Teaching Beginner Guitar Students: Do This To Keep Beginner Students’ Interest In Playing Guitar And Taking Lessons With You
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What’s the #1 skill you need when teaching beginner guitar students?
Is it knowing ‘what to teach’ your guitar students?
Is it getting your guitar students motivated?
Is it getting them to believe in themselves?
Hint: It’s none of these.
The answer is: knowing how to keep beginner students’ interest (in learning to play guitar and take guitar lessons with you).
When you can do that (keep beginner students’ interest), everything else about teaching guitar (and teaching beginner guitar students) becomes easy.
Your guitar students will be much more eager to practice what you give them.
Your beginner guitar students will start to believe in themselves (and in you) and will remain your students much longer.
And that means you’ll make way more money teaching beginner guitar students than any other teacher in your area.
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By submitting your info, you agree to send it to Tom Hess Music Corporation who will process and use it according to their privacy policy.
But how do you keep beginner students’ interest when teaching guitar?
Here are 5 things to know about this guitar teaching skill:
Now, let’s go deeper into each of these elements of teaching beginner guitar:
Guitar Teaching Tip #1 On How To Keep Beginner Students’ Interest: Get Your Beginner Students Playing ASAP.
Here is why this matters so much when teaching beginner guitar students:
Believe it or not: many (beginner) guitar students have one foot out the door even when they are inquiring (or sitting in) your guitar lessons.
That’s because they are full of doubt about their potential to learn guitar.
They often question if they are wasting their time practicing (and signing up for lessons) and wonder if they have natural talent, the proper hand size or potential to ever learn to play anything.
That’s why the best way to keep beginner students’ interest is to get them to play something (ideally a song or melody they can recognize and feel excited to play and show off to their friends and family!) as soon as possible.
It doesn't even matter if they play in perfect time or use proper technique. What matters is – giving them a quick win as early (and as often) as you can as you are teaching guitar to them.
Then, as your guitar students’ confidence builds, you can refine their other skills (e.g. timing and picking/fretting mechanics) that take more time and effort to develop.
Guitar Teaching Tip #2 On How To Keep Beginner Students’ Interest: Make Your Guitar Students Feel Smart.
Praise your guitar students for taking the initiative to take up guitar AND begin lessons instead of learning on their own.
Doing this can go a long way towards helping your guitar students persevere through the challenges of learning to play.
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Here are some things you can talk about when teaching beginner guitar students:
1. If you’re teaching guitar to kids, tell their parents that guitar lessons tend to make children do better in school (which is true). And add that – unlike, say, sports, which many children only play when they are very young – playing a musical instrument tends to be a lifelong skill.
So, guitar lessons end up being an investment in the child’s future.
(Saying this may not seem like it will do much to keep beginner students’ interest, since you are addressing the ‘parents’ of your guitar students... but guess what? Your parents are the ones who decide to keep their child taking guitar lessons or not.)
2. If you are teaching guitar to adults, praise your guitar students for having a growth mindset.
And tell them that ambitious adults tend to have far more potential than many teenagers because they tend to know what they want and act with more urgency than younger people who believe they have all the time in the world.
3. If you are teaching guitar to retirees, tell them about (true) studies that confirmed how learning new skills in general (and learning music lessons in particular) has been correlated with brain health and even longevity.
Guitar Teaching Tip #3 On How To Keep Beginner Students’ Interest: Surround Them With Other People Similar To Them.
This is reason #874 why you should be teaching guitar in groups.
Yep.
When you teach beginners 1-1, it’s very hard to convince them that they are not alone...
... and that they are NOT the worst guitar student in the history of everything (which is how they’ll likely be feeling when they struggle to do something in front of you).
When you’re teaching beginner guitar students in groups, you don’t need to try nearly as hard to ‘convince’ students of their potential...
... since they can see many other guitar students just like them during their lessons with you.
This makes your job much easier and helps you implement the other guitar teaching tips from this article on how to keep beginner students’ interest.
Guitar Teaching Tip #4 On How To Keep Beginner Students’ Interest: Get Ahead Of Their Expectations
You should know the thoughts, fears, questions and concerns beginners are likely to have at every step of their journey with you.
And the key is to address them BEFORE they your students vocalize them. This way your guitar students will feel like you’re reading their mind.
This is a powerful way to keep beginner students’ interest when teaching guitar.
You already know (from reading the other guitar teaching tips in this article) what you can expect when teaching beginner guitar players. (e.g. their concerns about age, natural talent, hand size and practice time.)
So, take your time and think through some of the ways you could allay their concerns in their lessons with them. (If you want help with this, get guitar teacher training.)
Guitar Teaching Tip #5 On How To Keep Beginner Students’ Interest: Paint A Vision Of The Great Things Your Students Can Achieve With You.
Tell (true) stories of how many beginners started with you and the cool musical things they are doing now because they didn’t give up. This will inspire your current beginners to persevere and stay engaged in the process.
This is something you could and should be doing with students of all skill levels... from beginners to advanced.
Now that you know how to keep beginner students’ interest, the next step is to learn how to attract more guitar students, so you can become more successful and make a lot more money teaching guitar. I show you how in my free eGuide ‘This Will Get You A Lot More Guitar Students’. Download it today and discover the secrets to attracting guitar students that most guitar teachers will never know.
Learn how to make more money teaching guitar, while working less hours.
