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terry70 -> RE: general question to guitar teachers (Sep. 12 2009 16:46:37)
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I've been teaching full time for quite some time now. Here's my two cents. take it for what you want.
It's quite a challenge teaching kids under 10 to 11. They have a short attention span, are lacking development in manual dexterity, and have little discipline to practice. For this reason I know many teachers who set an age minimum of about 12.
What I do is show them the foundations of music. First I teach them the fingering pattern for the open C scale. They don't learn the notes by their letter names but rather by their degrees, 1, 2, 3, 4 , 5, 6, 7, 8. Then i teach them how to play simple melodies using these numbers. For example, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is 1 1 5 5 6 6 5 - 4 4 3 3 2 2 1....and so on. We build up a repretoir of simple melodies then I start showing them the scales through the circle of fifths and how you can play these same melodies very easily in different keys just by knowing these numbers (scale degrees).
As their dexterity develops we start to learn chords for each of the keys. I's, IV's, V's, and vii's. We put the chords to the melodies they have learned. This system allows these kids to understand not only guitar but how music works. It is the foundation for playing by ear.
Because kids lack discipline I make sure that parents know that they have to be part of their kid's learning if they want them to succeed. I just ask them to make sure that THEY (the parents) make a practice time for them everyday and supervise it. Encourage and praise - be aware of what their kids should be practicing.
We all know that you can't learn guitar unless you practice, and practice takes self discipline, something kids rarely have. Can you imagine a child learning to read or do math by taking a lesson for a half hour a week then the parents allowing the child to determine when and if he/she should practice during the remainder of the week?!?! there would rarely be success.
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