Yes and no, Denyaw...
Most good teachers tend to be fairly busy teachers. A teacher with a full schedule will typically have 50-70 students.
I'll ask students what their favorite songs and bands are, and many times there's a lot of overlap. High School Musical, Sponge Bob Square Pants, Ben Harper or Jack Johnson - every age group has some acts/songs that a teacher can learn once and present to four or five different students.
But imagine 70 students each want to learn a different song. There just aren't enough hours in the day for that - and a teacher who tries to accommodate every request will have to teach fewer students (and therefore have to raise the rates to keep making a living at it!)
I have some students who ask for off-the-wall songs that I'm pretty sure I'll never get another request for. If they bring in a CD, we can listen to it together. I'll show them how they can figure out what key it's in, and what the chord progression is. I can teach them the specific techniques that are used in the song - bends, tapping, double stops, whatever. But I can't invest he amount of time it would take to learn the tune note-for-note and teach it to them.
I do know of at least one teacher who will do exactly that - but he does it on the student's dime. No matter what the song is, he'll figure it out one riff at a time during the lesson. His students often spend at least four lessons on a single song, sometimes a lot more.
But most students want to learn more than 6 or 8 songs per year.
One other factor is how well the songs a student wants to learn fit together in terms of their development as a guitarist. You can teach basic skills using just about any style of music. But if the student dictates the entire curriculum, you get bad results - I've seen students who could play all sorts of exotic chords because they were required by the songs they learned, but couldn't finger an open E major - they'd never needed one before. So if a student's song lineup would leave big gaps in their knowledge base, it's a teacher's responsibility to fill those gaps - using songs the student likes if possible.
Lessons are expensive. For the money students put out, a teacher should help them learn to play guitar, not just their favorite tunes.
Guitar teacher offering lessons in Plainfield IL
Note,
That's where I am with my current teacher. He WILL tab out every song I bring in note for note which is great, but as you said it's on my time and your right there were a few that took 3-4 lessons....that's a lot to pay to tab a song out.
I would have thought the teachers would be able to just pull out a tab that they had already tabbed out for another student but none of them ever did that. They always tab from scratch, I always thought that was because they wanted to milk a little money from the students.
I've been struggling with this for awhile and wondering if I need to reassess my goals with him. I do feel I am making progress but soemtimes I still think I'm definitely not where I should be. Of course some of that is probably my study habits. Although I do practice all the things the teacher gives me each week I'm just not sure if I really practice correctly.
"It's all about stickin it to the man!"
It's a long way to the top if you want to rock n roll!
