Seriously though, for actual lessons, people doing this for a living have to do just that. Make a living. Hard to afford? Maybe, depending on your income. Charging too much? ..... I don't think so. I taught myself because at the time I couldn't afford even the cheapest lessons, but not because I didn't think it was a good thing. I wish I could have afforded them.
Yes, and remember that the teacher is spending more time then just teaching when your there... They need to work out the lessons, and also work out what the student needs help with, and how to progress. Im guessing at LEAST a hour, and probably a lot more!! For me it was a time thing. Driving kids back and froth from school/daycare, then weekends keeping up the house... Just no time at plan. Add to that a wife thats not realy into me playing... ya.. it was tough till my youngest got out of DC
Paul B
I like the guy that I'm with now but he doesn't spend any time before hand working on lessons and I don't know of any that really do. If you're lucky they make a note in their book on where you are but 99% of them don't.
I know I don't use him to really "teach" me how to play per se, he's more of just a tabber of songs, good or bad that's what I wanted, but even when we work on technical stuff I know he has a vague idea where we are going but I don't think he spends one second after I leave thinking about me or what the best way to teach.
For my $20 1/2 hr I can't complain though, he's taught me enough to be able to play a couple hundred songs now and that's all I wanted when I started to be able to play songs with other people. Of course now that I can do the regurgitation part I want more I want to be able to create and that's a whole different story.
"It's all about stickin it to the man!"
It's a long way to the top if you want to rock n roll!
So much depends upon who's doing the teaching. I took piano lessons from ages 8-17 from a private teacher and got NO music theory from her -- took every instrumental-music class available at my high school and got very little -- so by the time I went to conservatory, all my reading skills & theory knowledge were self-taught.
On guitar, it's a question of what you want to do on the instrument. If you want to play sweet blues solos or gnarly rock leads, you can get by without standard notation. If you want to play ANYTHING that's written down, it's an advantage to be able to read music. It's not hard, really -- but for those of us who have been reading music since pre-adolescence, it's second nature, and it's hard to imagine what it's like NOT to read music....
NoteBoat, I know this is a tough question, but: How long would it take the average English-speaking, semi-intelligent human adult to learn enough standard notation to get by?
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream." - Frank Zappa
That is a tough question. I suppose it depends on what's meant by 'enough to get by'.
You can learn to decipher the staff, interpret accidentals, understand basic (simple time) rhythms, and know what key signatures do in a couple of months. Reading in more than one position takes at least another month or so. Being able to read all the common key signatures (up to 4 sharps/flats) maybe a year if you're diligent.
There's always exceptions. I've had students who took weeks to recognize just three notes, and I had a student about 5 years ago that I'll never forget - he was all-state on bassoon, but had never touched a guitar or read treble clef. He learned to sight read in up to five accidentals and all positions - over the summer!
Guitar teacher offering lessons in Plainfield IL
...I had a student about 5 years ago that I'll never forget - he was all-state on bassoon, but had never touched a guitar or read treble clef. He learned to sight read in up to five accidentals and all positions - over the summer!
Wow. I suspect that learning to read in bass clef made the transition much easier. Still, the divide between recognizing the key sigs theoretically vs. putting your fingers in the right place on a new instrument seems daunting. (It IS daunting. I'm trying to learn saxophone, and the difference between standard notation and E-flat alto sax fingering makes my head hurt.)
I remember the thrill I got in junior high school when I learned that chords had NAMES. Totally freaked me out -- but it opened the door for a ton of other useful musical knowledge which I wouldn't trade for anything. The trick is to keep your standard notation/theoretical knowledge from interfering with your intuitive musicality, your ability to let your ears guide you as you play. (Still a hangup for me after 30 years of trying to break free from my conservatory training.) If you can manage both angles -- sight reading and playing by ear -- you become a very dangerous player.
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream." - Frank Zappa
As Tom says, it definitely varies from student to student. With the five adult students I have who have decided to take up learning notation, all have gotten through the basics (notes from the low E up through the C note at the eighth fret of the high E string) and simple rhythms (dotted quarter notes but not dotted eighths) to the point where they could sight read easy classical guitar pieces within three months.
It does depend on their motivation and attitude. All of these students decided that they wanted to learn and also made a point of practicing their reading (two carried music around with them to look over in what spare time might come their way). None of them went into learning thinking that it would be hard or pointless.
Obviously, everyone's experiences will be different but having a positive attitude towards learning and also having motivation to do so will make the learning a lot easier.
