Questions:
Going Start Giving Guitar Lessons?
Ok so I am a sophomore in High school and play guitar. I have studied theory, play in our schools jazz band and I know quite a few styles of playing. I am still always learning myself but a few younger students I know from the middle school that funnels to our band program have asked me to give them guitar lessons and I know I have enough experience teach them. But like where do I start? the stuff I know now I just know off the top of my head so where is a good place to start teaching? Also times are tough but should I charge.. if I was going to I was thinking 5$ a lesson is that to much to little? yeah Im a decent guitar player... know clue how to teach others thanks for the help =)
Answers:-
1.
You should visit some of the instructional web sites, such as guitartricks.com, get a guitar instructional book (s) to compare, and checkout an instructional DVD or two. Utilize a format found there and breakdown your instruction. If the student has the basics do a brief review in case they have heard something false or have picked up a bad habit. Guide them about guitar set-up, but as an instructor have them take it to a luthier, etc. You can and should show them how to replace a string however and of course how to tune their guitar. encourage them to care for their instrument. DO NOT MAKE FUN OF THEIR INSTRUMENT NO MATTER HOW CHEAP - THEY ARE LEARNING AND CAN UPGRADE LATER AS THEY PROGRESS WHICH YOU CAN SUGGEST LATER, BUT SETUP IS IMPORTANT ON EXPENSIVE AND INEXPENSIVE GUITARS) Of course you start with the basic chords and then you explain the scale used in western music and explain how a guitar is layed out versus a piano. Imagining the advantage of side by side strings relative to a long row of piano keys helps them visualize one of the advantages of the guitar. Definately have them get get a chord book like Mel Bay that shows the actual correct finger placement for a chord and not just a dot diagram. You could check out the local music stores/book stores so you have an instructional book and know it is available for each of your students. You will want to teach some type of fingering/warm up exercise.
Make it fun when they spend a session with you - always provide constuctive criticism and always give them a useful tip at each session. (so make a list of tips, copy it for each of your students) and mark off what tip you give them. And keep a progress record to remind yourself and your student how far they have progressed. Your fee depends on if you travel to their house or they come to your place. collect fees as you go!! (no credit) If you do not have a huge reputation i would start at $10 for a 30 minute session (you are showing them what to practice, and observing what they they have learned - do not spend the session practicing with them - they need to do that on their own - you need to "demonstrate" and "explain". If you don't know an answer say so - NEVER LIE -tell them you will try to findout and apologize if you can't find an answer or forget to! Suggest two lessons a week and one on Saturday (give them an extra 30 minutes free for one of the sessions) and start with no more than three students as that will be 6 hours of your time and you need to put about 4 hours of preparation/paperwork. so 10 hours should be plenty since you are in school too and perform yourself! The seessions should reinforce what you have learned too! After your students learn chords have them get a song book with the kind of songs/style they are familiar with and will like to play on the guitar! Add instruction to support their learning the songs!! (All theory is blah!)
Make it fun when they spend a session with you - always provide constuctive criticism and always give them a useful tip at each session. (so make a list of tips, copy it for each of your students) and mark off what tip you give them. And keep a progress record to remind yourself and your student how far they have progressed. Your fee depends on if you travel to their house or they come to your place. collect fees as you go!! (no credit) If you do not have a huge reputation i would start at $10 for a 30 minute session (you are showing them what to practice, and observing what they they have learned - do not spend the session practicing with them - they need to do that on their own - you need to "demonstrate" and "explain". If you don't know an answer say so - NEVER LIE -tell them you will try to findout and apologize if you can't find an answer or forget to! Suggest two lessons a week and one on Saturday (give them an extra 30 minutes free for one of the sessions) and start with no more than three students as that will be 6 hours of your time and you need to put about 4 hours of preparation/paperwork. so 10 hours should be plenty since you are in school too and perform yourself! The seessions should reinforce what you have learned too! After your students learn chords have them get a song book with the kind of songs/style they are familiar with and will like to play on the guitar! Add instruction to support their learning the songs!! (All theory is blah!)
