How much do you pay for lessons?

Nice post. I'd love to see (somewhere) your full brochure maybe in a short article or a post. I think it would give those just starting a start on getting their first teacher and what to expect.

NoteBoat,

Wow, I hope I get a teacher with the same mindset that you have. You seem to really want your students to learn. My lesson is set for this Friday and i'll let you know how it goes and what happened. That way you can rate him :) .

I think they have a couple of teachers their. So far, I learned the Natural note and c scale on my own. I thought this would help the teacher in teaching me.

I'm going to do the following when I meet him:

1. Tell him I like Rock music and give him a cd I made.
2. Tell him I want to learn to play "guitar" and not just songs.
3. I want to learn scales, theory and everything to tie music into picture.
4. I want to learn rythm and sturmming patterns.
5. Learn Songs.

I'm going to try an hour and do 1/2 hr to 2/3 of the music theory / scale / technique stuff. Then a 1/2 hour on learning a song / various ones.

I had a question - Should I bring tabs of the songs I want to learn as well? And...will he play the cd I have on the spot?

I wouldn't expect him to play the CD on the spot, for a couple of reasons - first, not everybody has a stereo or boom box in their teaching space... and second, because you're there for a lesson - why waste it listening?

I'd hold off on showing up with tabs until you've had a lesson or two. Then ask your teacher if it would be helpful to see tabs for music you're interested in. I prefer students not bring in tab, for several reasons, but every teacher is going to have his or her own approach. I do teach students to read tab, but I'd rather control the process... because tab has some serious shortcomings:

1) it's not visual. If you look at standard notation, you can tell at a glance what positions it's playable in (for example, no ledger lines above the staff = open position; no ledger lines below, up to three above = 9th or 10th position... others will be possible of course, but you can very quickly tell how much moving around you've got to do.

2) Techniques aren't buried. Standard notation will indicate vibratos or bends above the staff. It'll also clearly tell you what's legato, what's stacatto, where any tremolos are, slides, grace notes... tab buries that stuff in between the numbers (if at all!)

3) The accuracy of tab is often suspect. There's bad sheet music out there too, but I can look at sheet music and hear it in my head, so if there's a glaring error I can catch it and mark a correction.

4) Using a lot of tab shifts the emphasis away from technique and into learning songs... probably not what you want to pay for.

I figure my students are better off if I show a tab I'm already familiar with, so we can discuss the techniques involved. If a student brings sheet music or chord charts we can work with it right away, because the important stuff is all there, visually represented. It's sort of like... sheet music is in English, tab is in pig Latin - it's encoded. For example, if sheet music has one sharp in the key signature, I know it's in G major (or E minor) in less than a second. With tab, I need to look at the numbers, the strings they're on, and then figure out what notes have accidentals. If I see a 7th fret note on the 2nd string, maybe we're in G... but we could also be in D, A, E, B, F#, or Db. I have to look for other numbers... and even then I might not have it right until I've actually played through it, because you don't know if that F# (or Gb) is a one-time chromatic or part of the key.

Tab is a nice shortcut for learning songs, but if you take the time to learn standard notation, you'll actually prefer it. You get a sense for the overall scope of things right away.

I suspect you'll find that 30 or 40 minutes on scales or theory will give you far more than you can absorb. When I sought out my first guitar teacher, I thought I was already pretty decent on guitar. He agreed, and showed me four or five major scale fingerings that I didn't know in lesson 1 - in about 10 minutes. I was still stumbling with them the next week, and the week after that, as I recall. You might be better off learning one a week and getting it down completely (or maybe I'm just a slow learner and you'll do fine!)

That's it.... I'm moving closer to Chicago. :P

Thanks for posting part of your brochure, Noteboat. I'd be interested in seeing the rest of it, too.

Don't pack on my account, R3d - I'm sure there are good teachers where you live. It's just that most people who teach private music lessons (not just guitar, but any instrument) are doing it to make extra money... their real ambitions are somewhere else - being a rock star, arranging for big bands, whatever. That's what they focus on.

I love teaching. Since that's my ambition, that's what I work at improving - I read all kinds of stuff written by piano teachers, theory teachers, violin teachers... then I think about whether it makes sense, how I could apply it, and I test out the ideas.

I know I'm not alone in that ambition. Just find somebody that teaches because it's what they want to do, not because the car payment is coming up. :)

NoteBoat has provided some very interesting information regarding the length of lessons, but there was something I was left wondering:

How does the kind of music you're interested in influence the length you should go for?

