I'm trying to improve my teaching in guitar and wandered which books and resources if any you would recommend. I teach fingerpicking, flat picking, classical, acoustic guitar and electric guitar. All my students are at different levels of playing. It's looking for really good pre-grade books or would you design your own programme of learning. My thinking is to combine both. Currently I'm using the Hal Leonard Guitar Method for Kids for very young beginners. Are there any alternatives. I've heard Alfred is a good course too. I think I'm looking for an all round approach so if I can focus on some of those specific guitar concepts like flatpicking but it's finding material that's also inspiring that young people want to play as well. What I've started to do is use a technique such as fingerpicking then use that within a song. If you can suggest any ideas that could help with this, that would be great.
I'm in the UK - I use the excellent "Trinity Rock" series of Grade Exam books published by Trinity College London for teenagers on upwards, supplemented by the Registry of Guitar Tutors Rock Guitar Grade Exam books (the songbooks are published by Hal Leonard). Both use songs that you'll hear on the radio. Additional songs come from collections of songs published in any number of books that you can get from your local shop. You'll need to do some work yourself to figure out which songs fit at which level, but you're probably already doing that.
Techniques - I take the exam songs and decide what technique I need to be able to play them; that's the content of that lesson.
Alternatives - Rockschool have recently launched an Acoustic Guitar Grade Exam series which looks really good and also uses songs your students will have heard on the radio. Don't bother with the original Rockschool syllabus, which uses specially commissioned pieces; it's very ordinary. Registry of Guitar Tutors have their own series of Grade Exams for acoustic guitar, too; I have the books up to Grade 3 and can recommend them.
Finally, my top flight students take the London College of Music Classical Guitar Grade Exams. There are other excellent sources of material - the "Bridges" series published by the Royal Conseravtory in Toronto is an unbelievably excellent collection of music, and ABRSM and Trinity College have similar sets of books for their own Grade Exams.
"Be good at what you can do" - Fingerbanger"
I have always felt that it is better to do what is beautiful than what is 'right'" - Eliot Fisk
Wedding music and guitar lessons in Essex. Listen at: http://www.rollmopmusic.co.uk
