I think im firing my guitar teacher

I did the same a while ago... things just were not working out with my old instructor and we were not going in a direction that I wanted to - I had concerns about his skill level and teaching abilities anyway.

I found a new great instructor, and so far, I can't see a foreseeable future where I won't be using her.

I have heard lots of people say to expect to go through 4-5 teachers before finding the right one for you. Luckily, my 2nd seems to be the one.

I did take a break between them the "fly solo" and take a moment to figure out what I really want from lessons, and what I can learn on my own.

I did take a break between them the "fly solo" and take a moment to figure out what I really want from lessons, and what I can learn on my own.

Glad to see im not alone. This is definitely one of the things that bothered me about him, we never even really talked about it. He never asked me what I wanted from the guitar... Maybe I shouldve brought it up but it seemed like he had lessons prepared. Anyways. I ramble.

I found this new instructor online, and emailed a long story to her. By this time, I had a lot of time to think and work out what I want to learn. I explained in detail what my goals were and what I wanted to get from her in the first bit.

It was amazing... it is like she custom tailored a course just for me on the first day... since I got all that out of the way in the emailing back and forth, we jumped right into it and haven't stopped.

Once you figure out what you want to learn, lay it out to your potential new instructor(s) and hopefully, on your first session you can hit the ground running.

By the way, if anyone is in St. Thomas Ontario Canada (or London) and wants a great instructor, her name is Wanda Taylor... I can pass on her contact info if there happens to be anyone in my area and is interested.

Glad to see im not alone. This is definitely one of the things that bothered me about him, we never even really talked about it. He never asked me what I wanted from the guitar... Maybe I shouldve brought it up but it seemed like he had lessons prepared. Anyways. I ramble.

No, you are most definitely not alone. I signed up for lessons in Jan. 2008 and attended them until August. Since then I have been going it alone, but it is not easy. It's hard to do it without a live "coach", despite having learned more from this site and from videos than in my lessons. In fact there is little I can remember from my lessons, except not wanting to do my pentatonic scales and soloing (why should I when I wanted to learn and play rhythm first?).

In the beginning I was pretty hyped but as time wore on I realized I wasn't going in the direction I wanted to. It was mostly my fault, though I have to ascribe some of it to my teacher. He is a a great guitarist, but not necessarily a great teacher. This happened to me once before. I've heard this sort of thing from a number of people, the latest from the lessons co-ordinator of a larger facility. She said they will not hire younger guitarists to teach just because they are fantastic guitarists. They have to be able to teach. She knew exactly what I was talking about, and runs into it all the time. She said based on our conversation she has two older, more experienced teachers in mind for me.

Now I am thinking seriously about signing up for lessons at this larger facility in the near future. I've put together a resume' of sorts of what I've done, what I want to do, what I want out of my lessons and my teacher.

"My mama told me
You better shop around, aah-ha-ha
You better shop around..."

Yea pretty common. I went through a couple early on but I didn't have to quit they quit so I had two teachers for like 2 lessons each, then I moved to North Carolina and didn't take lessons for almost 9 months or so. That teacher was OK, good guitarist and good teacher but he had a definite structure to how he presented material and what he would do. One of the things he told me on day one was that if I just wanted hm to tab out songs he wouldn't do that, but after a few months he did tab some out for me although many or most were songs he initiated.

I moved back to CT and again took a break for sveral months and got on a waiting list of a local guy who had great recommendations. I've been with him ever since.

Now I am going about this much differently than most people. When I first started we would do some technical exercies and then work on a song but I started playing with a bunch of guys and we decided we wanted to play out so now pretty much all he does for me is tab out songs. But his tabs are the best I've found including buying books/internet(well none of them are ever right)and I've become a bit addicted to them.

For the most part we are playing classic rok and none of it's all that hard (excluding some solos) but once and awhile there will be some harder parts that are either very fast or require some unusual fingerings and that's mostly where he helps me sort it out.

I know this is maybe not the best use of my time with him but I have this insatiable need to learn a new song every week or I'll get bored. I've got about a 100 under my belt with him.

So I have started to think about going back to some technical stuff more along the lines of learning to improv solo's which we started but stopped because I really wasn't going to be playing lead in the band anyway.