Guitar Lessons In Tulsa | Maximizing Effectiveness
This content was created for Curtis Music Academy
All right. In this edition of the Curtis music Academy podcast, I’m going to be discussing maximizing the effectiveness of your guitar lessons in Tulsa. So without further ado, my name is Steven and I’ve been teaching music for about six years now on six years teaching guitar at least. And I’ve loved every single bit and every single minute of it. I’ve learned so much in this past five to six years. I’ve taught many different ages from like five to like 65 and there are lots of differences. And so, I’ve also been teaching at the Curtis music Academy for almost a year now for about 10 months and have also enjoyed every bit of it in guitar lessons in Tulsa.
And so without further ado, we’re talking about maximizing the effectiveness of your guitar lessons in Tulsa. First step, I think when it comes to maximizing the effectiveness of your guitar lessons in Tulsa is to first have a clear and concise goal. If you don’t know where you’re going, you don’t really know what you’re doing. So having a clear goal and making it very concise and precise is very important. And to do that, I would just sit down with a pen and paper and write down, you know, what are you most looking to achieve with your particular student?
What are you looking to? What is, what are their goals? What is their ultimate goal? Is it to play for a talent show at school? Is it to play for family? Maybe a family reunion? Is it to perform their own song at their own concert? There’s a ton of different scenarios. There is a ton of different contexts where their goal could be, but it is your job to get that on the first lesson. Make sure you understand it upon the very first lesson with your student understanding their goal is one of the keys to maximizing the effectiveness of your guitar lessons in Tulsa with them.
My second point is to have specific times set for each topic that you want to talk about in your lesson. You know, breaking down your lesson into short periods of time to kind of create some variety in the lesson to kind of guide you and to limit you a little bit. The limits are going to be good for you because you know exactly what you’re talking about for how long and then you know when it’s time to move on to the next thing. So in my experience using you know, a method or F a format for a 30 minute lesson, it’s a 45 minute lesson.
An hour lesson is very, very important. And so typically, you know, with a 30 minute lesson, actually this isn’t typically, but all of the time with a 30 minute lesson, I’m going to build some rapport with them for five minutes. And in that five minutes I’m asking them, you know, how, how was their week, what’d they do that week? How has their life, and just talking on things other than guitar. And after that, I’m going to review with them what we learned on our last lesson and then revise anything that needs to be corrected or addressed and polished up from maybe something they didn’t understand fully on the last lesson or a question that arose during the week for them while I wasn’t well, they were at home and not in guitar lessons in Tulsa.
These are, that’s a great time to begin to. I call it rapport review, revise. And that ensures that you guys go off to a great start and that five minutes. All right. And then the next 15 minutes is going to be on new material. You’re going to S you’re going to teach new material and how would you break that material down is really, really important. I kind of like to break it down in three to four steps and typically no further than that. That’s just me personally. If you need more steps, go for it. And if you even need less steps, go for it.
But you have 15 minutes to break down your new material into a way that is going to be useful for them and in a way that they’re going to understand. And to do that, you’ve got to break, you’ve got to chop way down. For me, chopping way down is like three to four steps and I know what to do with those three to four steps. Some people need a little bit more steps named me. Maybe I need to break it down to F. you know, six to eight steps, which is fine, or just one or two steps. And then, you know, that gives you plenty of time to elaborate on one topic. And then the next part nonetheless, whenever you are.
You know, setting aside these times, make sure that you have some type of method that you’re using to kind of administer and to transfer skill. That’s what we’re trying to do. You’re trying to learn, they’re trying to learn from you and be as good as you are, if not better. So to do that, you know, you’ve got to have some type of transfer method of skill and it really comes down to hitting all five senses. You know, are they hearing you? Are they seeing you? Are they you know, doing it themselves? Are you doing it with them?
Those four things are key. And helping them get a full, tangible, central idea of what is what they’re supposed to do and help them repeat that two to three times and then move onto the next topic. So unless otherwise, unless they have questions or anything like that. So a good method to use during the, the new material is what we call the, the edge method, E as in Eric, D as in dog, G as in Garrett, and E as in Eric. So the edge method, the edge method that comes from the boy Scouts, which is a transfer of skill, you know, and edge is an acronym and it stands for explain, demonstrate, guide, and enable.
And this method ensures that the student and the teacher make any successful transfer of skill. So in your first nugget for your lesson, I would explain what it is that you’re doing or what it is that they should do. Then demonstrate for them what should, how to do it. Demonstrate how to do it so that they see and hear what it is they’re supposed to do. After demonstrating, you’re gonna want to guide them in doing it. This is the time where you’ll give them the floor and yourself, the floor, you’re going to walk hand in hand, so to speak. You’re going to hold their hand through the process in guitar lessons in Tulsa.
Maybe you’re learning an introduction to a song. Maybe you’re learning a verse, a pre-course, a chorus, a bridge, and you’re going to want to guide them, kind of hold their hands so to speak, through the entire intro or whatever piece or whatever section it is that you’re trying to help them learn. And you want to make sure that they do it exactly the same way that you do it. That way they get the exact same result that you want them to get. So after you’ve guided them a one to two, three times, one to three times through, you’ll want to enable them, enable them by giving them the floor completely and saying, alright, I’ve helped you do it two to three times.
Now let’s have you do it by yourself and then you will allow them to do it. Whether that’s turn on the metronome, whether that’s just letting them have the floor pre metronome and just letting them play with no stress of a metronome and just see how well they do. And if they do well, awesome. If you’ve seen a successful transfer of skill, then you can move on. If not, I would repeat the same four steps. Explain what it is that you want them to do or correct. Then demonstrate for them how to do that specific thing and the entire thing together so that they see it one more time and that they hear it one more time. Thirdly, you want to guide them through it again, so you and them walk again. And then lastly, enable them. Give them one more time to try it.