How To Teach Guitar Effectively And Help Your Guitar Students Make MASSIVE Progress From Studying With You

by Tom Hess

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• Their own motivation, work ethic and commitment.
   
• Your guitar teaching skills and your ambition to help your guitar students reach their goals.

You can’t control your guitar students’ level of commitment, but...

You can control your guitar teaching skills. 

Good news is:

You can develop your guitar teaching skills the same way you learned to play your guitar.

All it takes is practice, training and patience.

The better your guitar teaching skills are, the more you stand out from all other guitar teachers in your area.

Want to see an example of great guitar teaching skills?

Watch this video:

Question: “But Tom Hess, all guitar students have totally unique goals, challenges and musical weaknesses! How does one learn to effectively teach all types of guitar students?”

Answer: Teaching guitar the right way is easier than you think. The problems your guitar students face are caused by many similar things. The best guitar teachers know how to identify these causes, how to spot them in their students' playing and create effective solutions that make their students improve very rapidly. You can learn to do the same. When you do, you become the #1 guitar teacher in your area.

These guitar teaching tips make you a better guitar teacher quickly and help your students become awesome musicians:

 

Guitar Teaching Tip #1: Be More Than A Guitar Teacher - Become An Effective Problem Solver

Your guitar students have many problems they want you to help them fix. Most guitar teachers try to solve the biggest cause of their students’ problems right away. This approach does more harm than good to many of your students.

Here is why:

You are not teaching music, you are teaching people. People have emotions and get frustrated when dealing with difficult challenges. Your students often beat themselves up inside their own minds when their guitar playing problems seem hard to fix.

Dealing with the biggest causes of your students’ problems first can make them feel bad about their playing and doubt their potential. This mindset causes some people to quit guitar lessons.

What to do instead: Learn to manage your guitar students’ emotions as you improve their musical skills.

Focus first on the issues that are easiest to solve. Walk your guitar students through the process of mastering them. This gives your students immediate victories and builds their confidence in your skills as a guitar teacher.

This confidence inspires your students to overcome their next (bigger) challenges (with your help). Such method for solving your guitar students’ problems is one of the keys to your long term success as a guitar teacher.

Tip: Praise your students heavily when they break through an obstacle and improve their guitar playing. This greatly improves their motivation and self-confidence (and appreciation towards you). Watch the video from 8:06 to see what it means to recognize your guitar students’ achievements.
 

Guitar Teaching Tip #2: Keep Your Guitar Students Studying With You For Long Periods Of Time

The amount of time your guitar students study with you has a direct impact on their musical progress. Being an active student makes them feel accountable to learn and practice guitar on a consistent basis.

Fun fact: The more money your guitar students pay you, the better they tend to become as musicians.

Example: I charge $250 an hour for live, in-person guitar lessons. Guitar students who invest this much money to study with me are totally committed to do everything I tell them to do. These students make a lot of progress in a short amount of time. Part of that progress comes from my proven guitar teaching methods and skills. The rest is a direct result of the students’ own commitment and desire to maximize their investment.

Learn how to keep your guitar students taking lessons for a long time and make them love every minute of it.
 

Guitar Teaching Tip #3: Combine A Variety Of Effective Guitar Teaching Formats

Private guitar lessons and group guitar classes are the most common guitar teaching formats. Most guitar teachers falsely believe that private guitar lessons are the best way to teach guitar. This is false. Private guitar lessons can be valuable for some situations, but this teaching format also has many weaknesses. Group lessons are far superior to private guitar lessons in most cases (if they are taught correctly).

Question: “But Tom Hess, private lessons give students the teachers’ undivided attention and group lessons don’t. Therefore private lessons are better than group guitar lessons.”

Answer: Your guitar students do not need your undivided attention every single minute of every guitar lesson. They need to:

• Learn to be independent and self-reliant.
   
• Be inspired by being around other musicians.
   
• Learn from the questions other guitar students ask.
   
• Learn from the challenges your other guitar students face.
   
• Practice playing with other musicians.
   
• Have you (the teacher) guide and correct them when needed.
   
• Learn how to overcome performance anxiety.

Sterile isolation of private lessons doesn't prepare your students for the real-world of guitar playing…group lesson format does.

Question: “But Tom Hess, how can students learn effectively in a group when everyone is at different skill levels and some people progress faster than others?”

Answer: This problem is easily solved when you know how to teach group classes the right way. Guitar teacher training helps you improve your guitar teaching skills and become the best teacher in your area.

The video at the top of this page is a sample of a group guitar lesson (taught in front of more than 150 guitar teachers).

Teaching group guitar lessons also makes your guitar teaching business incredibly lucrative. This guitar teaching video shows how.
 

Guitar Teaching Tip #4: Teach Your Guitar Students To Practice Guitar Consistently AND Correctly

You must train your guitar students how to practice guitar the right way. This skill is the difference between rapid musical progress and a lifetime of frustration.

The vast majority of guitar teachers make 2 mistakes in this area:

Mistake #1: Most teachers only give some general guidelines to their guitar students on how to practice something new. They don’t go into enough detail about correct guitar practice and don't verify if their guitar students actually understand how to practice.

Hint: “Verifying” does NOT mean asking for verbal confirmation from your student. It means watching your guitar student practice in front of you to ensure they are practicing the right way.

Mistake #2: Most guitar teachers don’t explain the benefits of practicing something correctly vs. incorrectly. They assume their students will:

• Trust them completely and do what you tell them to do.
   
• Be strong-minded enough and not get distracted.
   
• Persevere if they do not see immediate results.

…most of the time this doesn't happen unless you do your job of “selling” the benefits of correct practice in advance.

This video shows how to explain the benefits of proper guitar practice to your students:

Training your students to practice guitar correctly is key to becoming the #1 guitar teacher in your area.
 

Guitar Teaching Tip #5: Teach Your Guitar Students To Integrate Their Skills Using The Geometric Approach

Most guitar teachers take a linear approach to teaching guitar. They teach their guitar students in a step-by-step, sequential way. The linear approach to teaching guitar makes perfect sense if you were teaching a machine. However, this method doesn't work for most human beings who are:

• imperfect,
   
• non linear in their thinking,
   
• subject to emotions
   
• have their own reasons for playing guitar

Example: many guitar teachers teach their students various skills and pieces of musical knowledge…but not how to integrate their skills together. The result: many guitar players struggle to apply their skills to playing real music. It’s frustrating to be advanced in one area (such as technique) yet feel like a total beginner in another area (for example - songwriting).

Solution: teach your guitar students using the Geometric Guitar Teaching Method™. This means you should not wait until a certain skill is mastered before teaching your students to apply and integrate it with other skills.

Implement these tips to help your guitar students become better guitar players and grow your reputation as a highly effective guitar teacher in your area. 

This guitar teaching eGuide helps you keep your guitar students from quitting lessons.

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