Teaching theory (or merely scales) is hard.

I agree that teaching theory and scales is not the greatest job in the world. I always try and make the theory stuff an important part of the lesson so my students understand that (say) the difference between a major and minor chord is that note in the middle but don't realise they've just learned a bit of theory.

Hello Neztok.

First of all, good job on putting a lot of effort into a free website to teach theory, it must have been a lot of work and it will be a helpful thing to do for a lot of people in the future I'm sure.

Anyway, I clicked in the beginners link, because that seems like a good place to start. here is my opinion if you are interested.

I understood what you are saying, but I think the only reason I did, was because I knew it already. The information is good, but I really think the level of explanation needs improving. If I was a complete beginner, I am not sure I would get as much out of that as I would by merely being shown the 7 patterns in diagrams and learning them off by heart.

I don't want to sound too critical, as I hope your website really works out. I am not a guitar teacher, but I do teach science for a living and I find the same problem with student science teachers when they come into our department. Their subject knowledge is excellent, often better than mine as they are fresh out of university, but they always seem to jump a little too deep into lessons they teach, and find it hard to really target the main misconceptions and stumbling point students have. This often results in confusion when minor tweaks are needed only.

Good luck with the site

Neztok, I just watched the video

I am interested to see what your formula theory is, but I have to say I didn't make it to the end. Again this is not down to what you are trying to say, but it is down to the level of explanation.

As a tip, people will be coming to your site because they do not know music theory, or they may know a only a little. What is sure is that they will not know anything about the way you visualise theory. With this in mind, do not make any assumptions that they will not need all things explaining as fully as possible :D

Again, these are only my opinion Neztok, but in my opinion only, I was left confused by the video.

Good luck again.
Al

Edit: the cof machine position finder is actually a very good little tool. Nice job on that!

I've not gone to your site or watched any videos. I've read your post and glean a lot from it.
The beginners have NO idea what I'm talking about
You're obviously not communicating what you want to say, in a manner that's understandable to them.
...and people with a music theory background learned a more tradition way (I made up what I'm trying to teach and they do not like it).
Maybe they don't like the way that it's being put across - again a shortfall in communication, I'd guess.
The music theory background people are A-holes
Need I say more?
My stuff leads to the exact same thing so I don't know what the problem is. (jealousy, maybe)
I don't think that it's jealousy. It seems to be something in the way it's presented. Perhaps, ".... are A-holes" says a great deal more than you think.

As I say, I haven't visited your site, but, if it's written in the same style as your post, I'm hardly surprised at the reaction.

I'm not trying to be mean. You're not being fair Greybeard. Sorry, you can't be negative towards me without even looking at my material. Really, I wouldn't want you to look at it. Please people don't start dissing me. I beg of you. I just want to start a polite discussion.

I'm always willing to look at new approaches to teaching music. But in order for an approach to be useful, it has to solve two problems:

1. Will a student understand what's being presented?
2. Will understanding it result in a step forward for the student?

In other words, an approach that contains a brilliant insight isn't enough; it has to be presented in a way that a student can grasp. And wonderful presentation won't be of any benefit unless the student is able to apply what he or she has learned to practical situations.

I've critiqued what you have to offer in another thread. I didn't like it, and gave specific reasons why I felt it fell short of solving problem #2. Write that off as jealousy if you'd like.

Since you've titled this thread about teaching, I'll only address that topic. And so you don't think I'm cutting you to shreds, I'm not going to critique your presentation - I'll just outline how to teach something successfully, and leave it to you to do what you choose with it.

When you begin to create a lesson plan, you have to start with the answer to a fundamental question: what will the student be able to do after the lesson? If you can't answer that, you're not ready to teach the subject yet.

Just so it's not misunderstood, it bears repeating: the answer to the question must explain what the student will be able to DO. If your goal for the lesson is “after this lesson the student will understand my method, you're not ready yet. Having a student understand your system isn't a goal. The only goal of teaching something is to benefit the student. Until you can define “after you've done this lesson, you'll be able to do x, you're not ready to start writing the lesson.

If a subject is very complex, or if your students are lacking fundamentals needed to get to the main goal, you may need to break the plan into steps. In that case, each segment has a goal of something the student will have gained, and each of those segments must follow the path that ends with the student DOING. (Example: if I am trying to teach a syncopated rhythm to a beginner, step one might involve the student being able to count beat divisions.)

After you have defined your goal for a lesson, you have to consider who the student is. You should do this in as many dimensions as possible: their age range, prior experience, and exposure to the fundamentals that support the lesson goal. You have to use different words to describe ideas to a 7 year old than a 27 year old; if you are teaching counterpoint to someone who's never heard baroque music, the lesson must begin with exposure to a contrapuntal piece. If you build a lesson without defining your audience, you run the risk of targeting part of the lesson to one audience and part of it to another. If you do that, at least some (and perhaps most) of your prospective students won't get it. That's not their fault.

Next you outline the order you'll present the material. These steps need to build in a logical sequence. You're building a ladder to understanding; that ladder can't have steps out of order, or any steps missing.

Now think about how the student should best experience the steps required for the lesson. Everything used should serve a specific purpose: diagrams, videos, text, etc. are simply tools. The tools you choose need to do the jobs required of them. Keep in mind that you're trying to help the student solve a problem. If the student can't see the connection between the problem and the what's being presented at the moment, it's difficult to keep their attention.

