just how good do you need to be??

good question.
I too have been thinking the very thing. someday I see myself living
outside the city; perhaps on a small hobby farm. I had thought to supplement
any income with teaching beginning guitar or lap steel /resonator /guitar.
maybe enough to pay taxes or tank heater electricity.

I would think being able to explain the why would enhance the how.

I have people asking me for lessons all the time ........ I don't want to do it. :roll: I could charge how much? Not near what I make at my real job, much less the time and 1/2 if I were to work OT. Almann, you are a teacher already and you can play the guitar. I say do it.

Beginner guitar teachers should be able to explain and instruct on the basics: how to hold the guitar, relative tuning, strumming, picking, open chords, barre chords, some common scales, and an intro to some fretboard theory (finding notes, etc). I don't really think they need to teach much more than that.

Thanks guys - i have a had a lot of encouragement from people, and no negative feedback on this idea - so i have approached the parents of a pupils at school who is interested in learning to play, and said i would give him free lessons after school so i could get some guitar teaching practice and also develop any guitar teaching resources i may need (not sure yet what they will be yet - but ill get there).

I will probably do this until the child leaves school (another 3 years),and then decide if it is something i can take a bit more seriously after that. I am also hopefull it will widen my own knowledge as in order to help me achieve this i am going to subscribe to the rockschool grading syllabus and work my way through the grades - so there'll be lots to learn :D

thanks guys.
Al

if you want to do it go for it there's nothing holding you back. In some ways being a teacher first and then learning to play guitar may actually be a plus. I mean you don't need to be a virtuoso player to teach other people how to play but I think the skills you learned in becoming a teacher should help alot. Many great players can't teach worth a lick.

I think I big part of being a good teacher is being able to read your students. Some you need to push, some need to be coddled, some need new material to keep interested etc. Everyone is an individual and if you can read your students well you well help them reach their true potential.

thats also my experience of teaching science - but with classes of upto 33 it can take time to get to know each pupil well enough. i have also found that identifying pupils misconceptions about things is vital - some children just assume certain facts which just arent true.

i am also hoping that as somebody self taught, i can remember my own misconceptions i had early on (and i had many) and perhaps plan lessons with those in mind.

Anyway, all this is a long way off - i havent even penciled this lad in for his first lesson yet - and i might bore him so much he wont come back :lol:

for the last three months I have been volunteering at an assisted living center. there are a couple old guys that sort of play guitar and sort of play lap steel. I have been answering question they have about technique or figuring out songs for that they are stuck on.
it has been fun and the reward is I have reinforced things I know and learned a bit more too.

Having just joined the ranks of the peripatetic guitar teaching community in Essex, the money's a lot less for 49 students in six schools than I get from the two days each week I still spend doing Investment Banking, but I'm looking to load up on private students and weddings/ parties/ corporate events at the same time. It's going to be painful, money wise, for a while

I took over a couple of schools from a teacher who apparently "taught pop songs from tabs" and a couple more from a guy who said "use the book to get the note recognition, and then, well, I showed them Smoke On The Water" All those schools have asked me to teach standard notation and to drop the pop songs.

I'm beyond Grade 8 now, but none of my students are at Grade 1 performance level yet, their legato isn't strong enough. Nothing that can't be fixed but they're all aged 10 and under and getting short lessons so there's only so much I can do.

Strangely enough, the guy who plays guitar for a friend of mine's flamenco dance group gave up teaching science to teach guitar, and the guy I took some of my schools from went from teaching guitar to teaching physics this year. Must be something about science.

How good do you have to be? Difficult to say; you'll need to present (at least) two contrasting pieces at audition and then spend time talking about teaching styles if you want to go into schools. Teaching privately you really only need to be able to teach someone to do something they can't already do, but you need to have a lesson plan that extends for the next few weeks otherwise your students will feel they're not learning and vote with their feet.

Horse with no name - Brown eyed girl - Maggie May - Wonderwall - Take it easy - those are my five standard songs to start adult learners. Time of your life is good for teaching them to work songs out from CDs.

A :-)

Thanks Alan - a very good detailed answer. My current ambitions though are far lower than taking up teaching guitar as a job. I simply am not good enough - and it'll be years before that changes. :D

But i do just want to replace the 3 science tutoring sessions i do a week with beginner guitar lessons for people who want to just pick up the basics as a personal hobby, as i did a not too long ago.

However, i dont mind saying, in the VERY VERY long term, i do hope that my experience working in schools with children, planning schemes of work and developing resources, may help me land a peripatetic job - i just need to get my skills to the "minimum required level" (which i am still a VERY long way off doing). :D

Thats great you are going for it Almann. I know you will do a very good job and I bet your students are fond of you.

Thanks TR. Although it is funny you say that - in reality i am the "grumpy teacher the kids are not allowed to have a joke with" - i find i can keep a better classroom working environment that way - but it made it hard work choosing a pupil who would even want to spend extra time with me :lol: :lol: :lol:

i dont mind though - its only work!