For example, while rock songs average about 4 minutes, many classical pieces go on for quite a bit longer.

Should you take this into account right at the start, or should you start expanding the length of lessons according to the growing complexity of study material? (This, of course, has a big disavantage: if a teacher is already booked full, he won't be able to give you more time per lesson.)

Also, for financial reasons I intend to study by myself for some time, before pairing up with a teacher. How long is it reasonable to study solo, before you start doing more bad than good?

The pieces for classical may typically be longer than rock, but longer pieces don't really demand longer lesson times. When you study a long piece, you'll be working on specific sections at a time...

If the piece introduces only a few new technical demands, you'll focus on those sections, and a lesson may only address one or two of the hurdles you'll need to get over. Once you have those down, you might play through the whole piece, but not repeatedly - just once, maybe twice, to make sure there aren't any other hangups. There's really not a lot of sense in playing through a 10 minute piece every week if it's only 2 minutes of it that give you problems.

The same thing is true of rock music - what's the point of going through repeated sections? A 3 min. rock tune won't be performed 3 minutes at time either. If a student can do the changes for a chorus properly the first time, I'll assume there won't be a problem on the second or third time through.

There are only a few situations where I have students play entire pieces (other than very short ones) in lessons:

1. A complete beginner learning a first song (or two) - being able to play 'the whole thing' along with a CD, then accompanied by me, and finally unacompanied, gives a tremendous sense of accomplishment. I don't want to take that away from any student! But once you've learned a song or two... then I'll address the hard spots, and the student can work on the rest alone.

2. Learning how to read music with repeats, D.C. or D.S. instructions, and codas. I have to make sure it's understood, and you can't do that out of context. Once a student knows how to find the segno and navigate to a coda, then we might take future pieces 10 measures from the D.S. sign, or something like that.

3. Introducing improvisation - going one time through a progression isn't enough experimentation time. I'll do a progression with 4-5 repeats so they can expeiment.

4. Advanced improvisation - when you're going for the whole enchilada of structuring a solo. (The middle ground of learning improvisation - learning to target notes for the changes, learning to build phrases, etc., can be done with shorter sections)

5. Preparation of recital pieces. Even then, if the student is planning on doing every notated repeated section, you only need to practice that if you'll be performing from memory - in lessons you can go through sections one time each.

As far as when to get a teacher, I'd get a lesson or two right away to spot any problems with instrument position, posture, and hand position - if there's something wrong there, you'll end up 're-learning' later on, when it's habit. When you find a teacher, share the financial concerns - maybe they can work out a lesson every few weeks to nip bad habits in the bud. If you're a really dedicated student, a teacher might even discount your lessons while you're in a rough patch - I've done that... I sure won't do it for everybody, and I sure don't do it often, but just about every working musician has been there, and remembers.

There's really not a lot of sense in playing through a 10 minute piece every week if it's only 2 minutes of it that give you problems.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I just hope that teachers here in town follow that school of thought.

I learned the piano with a very strict (in a technical sense) teacher, who believed that even a mistake in the penultimate bar meant you'd have to start the whole piece from the top, and that in class every piece had to be played in its entirety.

(And no, we didn't pay by the hour ;) so that wasn't the reason.)

That said, I suspect that guitar teachers may be a little less "hung-up" than classical piano teachers, and be more open to adapting Method to fit the student's logistic requirements of time and money.

I'd get a lesson or two right away to spot any problems with instrument position, posture, and hand position
(snip)
maybe they can work out a lesson every few weeks to nip bad habits in the bud.

Two very good sugestions - things which I didn't think teachers would be willing to do.

(I was again looking at this from the only angle I am familiar with: a piano teacher who would never accept one-off lessons for anyone, and who believed that anything under two 2-hour lessons per week was goofing off.)

I will definitely be looking here in town for a guitar teacher who accepts giving you occasional lessons, and only works on problem-spots. :D

(If I could afford it at the moment, I might again go for the strict-discipline method... but, alas, money always gets in the way of your having fun. ;) )

Noteboat, nah, not moving anytime soon unless Uncle Sam says so. Was just teasin, but I do hope to find a teacher with your attitude.

Martha, one of the reasons I decided to start lessons now is to make sure I wasn't forming bad habits. Um, and there was one thing he suggested I try to correct. I've only had one lesson so far, I talked it over with the guy and he is cool with me coming in every other week or so.