Guitar Teachers - what is your approach?

sev112

I can understand why teachers don’t teach reading music, it’s bloody hard and I’ve been doing it got 40 years.
But what really can be useful is teaching them rhythm notation, that can really help to play riffs, feel some groove, understand how to play reggae, bossy nova, etc and give some versatility and feel but see some way of documenting that for the future in strokes and rests 

Lestratcaster

Rhythm makes up for 90-95% of guitar playing so its vital they can read and understand rhythm notation. I hate seeing tabs online that just read 0-2-3-0-0-3 with indication of what subdivision you're meant to play. Is it quarter notes? Eighths? Any rests?

Many want to just learn the solo or a little lick that makes up for 5% of the song, the rest of it will be the chords so unless you want to sit there for 3 minutes waiting for one part then you would want to learn the rest.

Also playing consistently to tempo and with groove can be hard, as I see some learners don't concentrate and end up changing the pattern or losing the beat midway.

Evo

allen said:

They both commented that they couldn't understand how their friends who learned guitar at school had been doing it for ages, but still couldn't play a song! To me, that's everything that's wrong with school music.

As a teacher that has taught both in schools and at home, I can say that in my experience this is usually the fault of those students. 

I’d say that at least 30% of the students I’ve taught at school didn’t pick up a guitar once at any point between their 20 minute weekly lessons.

That said, I have also encountered a fair few guitar teachers of questionable ability teaching at schools so that could equally be a contributing factor…

allen

Evo said:

As a teacher that has taught both in schools and at home, I can say that in my experience this is usually the fault of those students. 

I’d say that at least 30% of the students I’ve taught at school didn’t pick up a guitar once at any point between their 20 minute weekly lessons.

That said, I have also encountered a fair few guitar teachers of questionable ability teaching at schools so that could equally be a contributing factor…

Very good point. I have been a teacher, but not a music one. I'd say less than 5% of my students would do anything outside of a lesson so if you're getting 70% you're doing well.

There's also the issue of parents believing that learning a musical instrument is an important part of a child's development even if the child has no interest.

I lectured in business related things at university and a great number of my students were sent there by parents who thought it was the right thing to do, but the student themselves had no real interest.