You should visit some of the instructional web sites, such as guitartricks.com, get a guitar instructional book (s) to compare, and checkout an instructional DVD or two. Utilize a format found there and breakdown your instruction. If the student has the basics do a brief review in case they have heard something false or have picked up a bad habit. Guide them about guitar set-up, but as an instructor have them take it to a luthier, etc. You can and should show them how to replace a string however and of course how to tune their guitar. encourage them to care for their instrument. DO NOT MAKE FUN OF THEIR INSTRUMENT NO MATTER HOW CHEAP - THEY ARE LEARNING AND CAN UPGRADE LATER AS THEY PROGRESS WHICH YOU CAN SUGGEST LATER, BUT SETUP IS IMPORTANT ON EXPENSIVE AND INEXPENSIVE GUITARS) Of course you start with the basic chords and then you explain the scale used in western music and explain how a guitar is layed out versus a piano. Imagining the advantage of side by side strings relative to a long row of piano keys helps them visualize one of the advantages of the guitar. Definately have them get get a chord book like Mel Bay that shows the actual correct finger placement for a chord and not just a dot diagram. You could check out the local music stores/book stores so you have an instructional book and know it is available for each of your students. You will want to teach some type of fingering/warm up exercise.
Make it fun when they spend a session with you - always provide constuctive criticism and always give them a useful tip at each session. (so make a list of tips, copy it for each of your students) and mark off what tip you give them. And keep a progress record to remind yourself and your student how far they have progressed. Your fee depends on if you travel to their house or they come to your place. collect fees as you go!! (no credit) If you do not have a huge reputation i would start at $10 for a 30 minute session (you are showing them what to practice, and observing what they they have learned - do not spend the session practicing with them - they need to do that on their own - you need to "demonstrate" and "explain". If you don't know an answer say so - NEVER LIE -tell them you will try to findout and apologize if you can't find an answer or forget to! Suggest two lessons a week and one on Saturday (give them an extra 30 minutes free for one of the sessions) and start with no more than three students as that will be 6 hours of your time and you need to put about 4 hours of preparation/paperwork. so 10 hours should be plenty since you are in school too and perform yourself! The seessions should reinforce what you have learned too! After your students learn chords have them get a song book with the kind of songs/style they are familiar with and will like to play on the guitar! Add instruction to support their learning the songs!! (All theory is blah!)
Make it fun when they spend a session with you - always provide constuctive criticism and always give them a useful tip at each session. (so make a list of tips, copy it for each of your students) and mark off what tip you give them. And keep a progress record to remind yourself and your student how far they have progressed. Your fee depends on if you travel to their house or they come to your place. collect fees as you go!! (no credit) If you do not have a huge reputation i would start at $10 for a 30 minute session (you are showing them what to practice, and observing what they they have learned - do not spend the session practicing with them - they need to do that on their own - you need to "demonstrate" and "explain". If you don't know an answer say so - NEVER LIE -tell them you will try to findout and apologize if you can't find an answer or forget to! Suggest two lessons a week and one on Saturday (give them an extra 30 minutes free for one of the sessions) and start with no more than three students as that will be 6 hours of your time and you need to put about 4 hours of preparation/paperwork. so 10 hours should be plenty since you are in school too and perform yourself! The seessions should reinforce what you have learned too! After your students learn chords have them get a song book with the kind of songs/style they are familiar with and will like to play on the guitar! Add instruction to support their learning the songs!! (All theory is blah!)
You should visit some of the instructional web sites, such as guitartricks.com, get a guitar instructional book (s) to compare, and checkout an instructional DVD or two. Utilize a format found there and breakdown your instruction. If the student has the basics do a brief review in case they have heard something false or have picked up a bad habit. Guide them about guitar set-up, but as an instructor have them take it to a luthier, etc. You can and should show them how to replace a string however and of course how to tune their guitar. encourage them to care for their instrument. DO NOT MAKE FUN OF THEIR INSTRUMENT NO MATTER HOW CHEAP - THEY ARE LEARNING AND CAN UPGRADE LATER AS THEY PROGRESS WHICH YOU CAN SUGGEST LATER, BUT SETUP IS IMPORTANT ON EXPENSIVE AND INEXPENSIVE GUITARS) Of course you start with the basic chords and then you explain the scale used in western music and explain how a guitar is layed out versus a piano. Imagining the advantage of side by side strings relative to a long row of piano keys helps them visualize one of the advantages of the guitar. Definately have them get get a chord book like Mel Bay that shows the actual correct finger placement for a chord and not just a dot diagram. You could check out the local music stores/book stores so you have an instructional book and know it is available for each of your students. You will want to teach some type of fingering/warm up exercise.
