How to choose a music teacher

Music has advanced far beyond the time when someone could teach himself (or herself) to become a world class player. If your ambition is to become a competent player and a competent musician, you need a competent music teacher. Even if your goals are more modest, you can reach those goals far more quickly, easily and efficiently with the guidance of the right guitar teacher. There are hundreds of books, instructional videos, CD-ROMs and, of course, the internet. Even though a lot of information is readily available, there exists a lot of incorrect, incomplete and otherwise bad information (this is especially true for a lot of information found on the internet!).

You will need the aid of an excellent instructor to teach you how to fully understand and apply the correct information. You can save yourself a lot of time this way. Remember that text books, CD-ROMs, instructional videos and the internet cannot answer your specific questions. They cannot offer you advice on your playing, song writing, ear training, etc. They cannot listen to your playing and point out any mistakes or flaws that may be present. Some text books are great and I have seen some pretty good CD-ROMs out there too, but you still need the aid of an excellent teacher to guide you through everything and to help you to develop your abilities and musicianship correctly and efficiently.

Great teachers manage and schedule new materials and effectively explain its importance and meaning. A teacher should encourage you when you are doing well and correct you where you may have gone wrong. Good teachers will show you how to better organize your practice materials and show you how to effectively manage your practice time (this is crucial to your progress!). They help you to build up your confidence level (even if you are not consciously aware that this is happening). A great guitar teacher will help you to become secure with your technical skills so that you can execute difficult techniques comfortably. These teachers emphasize creativity (song writing, improvising) and performing. Great teachers want to make sure that you fully understand what you are learning and, most importantly, teach you how to apply it by giving you detailed explanations and encouraging you to ask questions when something is unclear. A good guitar teacher sincerely cares about your musical growth and development. An experienced and competent teacher will take you far beyond what you could learn on your own.

Unfortunately, teachers are not licensed and there is no organization that oversees or regulates them. Anyone can claim to be a good teacher and there are lots of people who make this claim. The number of competent teachers, however, is limited. This brings us to this crucial question; How can a student find, choose, and then accurately evaluate a guitar teacher?

Here are some questions that you should ask any music teacher that you are considering to study with. I have also included my own comments for each question:

1. Can you please tell me about your teaching experience, such as: How long have you been teaching and approximately how many students have you taught during that time? At least 3-5 years of teaching experience would be preferred. Certainly no less than one year of experience. It is good if the teacher has taught a moderate to large number of students. It takes time for a teacher to really learn how to teach well and the main way that someone learns to teach is by teaching for a while. So a young teacher’s first students are like experiments. The teacher learns how to teach on-the-job by trial and error. The teacher learns how to teach over time and will make some mistakes in the beginning of his or her career. You don’t want to be one of those first 30-50 students. Let that teacher gain his or her experience by making mistakes on someone else.
2. Do you offer a free introductory course? Its good to get a feel of an instructor before you commit long term to lessons. This way you can get an idea of what the lesson environment is like, sample the curriculum and see how well you or your child related to the subject material. Then comes the best part, you can compare the lesson with other instructors. You can then make an informed decision which is best. Beware instructors that pressure you to continue lessons after a single block of instruction.
3. What is the cost of lessons? Excellent teachers are in demand and usually already have a lot of students. These teachers often are not cheap. I can tell you that the going rates for good teachers in the midwestern United States is between $16-$24 per 1/2 hour private lesson. There are a handful of teachers that offer correspondence guitar lessons for students who do not live in the same state or country as the teacher. Usually these lessons are less expensive in the long run. However, finding a good internet instructor can be difficult (if you are looking for Neoclassical instruction I highly recommend my instructor, guitar virtuoso Tom Hess ). In general, don’t look for the teacher with the lowest rates, you usually get what you pay for. If you can’t afford to pay the higher rates for a really good guitar teacher, ask the teacher if you can take lessons on a bi-monthly basis instead of taking weekly lessons.
4. Can you tell me how you teach the lessons? This is probably the most important question that you can ask a teacher. The answer to this question can really help you to determine if a teacher is competent because this is actually a trick question. Anyone can tell you that they have been teaching for 100 years and that they have had 10,000 students and the cost is $1,000 per lesson because they are the greatest teacher of all time, but an inexperienced teacher cannot trick you with his or her answer to this question (unless he or she is reading this article.) If a prospective teacher who does not know you, your musical knowledge, your guitar technique, your musical tastes, and your musical goals tries to explain how he or she will teach you, then this is not a competent teacher. Not even the best teacher on Earth could answer this question if that teacher knows nothing about you, your goals, your playing level, your knowledge of music theory, etc. So what would an experienced and competent teacher say to you when you ask the question? Well, I can tell you what I do when a new prospective student asks me this. I explain to him or her that I can’t formulate a lesson plan for anyone until I learn a lot more about that student’s playing, goals, musical tastes, knowledge of theory, etc. .

