TEACHING GUITAR WORKSHOPS
Classroom Guitar Blog
Keep Your Guitars Happy
Do I need humidifiers for the room? For individual guitars? Do I need them at all? Think about this. 1. Humidifiers are necessary in dry climates. 2. For individual guitars – damp-it; try using old film containers. 3. In a room, you might get away with a jug of...
When Guitar Class Becomes a Dumping Ground
When another teacher requests to remove a disruptive student from his/her class, the logical place to move that student is guitar class. And why not, what kid does not love guitar? This scenario most often occurs when the class is in its tenth week and moving...
Share Your Guitar Lesson Plans
Teaching Guitar Workshops is building a new crowd-sourced book of Classroom-Guitar Lesson Plans. The project aims to make more lesson plans available to teachers, generate ideas among colleagues, bring substantive music lessons to kids, and, most of all, help...
How Do You Know Whether to Start a Piece with Your i Finger or Your m Finger?
How do you know whether to start a piece with your i finger or your m finger? You will most typically start with i, however it is really situational. If you have to do a backwards string crossing to start with i you should choose to start with m. Remember, you can...
Correcting Students’ with “Wrong” Pick Holds
How can you help students with “wrong” pick holds and is it that important? Emphasize the “platform” formed by the first digit and movement from the elbow. I think it is important, but take baby steps to fix it because they may have learned that way from someone...
Motivate Your Students, Play a “Show!”
Motivation happens when the teachers feed the dreams of their students. I find that students are more into performances when I refer to concerts as “shows”. Most guitar students can (and do) visualize themselves playing an electric guitar in a band, on stage, in...
Guitar Parent-Teacher Conferences
I wanted to share a very cool idea from my friend Jane who teaches guitar at a middle school up in Nebraska. She decided that during parent teacher conferences this year, that when students brought their parents to come discuss their grade – that they were going to...
Don’t Add Students After the Semester Starts
Adding new students to the guitar class after several weeks of school starting is a bad idea for everyone involved, and yet it happens. Have a plan in place how to deal with students who join the class after the class has learned all of the notes on the first three...
Teaching TAB
Philosophy in teaching guitar. If you want to divide a room of guitar teachers fast…just bring up TAB. Strong feelings abound! Here’s my take…. 1. TAB is important. 2. Teaching students to be literate musicians (who can read sheet music on a staff) is important. 3....
Thoughts About Assessments in the Guitar Classroom
Assessments Before the school year begins, it is important to know how frequently you will do formal assessments for a grade, what materials they will cover and the actual dates the assessments will be done. Here is more math to consider. How many grades do you...
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