Make it fun when they spend a session with you - always provide constuctive criticism and always give them a useful tip at each session. (so make a list of tips, copy it for each of your students) and mark off what tip you give them. And keep a progress record to remind yourself and your student how far they have progressed. Your fee depends on if you travel to their house or they come to your place. collect fees as you go!! (no credit) If you do not have a huge reputation i would start at $10 for a 30 minute session (you are showing them what to practice, and observing what they they have learned - do not spend the session practicing with them - they need to do that on their own - you need to "demonstrate" and "explain". If you don't know an answer say so - NEVER LIE -tell them you will try to findout and apologize if you can't find an answer or forget to! Suggest two lessons a week and one on Saturday (give them an extra 30 minutes free for one of the sessions) and start with no more than three students as that will be 6 hours of your time and you need to put about 4 hours of preparation/paperwork. so 10 hours should be plenty since you are in school too and perform yourself! The seessions should reinforce what you have learned too! After your students learn chords have them get a song book with the kind of songs/style they are familiar with and will like to play on the guitar! Add instruction to support their learning the songs!! (All theory is blah!)
Make it fun when they spend a session with you - always provide constuctive criticism and always give them a useful tip at each session. (so make a list of tips, copy it for each of your students) and mark off what tip you give them. And keep a progress record to remind yourself and your student how far they have progressed. Your fee depends on if you travel to their house or they come to your place. collect fees as you go!! (no credit) If you do not have a huge reputation i would start at $10 for a 30 minute session (you are showing them what to practice, and observing what they they have learned - do not spend the session practicing with them - they need to do that on their own - you need to "demonstrate" and "explain". If you don't know an answer say so - NEVER LIE -tell them you will try to findout and apologize if you can't find an answer or forget to! Suggest two lessons a week and one on Saturday (give them an extra 30 minutes free for one of the sessions) and start with no more than three students as that will be 6 hours of your time and you need to put about 4 hours of preparation/paperwork. so 10 hours should be plenty since you are in school too and perform yourself! The seessions should reinforce what you have learned too! After your students learn chords have them get a song book with the kind of songs/style they are familiar with and will like to play on the guitar! Add instruction to support their learning the songs!! (All theory is blah!)
2.
Good for you! Maybe go to a music store and sift through some beginnger books that you both can use as a basis to learn. Of course you will stray off these from time to time depending on the needs of the student. I also think you need to charge. I would charge a little more than $5/hour. Maybe $10. You are a beginning teacher so you can't charge a lot, but you have to put some value on the lesson and your time and talent.
3.
If you don't know how to teach, then you have no business teaching.
My guess is though, that you actually do know how to teach... or you could help these kids out if you knew where to start. Once you get started, you'll be able to talk with the students and see what they want to learn. Most will just want to learn a few chords to get started and play a few songs. You'll want to make sure they need to know some basics, like scales, and the triads.
First thing you want to do is sit them down, show them how to read TABs, then start on a few chords. C, F, G7, E, A... etc. Show them a chromatic exercise as well so they can start getting there fingers accustomed to alternate picking, and using all 4 fingers. This should be more than enough for 1 lesson. Then move onto the major scale. Don't overwhelm them with too much knowledge or theory all at once.
$5 a lesson? Where you at kid... I wanna learn from you too... lol. If you're gonna teach these kids in a group, $5 is cool. If you have 5 or 6 kids paying you at one time, then you'll make $30, which is worth your time. $20 for 1 on 1 is more like it... and really, other instructors are more like $35 to $45 for a half hour session... so don't sell yourself short.
ALSO, most important, get an instructional book, like Mel Bay's Grade 1, or.... uh.. who's the other guy? I forget... but you can teach them straight from those books, and have them buy the books too.
My guess is though, that you actually do know how to teach... or you could help these kids out if you knew where to start. Once you get started, you'll be able to talk with the students and see what they want to learn. Most will just want to learn a few chords to get started and play a few songs. You'll want to make sure they need to know some basics, like scales, and the triads.
First thing you want to do is sit them down, show them how to read TABs, then start on a few chords. C, F, G7, E, A... etc. Show them a chromatic exercise as well so they can start getting there fingers accustomed to alternate picking, and using all 4 fingers. This should be more than enough for 1 lesson. Then move onto the major scale. Don't overwhelm them with too much knowledge or theory all at once.
$5 a lesson? Where you at kid... I wanna learn from you too... lol. If you're gonna teach these kids in a group, $5 is cool. If you have 5 or 6 kids paying you at one time, then you'll make $30, which is worth your time. $20 for 1 on 1 is more like it... and really, other instructors are more like $35 to $45 for a half hour session... so don't sell yourself short.
ALSO, most important, get an instructional book, like Mel Bay's Grade 1, or.... uh.. who's the other guy? I forget... but you can teach them straight from those books, and have them buy the books too.