In addition to asking the questions above, here are some other things to watch out for:

• When students ask how to approach a certain technique or how to hold the pick correctly or how to most effectively mute strings that are not supposed to be sounding, the advice of some teachers is to do whatever feels natural to you. Sometimes what you may think is the natural way to hold your left hand may not be the correct way at all. It is the teacher’s job to know those types of things, the teacher should be teaching, not letting you do whatever you feel like. For most things, there is a right and wrong way and you will better off learning it the right way from the beginning.
• Just because a teacher may have some talented students, does not mean that the teacher is good. This might seem like a good criteria for evaluating a teacher, but the fact is that sometimes advanced students were already good players before taking lessons from this new teacher. The only time that judging a teacher’s teaching skills, based on his or her student’s playing skills, is really a reliable criteria is when those advanced students started taking lessons from the same teacher since they were beginners.
• Some teachers tell their students to try to learn from as many sources as possible and then leave it up to you to sort through it all and decide what works best for you. How are you supposed to decide that? How is a student to know what the best fingering is for a particular scale? Students typically won’t know how to determine what the right way is. This is one of the reasons why you have a teacher, it is his or her job to teach you these things, this is why you are giving the teacher your money!
• Do not assume that someone is a good teacher just because he or she may be an excellent player or has good credentials. I know plenty of competent players with advanced music degrees that I don’t believe are good teachers. I was fortunate to have some truly great teachers, but I had some incompetent ones too, along the way. Whenever I realized that a teacher wasn’t good, I looked for a new teacher.

The following things are not required for someone to be a good teacher, but it certainly is to your advantage to have a teacher who, in addition to teaching you about guitar and music, can help you in some of these other ways:

1. Musc Pedagogy. This is learning how to teach music. If one of your goals is to be a music teacher then you would benefit greatly from a teacher who can teach you how to teach a variety of techniques, music theory, ear training, song writing, improvisation, sight reading, etc. You will also need to learn about how to deal with a wide variety of personality types. Every student is different and each of those students may learn and comprehend information in different ways. It is important for any teacher to understand this. You need to know how to explain the same information in several different ways so that you will be better able to teach all of your students well.
2. Recording advice. The better you become as a musician, the more likely it will be that you will want to record your guitar playing. If you have little or no experience in this area, then having someone who can help you is especially helpful.
3. Music business. If you plan to record, release and sell your own CD, now or in the future, there is a huge amount of music business information that you will need to learn if you want to make any money. Some teachers who have released their own CDs, and are promoting it themselves, can be the best source of help for selling your CD. You can also learn other things like how to set up gigs for your band and how to get the press to write about you.

So now that you have a better idea about what to look for in a teacher, the next question is, Where do you look for a really good teacher? This depends on if you are looking for a teacher to teach you privately (face to face) or if you are looking for a teacher to teach you through correspondence. Both are good and there are advantages to both ways. If you are looking for a private teacher to teach you face to face, check out these places first: Contact individuals who perform in the Kenai Peninsula Orchestra here on the Kenai Peninsula. Even if they can’t help you directly, they can usually refer you to someone who can help. Next, you can try your local music shops (where guitars are sold). Most music shops offer lessons, most of the teachers found here are not of the highest quality, but sometimes there are some really great teachers that you can find at these shops. When you call one of these shops, ask to speak to the manager or owner. Ask him or her, who are the most qualified teachers for you (your style of music and skill level). After you get the teachers names, make arrangements to speak to each of the teachers privately. Ask those teachers all of the questions that are written above. If you are not satisfied with any of those teachers, keep looking.

After teaching music for over seven years locally (and over 15 abroad) I can tell you that using the information above can really make a huge difference in finding an experienced high quality teacher. An incompetent teacher can severely hinder your ability to fully develop your music skills. If you are not progressing well, but you are spending a lot of time practicing, find another teacher.

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