A teacher who would like some advice

Have you considered the capo option?

Start with the capo as far up the neck as necessary for them to feel comfortable with the chords. Have them practice until they have ho problems, then move the capo a fret or two closer to the nut. Repeat until no capo is needed.

I like to give my students a song that contains the chords they need to work on so they have something to compare against how they're doing. G-Em-C-D is a prime case in point - it's Brown Eyed Girl by Van the Man. Throw in a B7 to that collection and you've got the Alexandra Burke version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah (the one Jeff Buckley covered.) All nice open position chords.

The best solution to your student who can do A, D and E is find a song in A that changes key to G halfway through. Good luck.

Stretches - put a capo on the 2nd or 3rd fret so the stretch isn't so big. If you put it on the 5th fret you take the length of the neck down to 3/4 size (I forget where I learned that, I think it was here)

Powerchords - if your student is struggling with these, then Drop D is a perfect solution because it makes them a one-finger exercise.

Motivation should drive itself. Your students won't always practise everything every day (who does?) but if you give them a song they can relate to then they'll be more inclined to pick up their guitar and do some work because they can show it to their friends later and say "look what I can do"

Start with the capo as far up the neck as necessary for them to feel comfortable with the chords. Have them practice until they have ho problems, then move the capo a fret or two closer to the nut. Repeat until no capo is needed.
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Well I will give that a whirl but for him it's the stretch accross the width of the neck, so I don't know if that will change things.

Playing open chords at the first position can be difficult for beginers because not so much the strech of the fingers but because the arm is extended out so far causing a lot of tension. If you play a little air guitar and hold your arm out (in the first position) for 10-15 sec you can feel it getting heavy, now move up to 12 fret and its a whole lot easier to hold it there.

Check out Jamie's website, she cover's a lot on this subject

http://www.guitarprinciples.com/index.php

Well I will give that a whirl but for him it's the stretch accross the width of the neck, so I don't know if that will change things.

In that case, why not start using barres on 4-string chords?

I think he would find that equally as hard if not harder lol, cos that's just a stretch in the other direction. I think it's just going to be a case of telling him to practice the stretch a G or C requires, though I will try the capo thing! Thanks for suggestions :) This student is an interesting one though, he is only young but he can strum to a metronome! I mean, he loses it sometimes but then so do a lot of long time players, the fact he can do that as a beginner is brilliant!

Hey..... I got him to play the G! He discovered on his own (though I told him this a few weeks ago) do play the G with the little and third finger both (third on B, fourth on E) and he could do it! He couldnt when I asked him a few weeks ago and he wasn't even doing this with the capo - however the second song we are going to learn needs a capo at the 9th, I will talk to his Mum next week.

Nothing inspires a teacher like a student who's making progress. Nice one.

Just to update this - well he has learnt a whole song now, with chord changes - hes a little slow getting the whole chords on but he's changing which is excellent! We have done quite a few more songs with the capo and he is getting more into the guitar! He still doesnt understand the relativity of time - which is that he has acheived things he said at first "I can't do that" and he still says "I can't do that" and I point out all the things he can do now that he couldn't before. I think the kid is actually very talented and I hope one day he will kill us all in a guitar battle. :lol:

Hi,

Good to hear it's going well.

Something that I still do with tricky new chords is to look to see if there's a simple version to start with first.

So there's a one finger version of G that uses only the highest 4 strings - DGBG. You can then add another finger for a 5 string version, and then another for all 6 strings. If you're accurate enough not to strum the high E you can even play a no finger version - just the open DGB strings.

Same with C. One finger version -just the three high strings - GCE. Add fingers across as you go for 2,3 and 4 finger versions. Different voicings of course, but valid major chords.

Cool thanks :) I was aware that could be done though the high G on the 1st string E is the one he always gets late.