Teach Me
While we can learn to play by teaching ourselves, and lets face it there are some really great tools out there to help us. We might wonder what it is to be taught face to face, with this in mind I have drafted a quick guide on what to look for in being taught by a teacher.
Good teachers are quite easy to find, great teachers a little more difficult but lets not that stop us.
Good teachers turn up when they should, will show you how to get all your materials together and get organized and manage your practice times. They will encourage you and correct you when you go wrong. Teachers by their nature should be patient and help you through your doubting times. They should care about you progress and be enthusiastic.
Great teachers will continually push you to achieve more technically difficult pieces, they will take you totally out of your comfort zone. They emphasize creativity through song writing and as mentioned in the previous post improvising.
They want you to perform to enjoy what you are playing.
Music teachers are not licensed, and this could be a good thing, as soon as you regulate something you loose the flair, the creative ones do their own thing.
Yes they need to be competent and classical guitar teachers are perfect example of this, if you short cut on classical guitar techniques you will pay later when pieces become more technical.
Electric guitar is different and you need a teacher with all creativeness still intact with a passion about what they do for a living.
But with all teachers there are a few basic questions you can ask before studying with them that will make you confident that you have chosen well.
a) How long have you been teaching. Less than a year not advisable.
b) How many people are you teaching at the moment and how many have you taught. This gives you a feel for the variation of people that they have probably taught since teaching and hopefully have learned their teaching mistakes on someone else.
c) Cost and duration, as with anything you get what you pay for, but you could study with a good teacher on a bi-monthly basis instead of weekly. It would motivate you to work harder in between to ensure you get the best when you have your lesson.
More tips next post.
