Guitar Pedagogy

Over the years, my ideas about what a student should learn first have changed somewhat. I’ve felt pressure from students (and parents) to get to the fun stuff right away. I’ve felt pressure from the schools where I’ve taught either to do the same thing, or to do just the opposite (especially in schools with active performance groups: “I don’t want another guitar player who can’t read music!”). However, I have found out the hard way that certain things can’t be skipped.

Note: for students younger than about 10, I usually break this up into two separate lessons, ending the first lesson with quarter-notes and half-notes, and picking up with single-string notes in the second lesson.

Posture

I myself can’t boast the best posture in the world, but it’s amazing the way I’ve seen some of my students sit and think that they are going to play the guitar in that position. Wanting to be “mellow,” and not too closely resemble my high school guitar teacher, I’ve occasionally let it slide - and I’ve always regretted it. As they say, old habits die hard, and as soon as a student has gotten used to a certain way of holding the guitar or themselves, the harder it will be to fix the problem down the line.

For this reason, I spend the first 3 to 4 minutes of the first lesson carefully showing the student how to comfortably and effectively hold the guitar. It doesn’t have to be the classical model - there is a correct way to hold the guitar even in folk position. The key is make sure that the student keeps the body of the guitar straight and close to the torso (young students will often want to turn the guitar up toward their face - nip this in the bud right away!), the right arm slung comfortably over the front (hooked at the elbow), and the left arm relaxed, with the left hand thumb low behind the neck and fingers out in front of the fretboard.

The Hands

We then proceed directly to the techniques of both hands. I make sure that the left thumb stays low and flat (not cocked) against the back of the neck, and I have the student try pushing down a note with their index finger, curled so that they touch the string with the tip. Then, before learning any notes, I go to the right hand, leaving the left hand in a playing position but leaving the strings open. I’ve recently decided to try to using a pick even with my younger students, as I find that trying to incorporate one later on can be frustrating. So we’ll go right away to the picking technique. I make sure that they hold a large amount of the pick between their index and thumb, letting just the tip stick out (more than this and they will frequently drop the pick or get stuck between strings). For the time being, we’ll be doing only down-strokes, so I’ll ask them first to just raise their hand and drop it down across the strings - they don’t need to be putting any more pressure than this on the strings at the beginning - and then we’ll try some single strings. Even when working single strings, I try to make sure that the right hand movement begins at the elbow, not at the wrist.

Rhythm

As I mention in One-Chord Songs, I like to focus on rhythmic playing from the very first. So before we bring in the left hand, I’ll start up some strumming patterns and have the student try to follow along. I like to bring in rhythmic counting as well, as I find that students who have gotten used to counting along with their playing are much less intimidated by complicated rhythms later on. For the younger kids, we’ll strum these rhythms without any chord at all, just using the right hand. For kids older than 12 or 13, I might show them an Am chord if they seem to be able to grab it easily (you can tell this by the technique part of the lesson - if pushing down the strings seems a bit tricky, hold off chords for a while).
One rhythm that I love to start with, because it’s so easily recognizable, is “We Will Rock You.” I usually count it out in cut-time, “1-2-3-(4).” I like to point out the difference between “tempo” and “rhythm” - it’s important to remember that students need to learn the associated vocabulary as well as the technique. To illustrate this, we’ll try counting through the “We Will Rock You” rhythm at different tempos. Then I’ll show them quarter-notes and half-notes, and we’ll try writing some different rhythms using only those notes. For homework, I’ll ask them to listen to some songs that they like and try to make a rhythm that goes with the song. Can they count along to the song the same way that we’ve been counting? Even better.

Single-string notes

At this point, we should be just over half-way through our first half-hour lesson. Here’s where I’ll bring in some single notes. Rather than starting with an Em pentatonic scale, or a full-octave C scale, I start all students, young and old, on the notes of the first three strings, starting with C.
For younger kids, who for a while will be learning songs like “When the Saints Go Marching In,” I’ll limit this to the first two strings in this lesson, starting them on C and going up to G. They’ll recognize the sound of the major scale (”Do Re Mi Fa Sol”). We’ll take a look at how each note is written on the staff (talk about lines and spaces, high and low, etc), and then we’ll find them on the neck of the guitar, and learn which finger to use for each note. To finish the lesson, I’ll show the opening phrase of “When the Saints,” which they can take home with them to practice for next time.
I find that young kids will take to written music without much hassle, whereas older kids tend to be a bit more wary of it. For these types, from age 12 or so, I try to ease them into it a bit. Already after doing the rhythms of the right hand, we saw quarter-notes and half-notes, so rather than dive right into written notes again, I’ll first show them the melody of “We Will Rock You,” starting on C. That will get us half of the notes on the third string, which I’ll then show them on the staff, and then we’ll talk about the scale going down (”C B A G”) and the scale going up (”C D E F G”). I’ll have them play first through both, so that they recognize the sounds, then show them the remaining notes on the staff. For homework, I’ll give them the opening phrase to Green Day’s “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” in Am, but without telling them what it is. They’ll have to follow the rhythms and the notes and guess the song for the next lesson.

Recap: Posture, Technique, Rhythm, Single notes

So in the very first lesson we’ve actually covered quite a bit of material: how to hold the guitar and the pick, how to strum the strings together or separately, how to count rhythms, how to read quarter-notes and half-notes, and a few notes on the staff. We’ve also given the student some “real music” to play from the very beginning, be it “We Will Rock You” or “When the Saints Come In.” If you’ve done all of this, then you’ll really find out what kind of student you have when they come back next time: if they’ve been practicing like they should, you’ll be ready to move on to the next step with a bit of review, but if they seem to be back at square one, you need to let them know right away that they won’t be able to continue if they don’t take the time to practice at home. However, reviewing the information is essential, even if the student seems to have everything down cold. Start the next lesson with a recap of the first, making sure to go over everything clearly in case some details were forgotten. If the student has been practicing this should still leave a good 20 to 25 minutes for new material.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS