this is for all you who are guitar teachers, there must be one or two at least.
how do/did you build your lesson plans/curiculem/sylabus
how do you know what to teach next?
I have been teaching classical for a while, and recently stopped because nobody wants to me to teach it except the parents of snotty little kids who haven't grown an attention span.
so I want to teach rock/metal so I get an attentive student base.
but I dont know where to start.
so how do you structure your teaching?
I know how, but not what, most of the books I have found are really awful.

should I let the students decide which areas they want to study? or should I tell them? should I make them play with/without a pick? or let them decide? what about left hand fingering? if someone wants to learn to play like hendrix, classical fingerstyle won't help.

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i'm not a teacher, but ask who their favourite bands are and who they want to play like. then go from the basics of what they want to learn.

if they want to be the next angus young, then teach them chord technique. i can tell you now, parents won't be wanting to pay $50 an hour to have someone teach them power chords

if they want to be the next jason becker, just teach them the basics of shred.

use a bit of theory, you basically have to teach it to be a good teacher, but don't use "we'll be learning theory until you can do A bars, B time signatures" etc because they will just get bored if you teach them only theory. best of luck

When I had lessons we started off with a bit of theory and some simple chord songs, then It moved to a point where I brought in music and we would play that. And every now and then we would do a scale or something like that.

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My friend follows lessons with a GIT graduate.

It's like one class each three/four months, one hour. He talks through a lot of theory, and gives some exercices and applications of the theory in actual playing.

He just asks for your level of theory and builds on from there.

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when I took lessons, my teacher taught my the basics of guitar first (cause I was a noob, if theyre not then dont) like chords and a few exercises. then it was basically whatever I wanted to learn which is really what kept me going because i wasnt being forced to learn some shit that he thought I should know. if they dont know what to learn then yea ask em who they dig as players and go in that derection

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ha ha I can just imagine it
"ok this week i learnt chords, next week i wanna learn to play no boundaries by micheal angelo batio!"

I suppose then, the difficulty is finding pieces which are challenging to their level and take the student in the right direction.

ok im going to give it a go, ill let you know what happens...

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Hey.

I am guitar teacher, but exactly now, I´m not "practicing", this year I´m working in a financial enterprise and them come here to control this internet users site.(I don´t have time to teach except a classical guitar student at home. )

When I was a real teacher, I liked to do the lesson the most funny I could. Form me the 3 basical pilars are:
1- To know the guitar and its posibble soundings. Fifths, harmonics, Tapping, distortion, no distortion,...
2- To know theory (modes, etc) and their posiblle soundings. I mean harminizing, disonant notes, etc
3- PLaying technique:fingers natural position = easyiest position:,alternate picking, sweepicking, like hendrix, hammer-on pulloffs etc


I try to start on the basics of music theory, guitar theory(what notes are where) and playing tecnique (for me is important to start in alternate picking, because Í,m "starting" to control this technique.

If the student loves heavy metal, I try to teach him/her the power chord, palm muted, some menor scales and how to harmonize them and the pentatonic minor, for example.

If he/she likes funky, I try to teach him/her , some 9th chords, some sacales (pentatonic minor and mayor) and some funky rythm.

If he/she likes flamenco, I try to teach him/her some phrigian sacles, mayor scale a lot of right hand technique (without pick, normally) and some gipsy sounding chords and progresions.

If he/she likes jazz, I try to teach him/her some blues and rock´n roll, and a lot of modal theory, and the REAL BOOk.

If he/she like death metal I sell my guitars.

BUt the most important thing. I prepare the lessons at home and write in my portable PC which are the progresions of the teachers and waqht are their virtualities, bad habits, etc

SOMEtimes we watch a VIDEO to SEE the techniques

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thanks behemoth, some very good points there.
how did you collect information about students(what bad habits they have etc)? did you just have a little paragraph written about each one? or was it more of a database type thing?

I've been thinking about putting together a tree of modules, from which the student can pick and choose their learning path, what do you think?

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huh?

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First off you have to make the lessons exciting. Like at the end of the day show them a song they would like to learn. Dont seem to pushy. As far as what to teach? It depends on the students ability and go from there.
You dont want to discourage the student so showing off alot is a no no
enless of course he likes it. Always explain why he is learning what he is learning at the time and what he will benefit from what ever technique he is learning. That way he wont look at it as " This is boring and you suck".

my teacher makes song that he uses as lessons

like some chord and then u have to improvise over it in a scale
or just sweepign song
tapping songs
fastpicking, alt picking songs

and ofcuz mixes of the above
this is probaly a useles spost cuz its kinda obvious what i just told

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Is more like a small notes for every student. First of all, I put the lesson taht he/she has to study(with 15-20 students you don´t know exactly waht you said to each student the past week)
For example.
He goes out of tempo in exercise "IIIPICK", then you need to prepare some exercises to take him into tempo (I mean you must tell him waht he need).
Or hes hand position is one finger position only)

I dont know; are things that you´ll see directly playing with him/her. IT doesn´t mean that you do the things right, but you KNOW what is CORRECT and what NO.

For example I,m know very bad music theory extrictly theorical, but IF I have a guitar it is easyer (the intervals, key changes, etc etc ... ).Are easier than a unique and exclusively theorical view. THat was I wanted to say when I was speaking about knowing the guiatr, not exclusively wich the notes are. Also knowing only seeing or LISTENING them which intervals are.

P.D:listening;I think this is very important to a musician. To play you wannna play.

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