Guitar instruction has taken on a new form in recent years. The Internet has provided us with a vast resource of transcriptions, videos, and interactive forums for learning to play guitar. This in turn has forced publishers to provide buyers with a better product. Instructional books now almost always include audio samples/CD of the material at hand. Gone are the days of publishers avoiding copyright violations by producing books that teach songs like “Here Comes the Son” a similar yet not exact replica of the Beatles song “Here Comes The Sun”. They now get official permission from the person who owns the licensing of the song and they publish accurate versions of the song. This competitive environment has forced everyone, including teachers who provide students with private guitar lessons, to offer a better educational product for the person who wishes to learn to play guitar.
The routine for teaching private guitar lessons has also changed for the benefit of the student. A large percentage of guitar teachers in the 1960’s-1970’s used poorly written method books as the foundation of their curriculum. The students were forced to read standard notation, which takes an extra step of translation, as opposed to guitar tablature. The songs they learned were often hokey traditional arrangements that sound more like children’s music than anything else.
As the old guard of teachers dispersed (or died off), the instructors of the 1980’s-1990’s had their students purchase notebooks of blank guitar tablature, and they filled the notebooks up with hand-written lessons and transcriptions. This is before the day of home copy machines, so the method makes sense, although writing things out by hand wastes much of the student’s time during the lessons. Nowadays, the Internet provides willing and able students with plenty of well written lessons, so why pay $25 a half-hour to watch a guy scribble a few notes on a piece of paper when you can easily download and print the same information within a couple minutes online? Don’t get me wrong, many guitar teachers have always reviewed important material with their students such as scales and improvisation or music theory, but the teachers of the 20th century simply did not have the resources available to provide their students with a superior curriculum for learning guitar as is available today.
Here are some ways I have used inexpensive technology to enhance my lessons program:
- I don’t waste time writing out lesson plans during our lessons, instead I use a home copy machine to pre-print scale charts, chord charts, rhythm exercises, transcriptions of popular songs, etc.
- I teach my students how to use Fruity Loops and other music creation/recording software.
- I budget hundreds of dollars a year to purchase, review, and eventually recommend recently published method books, because I know the standard method books eventually become outdated.
- I record audio/video of my students during our lessons, and we review the recordings to find places where improvements can be made.
- I own a Fretlight Guitar, and I use it to help my students learn and understand how to harmonize with scales and chords.
- I provide my students with online access to all of my lesson plans/handouts thru the Virtual Drive page of my website.
- I post my teaching schedule online, so students can easily make appointments with me.
The main thing to keep in mind is the fact that our approach to teaching should always be adjusted as we learn new methods and as new technology becomes available. No matter how much we hate (or love) to admit it, the younger generation of performers will always display a higher level of talent than the prior generation because their teachers will provide them with a better education as new resources become available.
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