As to Chris's comment about teachers prepping for lessons, that definitely depends on the teacher as well. The only music teachers that I've ever met in my life who didn't prep for lessons were guitar teachers. But not for very long.
Peace
I'm with David - all decent teachers prep for lessons. I started doing it when I started teaching... mostly because every guitar teacher I'd had to that point started each lesson by saying "so what were we working on last week?"
In the beginning, my prep time was about 1:1 - 30 minutes of planning for a 30 minute lesson. With time and experience, you end up teaching the same concepts hundreds of times, so my prep for beginners is close to zero (after 33+ years). I spend about 2 hours a week reviewing my upcoming lessons and having a basic plan for all the students - which has to be flexible, because some students won't have practiced enough, and a few will advance faster than I'd expected, so I'll end up giving them more than planned.
But as my average prep time has decreased a lot, the amount of time I spend prepping for my most advanced students has gone way up - it can approach 8:1 at times!
Guitar teacher offering lessons in Plainfield IL
Well I'm sure there are teachers that prep and you guys are two but I've been to 5 different ones and none of them did. Of course I was a rank beginner for the first 4 and didn't stay with them but I just didn't see anything changing in their approach.
With that said for where I'm at and what I am doing with this I am happy with my current teacher and don't really have a problem with the way he teaches. Would I have advanced any difrferently had he laid out lessons in advance...I'd have to say I doubt if it would have made a difference.
"It's all about stickin it to the man!"
It's a long way to the top if you want to rock n roll!
I'm not going to disagree with you, Chris. As I mentioned, the only music teachers I've met who don't (or didn't) prep were guitar teachers. There might be a corollary reason for this as many guitar teachers are guitarists who teach in order to have money coming in when they're not gigging. A lot of people take up the guitar to get into music and then turn to teaching to make some money. Initially they approach teaching in a very informal way, simply showing their students the basics and whatever skills they themselves have learned. But those who decide to make a living out of teaching usually discover that in order to teach any individual you need to set out goals and plan how to achieve them. That takes planning.
And communication. A teacher and student have to have good and open communication between themselves. Goals are constantly reevaluated and redesigned as a student grows and evolves. There's a lot of things to discover out there!
Every teacher / student dynamic is personal, especially since most music lessons are one-on-one, as opposed to in a classroom. It sounds like you're getting exactly what you want from your teacher and it also sounds like the two of you communicate well. That you're happy with your lessons is the best thing any teacher can hear.
By the bye, Happy Thanksgiving to you! Hope the finger's getting better and I also hope that you and your family and friends have a great holiday.
Peace
Well Dave I don't disagree with you either and I've always thought about that, but in fairness to my instructor I think he has a plan in his head I'm just not sure how he goes about coming up with it.
He was formally trained and does have a music degree so he's a bit more than just some guy that can play guitar and wanted to teach and I do think he has a "plan" for me to get to whereever I want to go just don't think it's written down.
But like I said I have no problems with where we are at and what we do so all is good.
As for the finger, thanks for asking, it's doing a bit better. I have about 50 - 60% range of motion which suprisingly allows me to play most everything and it's gonna bit of a permanent bend down which actually is a good thing. Hopefully I will get most of the motion back or at least 90%.
Have a Happy Thanksgiving yourself.
"It's all about stickin it to the man!"
It's a long way to the top if you want to rock n roll!
I<...>
One more thing - "reading" (understanding what the little dots mean) is a pretty basic skill, and not that hard to do. It only takes time. "Sight reading" (being able to pick up a piece of unknown music and play it right away) is an advanced skill that takes a lot of time and effort. Unless you're doing fairly narrow musical work - symphonic stuff, musical theatre, radio jingles, etc., most guitarists won't ever need to sight read.
On the other hand, those narrow niches pay really well compared to the gigs you can get without sight reading :)
When I worked as a duo on cruise ships, I met a lot of other musicians who worked in the big orchestra. All of them could read (including the drummer) but they all couldn't sight-read more difficult pieces. I would hear them 'wood-shedding' their parts in appropriate places on the ship where they wouldn't disturb the passengers and crew/staff members.
I can sight read very difficult pieces on saxophone or wind synthesizer. I can read on the guitar, but I cannot sight-read anything other than simple to moderate songs in the first position, everything else takes wood-shedding. But the improvements will come with time and practice. I don't spend as much time learning to read on the guitar as I would like to because I have to share my time with learning new songs for my duo, being the "band salesman", writing new style disks and fake disks for Band-in-a-Box and Microsoft SongSmith, and running the day-to-day operations of Norton Music (everything from executive management to new product development, to webmaster, to janitorial work).
