Guitar Lessons Tulsa | Guitar Instruction Tips
This content was created for Curtis Music Academy
Throughout the course of teaching guitar lessons Tulsa, I have come across a few different tips that I have noticed that I had struggled with as I was starting out teaching lessons and I’d like to share them with you so that you can become a better guitar instructor in Tulsa. One of the things that happened as you are teaching is that you realize how well or poorly you communicate things throughout the course of teaching because people either understand you very easily or they have a difficult time understanding what you’re asking and therefore they ask for clarification or they simply do whatever it is that you’re asking incorrectly.
They might not place their finger where you’re asking them to place their finger because you are doing a poor job communicating as an instructor. One of the biggest things that I had realized as I started teaching guitar is that I would frequently use the word this, here or there. I would use words that weren’t descriptive and so people didn’t understand what I was talking about.
So to give a specific example, if I was asking them to place their finger on the sixth string of the third fret, I would just place my own finger on the sixth string, third fret while teaching the guitar lessons Tulsa. And then I would say, place your finger here. Or I would point to their guitar and place my finger on their guitar of the sixth string, third fret. And I would say, put your finger right here. And this isn’t descriptive enough.
Not only do you need to place your finger in the correct spot and say, place your finger here, but then replace the word here with sixth string, third fret. So always be very descriptive in the way that you communicate so that there’s no way that they could possibly misunderstand where to place your finger unless they don’t understand the actual concept of what you are asking.
So don’t allow the student to make a mistake because of your poor communication. Otherwise you have to figure out where it is that they’re not understanding. Are they not understanding the words? Are they not understanding how to place their finger in the correct spot? Are they not understanding a string? And so these are things that are very important as you are communicating with your students.
And not only should you not use the words here there, but you should say the same question, two to three different ways throughout the course of a lesson and throughout the course of your specific instruction of a concept. So if you aren’t trying to explain a major scale in your guitar lessons Tulsa, then you should explain it about three different ways so that the student can understand multiple different ways. So a major scale sounds happy. So you could explain that by using the major scale, it’s going to allow us to play songs that are really nice and pretty.
And furthermore, if you read sheet music going from c all the way to the next c, it is a major scale. And so this is something that you can explain. And then lastly, you would just do it one other way and that is how you would want to communicate as an instructor. You want to find multiple ways to help them with the exact same content.
So then lastly, if there’s any reason for them to misunderstand or have a difficult time with the concept of a major scale, then you can help them by pinpointing exactly why it is that they’re having a difficult time developing this scale. Be sure to be very clear, be descriptive in your words so that the student can understand effectively and efficiently and they will not misunderstand what it is that you are talking about. So then that comes down to my next point, which is understanding Miss Understandings. So what I mean by this is a lot of times when someone does something incorrectly that you have asked for, if you have asked someone to give you
a specific problem and you are trying to address what it is that they are trying to figure out, sometimes a student might play something incorrectly or if you are giving them instruction, they might make a mistake. And a lot of times people will make a mistake and they’ll be able to fix it themselves. That’s just a fluke. But sometimes a student might not understand what it is that you are asking them to do. And sometimes they understand about 75 percent of the content and it’s only 25 percent that they’re confused about.
And yet they make a mistake. So our job as instructors is to figure out what it is that they do understand so that we can continue to help them develop the remaining 25 percent that it is that they don’t understand. And a lot of times misunderstanding comes because they actually do understand the content. They just don’t understand the full scheme of the content during their guitar lessons Tulsa. So for us as instructors, we need to figure out what it is that they do understand and develop on top of all of that. So that’s the biggest thing that we need to do as instructors. So furthermore, if you have a student and they do not understand
eight to notes and so you are describing an eighth note in comparison to a quarter note. And then for whatever reason they are playing half notes when they’re reading eighth notes because they understand that an eighth note is half the amount of beets as a quarter note, but then for whatever reason they are making eighth notes, two beats because two beats is
twice the amount as one and if this is happening then likely the reason for it is because they understand. Yeah, the concept of moving notes from a whole note, which is four beats cutting it in half into two beats, cutting it in half, which is one beat. They are just incorrectly applying the concept of eighth notes to match half of a beet. They are doubling it instead of dividing it. So this is something that might happen and this is just a poor example of something that you may experience as an instructor, especially guitar instructors where students taking guitar lessons Tulsa don’t typically read sheet music quite as often as the piano or other instruments like the trumpet or the trombone.
By having these different notation it can be a little bit tricky for a guitar students. So if you are giving guitar lessons Tulsa, then I would encourage you to really dive into the way that you’re teaching and make sure that the content that you are describing is clear and concise and is very easy to understand so that as you teach it, you will be the best to guitar instructor in Tulsa.