using it before too long anyway.

[navvid]

I have been teaching for a few years now, both privately and for one of my local music stores, and I stay competitive with my local market. The standard rate for most places in the area I live is about $100 a month for one 1/2 lesson a week. That breaks down to $25 per half hour lesson. I personally honor that rate for private in home lessons. It is just enough to make it worth my while even if I have to drive to see one student, and if you can get enough clientel and arrange them right, it can be very lucrative.

As for methods, I believe strongly in starting them playing songs as soon as possible, since for most students the learning curve is very steep. That's why there are so many kids out there with guitars they never learned to play. You have to get them playing something they can have fun with asap. Thus I am a strong proponent of the CAGED method. I teach them these chords immediately, then as soon as their hands can reliably make the chords, I teach them a song with the easiest three which for most are A, D, and E. I use Wild Thing as their first song, and Hey Joe as their second since it uses all the CAGED chords.

This works for all ages as well. My students range from about 7 years old to about 50.

Guitar is not an easy instrument. They must practice every day, or they will not progress. It is very easy to tell with most students if they are practicing or not.