I admit reading music is easier on the sax, but knowing how to read music on the sax seriously shortened the time it took to learn flute, wind synthesizer, keyboard synth, bass, and guitar. Knowing music theory helped me get from picking up the guitar to improvising leads on stage in a couple of months. Knowing to read and knowing at least basic music theory makes everything else in music easier.
Standard notation is the lingua franca of musicians. You can take a huge number of musicians who do not speak the same spoken language, put sheet music in front of them, and they can effortlessly play music together if they all know how to read music.
On the price of music lessons, I think most teachers charge a fair price. Time is money, and they will definitely save you countless hours of time, plus a good teacher will give you information and feedback that you cannot get from a book or the Internet.
But of course, you need a good teacher. Like everything else, there are great teachers, poor teachers and a lot in-between. IMHO, the teacher needs to be attuned to your specific needs, communicate well with you, keep you progressing, push you as hard as is comfortable to you, and mix the work with some fun.
I am eternally grateful to the teachers who have shared their knowledge with me. I'm living what some would consider a dream life as a professional musician. I don't consider what I do work (except for the band-salesman part - but we have a lot of repeat business so that is now at a minimum). I don't even consider the practice work, because I get so much pleasure when I accomplish each minor goal. If I live to be 150 years old there will still be something new to learn about music. That's what keeps it interesting.
Bob "Notes" Norton
Owner, Norton Music http://www.nortonmusic.com Add-on Styles for Band-in-a-Box and Microsoft SongSmith
The Sophisticats http://www.s-cats.com >^. .^< >^. .^<
I don't even consider the practice work, because I get so much pleasure when I accomplish each minor goal. If I live to be 150 years old there will still be something new to learn about music. That's what keeps it interesting.
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Lol I thought that the thread had finished :P
About the comment with the music lessons; I think I meant that if you've got the money then they will be no doubt valuable for the money you pay. But I don't have that money, and the fact that I've not had a single lesson but can play guitar reasonably well means that it's not entirely essential. From that basis, personally I think that they should charge less than what the average rate is for guitar lessons. Just my thought. But then I guess I don't know what you get from guitar lessons because I've never had them. You don't learn from that hour or two of the lesson- it's when you start practicing for that week before your next lesson.
All the gear, but no idea.
http://www.youtube.com/user/93fishi/videos
there's hundreds of years of music that you can really only learn by learning sheet music. that's really the reason to learn to read music.
Interesting discussion. :)
As others have said, there is no downside to learning to read but there are a great many benefits. Tab can be useful for guitar but it's of no use to singers, pianists, sax players etc. Once I could read music it meant that I could not only read a vast library of written music but I could also write my own songs out for any other instruments to play.
Notes Norton made a crucial point about the difference between knowing how to read and being able to "sight read". Learning what the dots and symbols represent is quite a simple task. What takes the time is being able to read quickly. In other words to be able to read the sheets at something approaching playing speed (especially unfamiliar music). That does take time - lots of it. But what's the rush? Most of us won't need to decode all the information with brand new music, on stage, at playing speed - we can take the time that we need to figure it out.
I learned the basics of how to read music in literally a few minutes, despite being well into my fifties when I tried it. Of course it depends on how many of the underlying concepts you already understand, and it will take much longer if you have to learn them too. But if you know what a "key" is, what "sharps and flats" mean, what's meant by 3/4 or 4/4 time, and have a basic grasp of the idea that different pitches can be given "note" names and can last for varying lengths of time, then learning how those things are indicated with the symbols really is pretty straightforward.
What DOES take a heap of time is building in the hand/eye/brain coordination necessary to read the dots at any sort of speed. On guitar it's complicated by the fact that (unlike a piano) the same note can appear in several different places on the neck so you have a choice of where to play (that's not as hard as it sounds though). On piano, each note on the sheet refers to a single position on the keyboard, but reading is complicated by having to read two different lines of music at the same time (roughly speaking, that usually means a different line for each hand).
I can't sit at the piano and "sight read" anything but very simple music, and the same with guitar - simple lines only. But each year I get a little quicker and can decode more complex things with more ease. That's all I need though. The advantages to being able to do it all are enormous, and of great value to my own situation.
Learning to read scores is like any other aspect of music - there is no point at which anybody ever knows it all or can do it all. With playing you just get gradually better across a wider range, and with reading you just get faster at reading increasingly complex information.
Give it a go, it's well worth it.
Cheers,
Chris
