question for the Music teachers

Subject: question for the Music teachers
From: Ridge picker
Date: 08 Jun 04 - 12:43 PM

Hi,

I have been taking guitar lessons for about a month now and love it. I am finding though after practicing my lesson for a while every day I get bored to death with it. Is it ok to try other stuff or is there a chance I might pick up a bad habit i.e. finger positioning? Also what qualities does a good teacher have in your mind.

Thanks,

Pete

Subject: RE: question for the Music teachers
From: mooman
Date: 08 Jun 04 - 01:29 PM

Dear Pete,

As far as I'm concerned, I love my students to try other things and then play them back to me. Sometimes there are small things to correct and sometimes I learn something new myself.

A good teacher should not be dogmatic, should work to develop their students' natural abilities and likes and dislikes, should criticise (where necessary) constructively and never in a negative manner, and try to develop an enthusiasm amongst their students. If you bore your students you should not be teaching them music.

Peace

moo

Subject: RE: question for the Music teachers
From: M.Ted
Date: 08 Jun 04 - 08:22 PM

A good teacher should give you the basics, and should help you to understand how to use them--this is especially important for guitar players, because they have to work out a lot of stuff on their own--

Subject: RE: question for the Music teachers
From: David Ingerson
Date: 08 Jun 04 - 09:26 PM

Mooman has it right. If you are bored with what your teacher is giving you, you need to ask for more variety, more challenge, or a change to something you enjoy or are inspired by.

That is a tall order for the teacher of a beginning musician, but if the main goal is instilling (or expanding) the joy of playing the instrument (part of which is learning to play it better, i.e., technique, the practice of which can be boring), then that technique needs to be embedded in "real" music that will be a joy to play, even at a rudimentary level.

Of course, some teachers think the joy of music should be secondary to getting the technique right. In that case, a change of teachers might be in order.

Good luck, be assertive, and, in my opinion, fooling around, experimenting, and going off on your own is almost always a good thing! Find things you love to play!

David

Subject: RE: question for the Music teachers
From: Mooh
Date: 08 Jun 04 - 09:44 PM

I agree with the others here.

Yes, by all means experiment, adventure, and dare to go where others fear to tread. Whenever I have a student return with new ideas and tunes it gives me a new opportunity to develop their skills.

The boredom you experience is natural at an early stage while there is little variation in lesson material and much repetition. That will soon change as your ability develops. If you want, ask your teacher for more to play at the same level so that you can practice with more interest, but beware that he will likely ask you to demonstrate your ability with the piece of his choosing, so have that polished for lesson day.

I think of myself as a skills guy, and I tell every new student that that is my focus (besides the fun, the theory, and the exposure to new ideas). My intent is to instill the skills so that the student can apply them to music outside of the lesson material. They self-teach better that way. I choose lesson material, practical tunes, based on skills they can learn rather than simply providing tunes for them to regurgitate on demand without knowledge of how they work.

Don't be afraid to communicate with the teacher so that he can fully understand your needs.

Ultimately, the student doesn't need the teacher, and when that happens I've done my job.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: question for the Music teachers
From: Peace
Date: 08 Jun 04 - 10:01 PM

Pete,

I agree with the posters above. By all means, do your 'rote' stuff. That provides a good foundation. But when you have done your practice, then take some time to see what your guitar can do, and what you can do with it. Try things out and have fun at it. You are learning one of the most versatile, portable harmonic instruments in the world. Love it and it will love you back.

Bruce M

Subject: RE: question for the Music teachers
From: Ridge picker
Date: 08 Jun 04 - 11:21 PM

Thanks for the replies. I currently practice my lesson in the morning and free play at night. I think that my teacher is very good. Its just nice to hear some other opinions on the the subject.

Thanks again,

Pete

Subject: RE: question for the Music teachers
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 08 Jun 04 - 11:35 PM

A student may eventually out grow his current teacher, but that does not mean that he needs to stop learning from others.

:-)

Robin

Subject: RE: question for the Music teachers
From: GUEST,Heely
Date: 09 Jun 04 - 03:21 PM

One other thought on practice. I always have my students vary thier practice, play with accent on a different beat, loud, soft, slowly, as quickly as feasible, For instance - with finger picking - stress your first finger instead of the thumb for a change. It builds muscle and helps you to hear the musicality in the piece. Sometimes I have the student start from a second section instead of the first. All of this adds variety, and dispells boredom. Also, it helps with memorizing and allows you to see the music in a different way - sometimes you see a note or musical marking that you did not see before.

Subject: RE: question for the Music teachers
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 09 Jun 04 - 07:18 PM

Reminds me of when I was a kid and began clarinet lessons (on my own initiative—my parents had nothing to do with it). The teacher set me to work playing scales, but I was impatient to play something that sounded like a tune. So I gave short shrift to the scales and skipped ahead in the book and practiced a tune instead. At my next lesson, I was too embarrassed to tell the teacher what I had done. (Or maybe she never gave me an opportunity to speak—my memory on this point is hazy.) She tested me on the scales and found me wanting, so she sent me to practice in a closet while she taught other kids. I was so humiliated I quit the lessons at the first opportunity. And nobody ever asked me why.

Subject: RE: question for the Music teachers
From: GUEST,jennifer
Date: 10 Jun 04 - 01:42 AM

I don't know when I was given a recorder but at age ten I took it to Recorder Club. I was put in Beginners where they were playing G G G G... got bored and started playing Mull of Kintyre. Sent to Advanced where they discovered I couldn't read music and threw me out.

When I was seventeen my grandfather in desperation blackmailed me into taking clarinet lessons by saying "wouldn't you like to learn a PROPER instrument? I mean, if one was lying around wouldn't you pick it up out of curiosity? If the person it belonged to couldn't be found?" to shut him up I said I suppose I would and - surprise - next time I visited there was a clarinet and a lesson lined up. I took my grade three but gave up when I went to uni because I hadn't discovered folk music yet!

After 25 years or so of experimenting by myself with the recorder, and then discovering the CD and Folk Music four years ago, I think I make a passable noise but I'm probably doing it all wrong.

So now age 33 I am looking longingly at the local (mixed) Morris side which I mean to join in September and wondering if I will ever dare ask them if I can play in the band?

Subject: RE: question for the Music teachers
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 10 Jun 04 - 02:14 AM

Jim & Jennifer,

You are both examples of 'victims of insensitive a****** who just happened to think they were music teachers cause they could play a bit themselves' - LOTS of people who are much more intelligent than their teachers get humiliated and lose interest this way...

Robin

Subject: RE: question for the Music teachers
From: M.Ted
Date: 10 Jun 04 - 11:25 AM

No question that I agree with Foulestroupe--I could go on for hours about bad music teachers and the damage that they do. A good music teacher starts out by identifying the strengths and weaknesses, and finds a way to engage the strengths right away, and then develops a systematic way of building up the weaknesses. Bad ones tend to have their own little regimen that they go through, regardless of what effect it has on their students musical development--

There are a lot of bad teachers out there, many of whom only teach because they need the money, and not because they have any special ability to teach. Some are of the type that takes the joy out of music by drilling and scowling, and such things, but some of the truly worst teachers can be charming, fun, and entertaining, but who don't manage to teach their students much of anything--

It is a mistake to reject a teacher just because they make you do things that are difficult when you want to do something that is fun, though, because all the good stuff is hard the first time you try it--

Subject: RE: question for the Music teachers
From: freightdawg
Date: 10 Jun 04 - 04:38 PM

I have really enjoyed reading the posts to this thread, and as I would someday love to teach guitar, I will probably print this whole thread out for future reference, just to remind myself of the good and bad of all teachers.

I have never taught music, but I have been a flight instructor, with multiple hundreds of hours of instruction given. After a few lessons I hit on a phrase that seemed to help students grasp keeping us right-side-up. I told them that learning to fly was half science, half art. They had to get the science down or the art would never come. But, you never want to fly like a scientist - you want the plane to be your instrument or brush or pen or whatever. We would go out, practice the science, and then just see what the plane could do (within limits!). Now the connection between "science and art" is much more evident in music than flying, but it seems to me that if the student is made aware early on that the "art" or fun of music depends wholly on the "science" or rote aspects of it, then the enducement to practice would be easier.

I, too, am the victim of a music instructor who was in the job for the money. Now, some 30+ years later, I am going to go to a fine professional to give me what I hungered for all those years ago. While I will never probably be good enough to give advanced lessons, I hope to get good enough to introduce students to the science and art of guitar, with the hopes that they will blow right on past my skill level and move on to a professional instructor who can turn them in to lovely free-flying musicians.

Thanks, all.

Freightdawg

Subject: RE: question for the Music teachers
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 10 Jun 04 - 07:37 PM

There is an old oriental saying
"When the student is ready, the teacher will appear."