Should We Teach Kids in Open G Tuning

I've long advocated starting beginners with open tunings and reserving "standard" tuning as an advanced technique for intermediate players to learn. It's a pretty steep, frustrating learning curve for a beginner to climb in standard tuning, especially for those with small hands. OTOH, a rank newbie can be strumming a very basic 12 bar blues and singing along (covers a lot of popular music) within a few minutes in an open tuning.

Go for it. I'm a firm believer in teaching alternate tunings with students. It helps explain why voicings don't always sound right even though the chord is definitely the right chord as well as giving you one-finger chords

A :-)

It depends on your daughter.

I've taught hundreds of kids over the years. It can be a challenge, because their attention span is often very short. So what I'm about to say is "in general" - there are some 5 year olds I've taught like adults, and some 11 year olds I've taught like tiny tots.

For kids age 4-5 I use open tunings. For kids age 6 and up I use standard tuning.

Here's why: kids at about age 6 are moving beyond reciting the alphabet and they're starting to read simple words. The skills involved in reading music are no different - written symbols represent sounds. 6 and 7 year olds are not only capable of learning standard notation, they excel at it after a few months; it's been integrated with other reading skills. In fact, I've got three students right now who read standard notation better than most pros I know: a 9 year old boy and 10 & 12 year old girls. The boy started with me at age 6, the girls were both 7.

Small children have small hands, so I do simplify chords for most kids under about age 8 - although again it depends on the child, and on the size of the guitar they have. Use xx0003 for G, xx0001 for G7, xxx010 for C, etc. For those I use only downstrokes with kids. As soon as they can finger an Em chord we'll start working on strumming - it's much easier to learn up & down strokes when you're not worrying about how many strings to play, and it's easiest to learn bass note/strum patterns when the bass is on the 6th string.

The last thing I do differently with young kids is how I structure the lesson. This probably won't apply with you teaching your daughter, but anyone doing half-hour lessons with kids might find it useful: mix it up often. When I see attention flagging, I change gears; we work on something else. I'll spend a lot of time on listening drills presented as games... if they're getting distracted, I'll say "hey, let's play a game! I'm going to turn my guitar so you can't see it, and you guess (which note is higher/lower, which chord is major/minor, etc). Doing this can hold their interest, and develops useful ear training skills. After a few minutes, we go back to guitar work - and I mix that up between single notes and chords.

For kids age 4-5 I use open tunings. For kids age 6 and up I use standard tuning.

That's interesting. I've never considered teaching young kids open tunings. Which open tunings do you use? Doesn't it confuse them when they 'come of age' a year or two later and have to convert to standard? It seems like much of what they've learned would no longer apply, e.g. open string note names, simple chord shapes. I assume you don't introduce them to standard notation with open tunings, right?
Otherwise, I think our approaches are pretty similar, e.g., simplified chord shapes and ear training games as a diversion. As for the games, we sometimes play against each other and I make sure I get a few wrong. (e.g., one plays a note and the other finds it by ear). The look on their face when they score a point over me is priceless, and it's a great confidence booster for them. I might even suggest ridiculous stakes such as "If you win this point, I'll give you a plectrum, but if I win, you give me your Nintendo". I still don't have a Nintendo but I'm getting seriously short of plectrums :D

But I'd be interested to know what you feel are the advantages of open tunings over standard for such a young age. I accept some of the previous points posted, such as simple chord shapes, but standard tuning shapes can also be simplified, as you mentioned, eg. G7 = 0001.

Interesting thread. I don't have much to contribute, as I'm not a teacher - but I do have an observation. If you're teaching kids to play chords on the top four strings, aren't you basically using a modified open G tuning - the DGB triad on the 4th, 3rd and 2nd strings, with an added 6th on the open E string?

Takes me back to when I first picked up a guitar - one of my first purchases was the "Complete Beatles" songbook. I was struggling with a lot of the chords, but by using mainly the top four strings, I could manage to get through most songs - I figured that in time, my fingers would get used to playing the full chords on all six strings. It's only taken me about 30-odd years, but I'm getting there!

:D :D :D

Vic

Takes me back to when I first picked up a guitar - one of my first purchases was the "Complete Beatles" songbook. I was struggling with a lot of the chords, but by using mainly the top four strings, I could manage to get through most songs

Wish I'd thought of that. I thought you had to play every string or not at all. :D My first songbook purchase was Beatles 66, which was the Revolver album. The only song that was remotely recogniseable was "I'm only sleeping" at least until I got to the B7 at which point I would quickly turn the page hoping to do better on the next song, which, sadly, was even worse. :(

Yes, the first 4 strings in standard are very close to open G, so I don't really see any advantage to teaching open G instead of standard for young kids. The useful one-finger major barre chord thing isn't practical for young kids so the advantages must be in simple open string chords, but I can't really see any great advantage over the standard tuning simplified shapes. For older kids and adults, I'll teach open G and other tunings but only as alternatives to standard.

Fretsource, the value for open tuning with the real small fry is that it sounds like music right away - just strum and you're a musician too!

I don't teach standard notation until they're in open tuning. I also keep melody playing confined to single strings - that way, when they get to standard tuning, they'll still be able to play them. But we can do simple things to prepare... quarter notes are quarter notes either way; up strokes and down strokes work either way.

I also like to let the kids play with a slide in open tuning :)