As the title might suggest, I'm debating on taking lessons again. (you would've figured that out on you're own right? :wink: ) I took lessons up till just this March, probably took them for about 8 months. I stopped because he was telling me to work on a lot of the same things every week (mostly timing). No fault of his. Some of the stuff we started getting into, he didn't know much about. He's a classical/flamenco guitarist. I wanted to learn some whammy bar tricks, pinch harmonics, etc, which he admitted, he wasn't very good at. Can't blame him, most flamenco guitars don't have tremolo bars.
So I'm wondering if this is a sign to keep practicing the stuff he left me with, being scales, playing with metronomes or should I find a teacher who knows more about the type of music I want to play?
"In what, twisted universe does mastering Eddie Van Halen's two handed arpeggio technique count as ABSOLUTELY NOTHING?!" - Dr Gregory House
I dunno. Not knowing the guy, it's hard to tell. My initial reaction would another teacher more in line with what you want to do.
Roy
"I wonder if a composer ever intentionally composed a piece that was physically impossible to play and stuck it away to be found years later after his death, knowing it would forever drive perfectionist musicians crazy." - George Carlin
I went through 3 teachers within a year until I found the right one. He is teaching me what I want to learn plus the necessary tools to play it. The other two teachers were excellent players however both of them kept trying to steer me towards their tastes in music. Nothing worse than trying to learn to play something you wouldn't like even if you could play it.
I started off learning from books and stuff I found on the web, mostly here actually.
After about 9 months was feeling very frustrated and got a teacher. He was great, asked what I wanted to acheive and went through what I already knew and away we went. He had studied music so he was slowly explaining theory without me even knowing it. He stopped teaching to finish uni so I found another teacher.
This one was OK but very unorganised and kept trying to teach material that was not leading to where I wanted to go. He was self taught and had no idea about theory, thats when I realised the first guy was explaining a bit of the why as well as how.
Now I have stopped lessons but seem to be going OK on my own so will try to find another teacher when I get frustrated again.
Why debate? Start shopping around, but make sure you'll be learning what you want to.
It's a dry heat!
it depends how organised and experienced you are. You need a teacher who can help you develop with the things you want to develop, but there may be areas you 'should' (in whatever objective sense) develop that you're deficient in without realising, so if a tutor points this out and encourages you to learn it, its worth giving it some consideration even if you do dismiss it eventually.
but, if you are very clear on what you want to learn, and you feel confident that you're not overly deficient in any area you can't work on yourself, then teaching yourself can work, but only if you're gonna be disciplined about it. there's tons of info available nowadays to aid that. and if the only tutors available aren't capable of helping you develop the skills/styles you want to work on, that doesn't make them a great teacher (in the subjective, your-needs sense) no matter how great they may otherwise be.
also, I'm tutoring myself right now, and I've noticed my mum and friends don't seem to think its as 'serious' as when I had a teacher, so I get tons of interruptions when I'm supposed to be practising that I didn't get previously. that's seriously affecting my progress, but not so much that I can warrant dropping 30quid per week on a tutor who is inadequate for my present needs. but bear it in mind, anyway (or just lie, and tell them you have lessons, could work).
I would say find someone more in line with the kind of music you want to play. He can, and probably has, taught you the basics but if you are ready to move onto something more specific it wont help you if he doesn't know how to do what you want to learn.
I had a teacher that told me to bring in some tabs of songs I wanted to learn. I brought him a tab of Tequila Sunrise and he had never heard of the Eagles (he was pretty much exclusively into Blues). So he struggled through the tab that lesson but I had actually done better with it on my own before that. While I learned some basic chords and things from him in my few lessons, I found it unhelpful that the songs I knew, he had never heard of and the songs he knew, I didn't know either.
Shortly after that he closed the shop without telling me, taking off with my money that I had paid in advance. :|
All my life I wanted to be somebody. Now I see I should have been more specific.
I agree you have to try and find someone who help you with the music you want to play.
I cancelled my lessons last November when I had to have daily medical treatments for a couple of months and I just lost interest in learning.
I decided this year I was going to teach myself but yesterday I booked lessons again starting next week. As I am 59 I just feel I don't have the time to learn all those tricks you pick up by experience. Thankfully my teacher is right up on the blues and I'm looking forward to next week.
When you have a thousand other things in life competing for time and energy, the necessity to do your 'homework' for teacher :) is a great impetus.
EDIT: Just noticed I joined in Aug 2004. Where have those fours years gone? And I'm still a beginner because of stopping/restarting several times. No wonder my wife rolled her eyes when I said I going to have lessons again.
I know in my area it's hard to find a teacher who doesn't have their own agenda of what they want to teach regardless of what you want to learn. I would suggest taking lessons from a teacher who wants to teach you what you want to learn, but to find that person, you may have to do some calling & interviewing to find the right teacher.
Dan
"The only way I know that guarantees no mistakes is not to play and that's simply not an option". David Hodge
I haven't read everyone's response but it is important to find someone that is Ok with teaching you what you want to learn but there are pro's and con's to that as I see it.
Obviously you'd get bored if he's teaching you classical guitar techniques and all you want to do is play punk music or something but on the other hand there are so many technigues and skills that are pretty much the same no matter what kind of music you play.
So having a teacher that's teaching to "their" agenda may or may not be a good thing. Sure you might find a teacher that'll teach you whatever you want to learn but I'm not sure that's totally the right way either because you may go down a path that in the end doesn't improve your guitar skills.