When you are creating a lesson that uses an entirely new approach, you must define your terms and explain them BEFORE you use them. If you label a scale 3 + 2, that means something to you. It doesn't mean anything to anyone else yet. If your terms are not well defined, you will lose the student.

Finally, consider the goal of the lesson again. The student should be able to DO something. Make sure they can do it. When I teach live, the student has to be able to play something that shows me they've gotten the idea. If they can't, I have to rethink my approach and start over. A lesson is not a success until the student has learned something that they can actually use. Teaching through written materials or video doesn't give you the feedback that you need to know you've done it well; however, you'll want to consider whatever feedback you do get.

Thanks - Alan, almann1979, and Noteboat. I really do respect you guys (or I wouldn't come here - too many people want to antigonize me - my fault from years ago) and your suggestions help. Hey, I got 169 students on Reddit (r/cofmachine) in two months so I'm progressing a little.

Hey Noteboat, the number formula thing actually lead to positional playing. I had the book "Mel Bay's Deluxe Guitar Position Studies" and that didn't really do it for me. But one day I was thinking about the circle of fifths/fourths and how the guitar was tuned to the circle of fifths/fourths and it just clicked.

It lead to: http://www.reddit.com/r/CoFmachine/comments/md9v7/introducing_cofmachine/ and
http://pages.suddenlink.net/cofmachine/x/cofmachine.html

I'm proud of the simple formula. It helped me a lot - probably because it made me think a lot.

...and Greybeard if you're still mad at me from years ago when me and Fred from RSoG was annoying one another. We made up and became friends. He even sent me his guitar method (it was expensive at the time) for free. I send people to his website all the time. You gotta let things go. Please stop perceiving my posts as insults.

In all honesty Neztok, I had to read your post twice before I got your sense of humour. At first glance, coming onto a theory forum and then calling theory people A-holes could be taken as an insult :D

I understand it wasn't meant that way, but it did take a double take on my behalf at least :D

I'm not mad at anyone - I'm merely responding to the perceived tone of your post. To the casual reader, it comes across as arrogant and aggressive. If that carries over into your "teaching" style, it is hardly surprising that you get the response that you do.

It's not what you meant to say that counts, it's how it's perceived by those hearing it.

I just took a test on Perception 4 days ago in a Psychology class. Attention, mood, culture, and context play a role. I wasn't paying too much attention how I wrote the title - sorry. Mood - I was in a pretty good mood. Culture - what country are you from, I'm from a holler in WV, Context - These are just words on the internet.

I can advertise my r/cofmachine on a theory board on Reddit, but I'm going to get destroyed in the process. That's all I meant. And most beginners are clueless (does this give you the right to say it's because I'm a lousy teacher - nope). It's just that I'm not willing to go back to the beginning of whole steps and half steps. Sorry for yet another f'd up post. Can we get back to music theory.

yeah, why not?

Getting back to music theory, or rather to the teaching of theory (which is what this thread is supposed to be about, no?), most teachers (and most literature about teaching on any subject) will tell you that in order to be even somewhat successful, you have to go to where the student is. In his or her head, that is. All beginners, unless they've had some previous exposure to music, are going to be in the half-step / whole-step mindset and if you're interested in reaching them, then you're going to have to go where they are in order to have a hope to lead them where you are.

Most beginners aren't clueless, more often than not they simply don't know what they know - how it relates to the big picture of music or to themselves as guitarists. I think that if you want your theory pages to be understood more easily (and the majority of the comments I read on the links you posted are about it being, at least initially, confusing) then you might want to consider starting closer to the very basics. One does need a bit of time to get your ideas because they involved already knowing a lot of the basics. I say that as someone who's gone over the material on your site close to a dozen times now.

If you don't mind my saying so (and this is not meant to be reflective of your teaching abilities), the first statement you make in this thread is:
If I'm gonna teach something it pretty much has to be entertaining to me or otherwise I'm not going to bother.

I'd just like to say that if what you're teaching has to be entertaining to you, you may want to put a lot of thought into why you want to teach. Teaching is ultimately not about the teacher at all. You can be the best teacher in the world but that doesn't mean you're going to have success because teaching is ultimately a relationship and every relationship involves (at least) two people, in this case teacher and student.

I think that your pages do well with one particular kind of student - namely one who is the most like yourself in his or her abilities to make the leaps that you made in order to create this system. You're not likely to find a great many people like that. Few teachers do. Like it as not, the key to teaching well is to be able to first understand where your students are in terms of knowledge and ability and then to lead them from there in ways that apply to them personally, as individuals, and not necessarily to themselves.

Your writing, both here and on your website definitely gives the vibe that it's meant to be "entertaining" to yourself. I think that's what Greybeard is trying to get at - if you're seriously trying to get students and others to take you seriously, you are likely (but not guaranteed) to have much more success by putting yourself on or close to the level of your target students. At least in terms of how you communicate with them.

As always, this is just my opinion. And, again as always, it's meant as a serious reply simply in order to be of help. So please don't take this personally or try to spin it in that direction. You've asked for a "cool" discussion and I'm taking that to mean a serious one.

Peace