So you have mastered Guitar Hero and you are ready to take the next step. You bought a guitar and a cool strap and have spent hours in front of a mirror practicing the windmill and other cool guitar stances. Now you are ready to learn to play and now you need to find a guitar teacher. Finding a guitar teacher can be a tricky endeavor. The following article will cover what things to think about and look for when seeking a guitar teacher.
First you must determine by which media you are going to use for your lessons; group lessons or private lessons, both of which will determine who the best fit is for you as your guitar teacher. Regardless of which path you take there are basic criteria that should be considered in choosing your guitar teacher. Great guitar players do not necessarily make great guitar teachers. The best guitar teacher I ever had was not a virtuoso, in fact I never heard him play that much at all out side of what he was teaching me.
*Group lessons: In the group guitar lesson setting, a guitar teacher not only needs to be qualified to teach guitar, but has to be good with a group. Since group lessons are filled with individual people that learn differently and at different rates, the guitar teacher needs to be able to indentify with everyone’s individual needs. Guitar teachers without these skills can be the cause of why group lessons fail and are a very slow or unsuccessful means of learning to play the guitar. A group guitar teacher needs to be able to keep the slower students from falling behind and at the same time keep the quicker students from having to slow down because of the slower students. A group guitar teacher needs to have a completely different set of skills besides just the knowledge of the guitar and how to teach it.
*Private Lessons: When available, private guitar lessons are always better than group lessons. A private guitar teacher can spend the undivided one on one time with a student that will yield the best and quickest results. Still with a private guitar teacher, teaching skills outweigh personal playing abilities. A guitar teacher needs to be able to explain the same ideas and techniques in multiply ways to meet the needs of the individual student. The best guitar teachers don’t use published method books, since they only focus on one method of teaching. Rather they should write there own curriculum that can be custom tailored to the individual student.
When selecting a guitar teacher you should take the following into consideration;
*Can the teacher pass a criminal background check?
*What kind of success have other students had?
*How long has the teacher been teaching, what kind of experience do they have?
*Are they licensed? Are they NAICS certified?
If the lessons are for your child, what is the guitar teacher’s policy on you being there for the lesson if you want to be?