I'll use myself as an example. I've been with the same guy for about 18 months. He'll teach me anything I want but his normal method is to do some technical stuff and then work on a song. For the first 12 months or so that's what I was doing, then about 6 months ago I started playing with a bunch of guys fairly regularly and found out quick none of us knew the same songs. So I started having him teach/tab out songs for me. He's great at it and we can do about a song a lesson. Anyway here I am 6 months later and have learned a probably more songs in the last 6 months than I did since I started but I really haven't improved as a guitar player...well OK I did some just from the fact that I'm playing these songs but I guess what I mean is that I haven't imporved in the area's that I really want to improve in and that's to be able to create solo's on the fly that actually sound decent.
This is no fault of my teacher's it's all me. I asked him to tab out songs and he did. I've just come to the realization that I need to get back to the technical stuff and thats what we started again last week.
So I guess my point is there needs to be a good balance between what you want to learn and what the teacher thinks you need to learn, sometimes all of it won't be all that much "fun".
Just my opinion though.
"It's all about stickin it to the man!"
It's a long way to the top if you want to rock n roll!
Thanks for your help all. I'll start looking again, I may go back to the first guy I had. He seemed to know a bit of everything. Just couldn't keep doing them due to time constraints. The only problem is he wanted to teach me some blues, which I have zero interest in learning.
Just to clarify, my teacher never tried to teach or forced me to learn classical. It was just that as we were getting to other techniques more for hard rock/metal style, he didn't know much about it. Like whammy bar techniques and what not. So he never had is own agenda or anything, it's just that the stuff I was starting to get into, he didn't know much about.
This is just recently but all the shredder bashing got me listening to Steve Vai, which I ended up liking, so I want to get into the neo-classical stuff.
"In what, twisted universe does mastering Eddie Van Halen's two handed arpeggio technique count as ABSOLUTELY NOTHING?!" - Dr Gregory House
... The only problem is he wanted to teach me some blues, which I have zero interest in learning...
That's the only thing I want to learn, at least for the moment.
Good luck with finding the right teacher.
Ron
GrungeSunset,
This may sound biased from my other posts where I go on (at length) about how great he is, but if your teacher wants you to learn blues, tell him "okay, if you'll teach me some Jeff Beck tunes" - it's not totally up your street,but he was a big influence on Vai and does a lot of whammy bar stuff, some tapping, etc, etc, so you can push your teacher onto ground thats close to what you want to learn but isn't a totl stretch for him, either. I'd suggest JB's tune Brush With The Blues (off, uh, Who Else? I believe. Its up on youtube a bunch of times). Sounds like a simple blues, but its as hard as any shredder-stuff, imho. Or Eirc Johnson stuff. Orthe G3 (E Johnson, Satch and Vai) Blues stuff - thats got tones of scalic runs, sweep picking, whammy bar antics, etc, etc, too. Or Andy Timmons - I'm sure there are others too who play 'blues' but push more into the 'shredder' category too.
Also, just as a question (as I've not listened to more than a handful of Vai tracks) is Vai realy neo-classical? I wouldn't have described him as so, what I've heard just doesn't seem to fall into anything remotely as structured as classical music. Just curious there.
hope this helps you some.
GrungeSunset,
This may sound biased from my other posts where I go on (at length) about how great he is, but if your teacher wants you to learn blues, tell him "okay, if you'll teach me some Jeff Beck tunes" - it's not totally up your street,but he was a big influence on Vai and does a lot of whammy bar stuff, some tapping, etc, etc, so you can push your teacher onto ground thats close to what you want to learn but isn't a totl stretch for him, either. I'd suggest JB's tune Brush With The Blues (off, uh, Who Else? I believe. Its up on youtube a bunch of times). Sounds like a simple blues, but its as hard as any shredder-stuff, imho. Or Eirc Johnson stuff. Orthe G3 (E Johnson, Satch and Vai) Blues stuff - thats got tones of scalic runs, sweep picking, whammy bar antics, etc, etc, too. Or Andy Timmons - I'm sure there are others too who play 'blues' but push more into the 'shredder' category too.
I wasn't sure what his reasons were for wanting to teach me the blues. I haven't gone to him in a long time. I now live closer to him so he would be a better option. To be honest, your way seems to be a long way to learn Steve Vai. Rather than learn all these artists that influenced and sound like him, I would rather just learn Steve Vai. I have no interest of any kind learning the blues. If I had a teacher where it came to learn blues from them or learn nothing, I'd just find another teacher. Thank you for your input though.
Also, just as a question (as I've not listened to more than a handful of Vai tracks) is Vai realy neo-classical? I wouldn't have described him as so, what I've heard just doesn't seem to fall into anything remotely as structured as classical music. Just curious there.
hope this helps you some.
Don't really know what genre he'd fall into. I guess it really doesn't matter.
"In what, twisted universe does mastering Eddie Van Halen's two handed arpeggio technique count as ABSOLUTELY NOTHING?!" - Dr Gregory House
I think that in the beginning yo ushould focus on the basic skills. It's okay to play punk but be sure to learn the basic chords, picking patterns and such as well. After that you need a teacher that understands what you want to learn and get you there in a controlled way, so when you reach that goal you won't have enormous gaps in your basic understanding of the guitar.
My piano teacher studied Jazz at the local conservatory, he likes it very much and makes no secret about him hoping his students do the same. That's no problem because if someone doesn't like it he wips out the pop tunes or some Yann Tiersen, whatever the student wants. Clearly his strenght lies in teaching jazz and improvisation, but he's at the level that he can teach me very well in other styles as well.
