For the teachers out there, this video is focused on ideas that surround teaching guitar. In the video, I run through a collection of the most common categories of teaching that I've been involved with over the last 10 years of being on the internet teaching guitar online. Plus, I will discuss the teaching I've done in my own private music studio... 



I will be discussing, topics covering; dealing with new students, the study of guitar with intermediate players, what a student should focus on with respect to their attitude (both as a pupil and as an instructor), how to offer the most help to advanced guitar players, and how to deal with difficult students.

WATCH THE VIDEO:



NEW STUDENTS: When a person decides to study guitar, and they come in for classes, or they enroll on a lessons website, they need to always do one important thing. And, that is to properly plan their practice time.

Practice does not just happen, it needs to be planned out, it needs to be scheduled. So, if a new student can just do this one critical point, they'll have a far better chance at success.

So, remember how important it is to plan, plan, plan your time, by scheduling in practice. Once practice time is scheduled, and you're working with a comprehensive, well thought out guitar study plan, you're going to get results on guitar.



HAVE RESPECT FOR YOURSELF and YOUR TEACHER: If you take a moment and recall every successful training you've ever done, there's likely a common theme across them. And, I'll bet that it involved two things.

#1). You were in a good head-space during the instruction.

#2). There was a respect present that you had for the teacher and that the teacher conveyed back to you.

Generally, when it comes to music teachers, there is a two-tier level of respect. One is for their skill over the material being taught, and the other is the teacher's ability to clearly deliver the instruction, (so, it makes reasonable sense).

If those two parameters aren't present, it's unlikely that you'll feel compelled to want to work on any of the material being presented. And, the respect goes both ways.

Conscientious students offer respect, and conscientious teachers also project respect toward their students. Good teachers are also willing to change along the way because good teachers tend to be quite flexible in their approach and they understand that there's a level of value behind analyzing all types of situations as well as, criticism.



INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS: If beginners require a well thought out practice schedule, combined with really good guitar study system, so then what if anything changes when we upgrade the skills over to the Intermediate level of guitar playing?

That's a good question and unless you've worked with a lot of Intermediate guitarists, it's also a tough one to answer. This is an interesting area because Intermediate players tend to need a lot more hand-holding from their teachers.

In the studio, I need to be more focused on my Intermediate players with respect to their understanding of the topics that we're studying. And, with my online students, the majority of my Skype sessions are with players who are at that Intermediate level, (on the website), and they can have a lot of difficulty with understanding everything in that Intermediate guitar course, (my Intermediate course is a very involved program of study).

Students can have troubles with everything from; neck layout, the geometry of the neck regions, they will have barre-chord problems and there can be problems with learning rhythm patterns.

All of these issues combined make the Intermediate player one of the most challenging to teach guitar to.



TEACHING ADVANCED PLAYERS: Most people who set out to teach guitar in life, do not fully comprehend what an Advanced Guitar Player is, until they get experience working with one. And, until a teacher spends a number of years working with Advanced level guitar players, most teachers won't actually know what Advanced Level instruction involves.

Advanced guitarists know their stuff - period. They can play almost everything you throw at them, plus they know a ton of songs, and their comprehension of theory and the elements of music can be at a really high level of comprehension.

The issues advanced players tend to have are very specific and will mainly revolve around "why they can't do a certain specific thing" on guitar.

In dealing with the Advanced player, (as an instructor), you have to dig down and discover what playing elements are missing from the skill set of your student. Once you find those missing pieces of your students playing situation, you'll be able to help them move forward.

However, as a teacher, you'll need vast experience, because Advanced students are a very specialized group of musician to teach.



DIFFICULT STUDENTS: The final idea I wanted to go over with you, is dealing with students who are difficult to work with. These are going to be guitar students who have an overall difficult personality type that you'll have to contend with.

As a teacher, you'll need to understand that students who are like this, do not just have a problem dealing with you, they have problems dealing with almost everyone they encounter out there in the world. So, you (as their teacher), need to understand that it will require a specialized set of skills when it comes to dealing with people of difficult personalities.

If you're flexible enough in your behavior, without giving into with these people, you'll generally find some common ground and you'll be able to cope with them.

However, you'll also need to realize that sometimes it just doesn't work out. And, in very rare cases, you'll quite likely (if you teach long enough), have to call things quits with some of these types of students.

It's an awful situation when it comes to this, but again (if you teach long enough), unfortunately this will occur on the very rarest of occasions when it comes to dealing with difficult personality types.



VISIT THE WEBSITE:
Well, I'd like to end the discussion by saying, thanks for joining me... If you want to learn more about what I do as an online guitar teacher, then head over to my website at creativeguitarstudio.com and sign up your FREE lifetime membership.

When you want more, you can always upgrade to either a Basic or a Premium lesson package and start studying the guitar courses I've organized for the members of my website.

Also, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on all of this in the comment section below.

If you enjoyed this video, give it a thumbs up and subscribe for more on YouTube. Thanks again and we'll catch up next week, for another episode of the "Guitar Blog Insider."