Teaching Students to Improvise I am comfortable with teaching students how to improvise, but I have no idea how to provide the accompanying chord progressions. Here are a few ideas. 1. Fortunately, CDs and mp3 players (iphones, ipods, etc.) were made for...

How Do You Set Up the Right Hand for Fingerstyle Playing? 1. Let the right hand fall to the side and create a “C” shape with the fingers keeping the thumb on the outside the the i finger. 2. Turn the back of the hand toward the teacher. 3. Bring the right hand up...

What would you do on day 1 with beginners (of any age)? You can start off by playing bass on strings 4,5,6. Find any song in A that they might know (start with a blues, that's always a good bet!) and put the chord progression on the board so that the students can...

How do you incorporate your smart board in your guitar class? The smart board is great tool to use in the classroom. You can use it for writing in right and left hand fingerings into music. It is easy to write in a finger picking pattern on a tablature grid....

Should my guitar be resting on my left or right leg? or is it just personal preference? Try this. 1. Use your right leg for folk/jazz style sitting position. 2. For classic position, use your left leg. 3. Petite player might use the left leg crossed over right,...

Teaching Scales Please discuss how you approach teaching scales? Which are priority? Here are a few ideas. 1. Guitarists think in moveable patterns rather than specific chromatic notes. Guitar is great in that way. 2. If you're going to teach a couple of scales: A...

Assign parts of the Ensemble based on skill level and difficulty. For students who have a very difficult time with note reading, practice using the “first note option”. The goal of the “first note option” is to train the young note reader to follow in the music and...

The guitar is essential to the music of many cultures. Put together a library of different styles multi-cultural music that you can play for your class; this will help them to understand the wide range the instrument possess outside of rock and pop music, such as...

The guitar is a very popular instrument and you may have a budding Eric Clapton in your class. These students can be a good resource and usually will be glad to be your assistant, either by demonstrating guitar performance techniques or assisting other...