I manage a guitar and lesson studio..

[toddzilla]

ask me anything!!

[ZoCrowes]

1. Yeah

Hire my monkey ass!!

[toddzilla]

2. lol

we've already got 10 monkeys, it's a zoo!!

[regularguy]

3. How's business?

[toddzilla]

4. business is good!

200 students a week, getting some good high-end business on the guitar side. It's tough not spending a ton of money every week cause stuff is so cheap!

[Ron Green]

5. What are most of the young-uns wanting to learn? To be like their hero, or

to how to play the guitar?

[toddzilla]

6. as a former teacher...

On average they want to be a rock star in two months. Once the vast majority of people find out how much work is involved in becoming adept at your instrument, they either quit or suck for many years. Another side to that is not everyone wants to be good, or wants to devote the time it takes to be good. The ones that get me are when they constantly bitch and moan about how they never have time to practice, when they obviously do. or when you continually tell them exactly what they need to do to get better, and they don't ever really do it.



I haven't taught for a few years, but it's always either classic rock, or whatever pop bullshit is on the radio, fads are king.

[Pepperbelly]

7. When I first learned to play, "lessons" involved things like scales and

chords and old-school songs like Home on the Range. The rock stuff we learned on our own time. Not long ago, I was in a music store to get a scitch (you know, like 'switch' but with a typo) replaced on one of my guitars and heard a newbie struggling painfully with that break in Dazed and Confused ..."The soul of a woman is created below" ... bum-bum-bum-bu-bu-bu-bu-bu-bu-bum-bum-bum.

Long way from Red River Valley but hey ... I guess it let's them see some progress early on which can't help but be good.

[Ron Green]

8. That's the balance you have to achieve as a teacher, isn't it?

You have to let them see some progress, so they don't just give up, but at the same time you have to show them what a long hard road it is to master an instrument. It's sad, in a way, that "Red River Valley" is no longer in favor as a popular tune, because that's how you learn fundamental harmony. Kids who learn grunge or alt-rock progressions are learning retrograde changes that, while serving them for this narrow style of music, won't give them much of a harmonic foundation for later.

[toddzilla]

9. totally true..

Our lesson studio is a cut above most places in that we only hire teachers that are well versed in theory and musicianship. The trick is to get the 14 year that just wants to play green day to realize that it's in his interest to know how music works and not just how to play powerchords. We make them work with metronomes, and identify what makes up a chord, etc.. but many of them really don't want anything to do with it, they just want to jam out.

I quit teaching for many reasons, this being one of the primary, when your parents make you take lessons and you don't give a damn if you practice or get anything out of it, it's more than frustrating for the teacher, and i just ran out of patience for it. It can be very rewarding, i just got burnt out on it and decided to do something else. I have only had a few advanced students and they are really cool to sit with and help them on their quest.

[bullimiami]

10. i just never understood why not just teach whatever the student likes

try to get them playing along with some songs they enjoy, they learn some chords and a few little ditties, start getting some coordination and then see where it leads.

why in the world would anyone ever teach a kid to play red river valley? of course I like it because my dad used to play it on the uke.

now i enjoyed violin lessons as a kid, learned to read music and play the typical classical stuff but I dropped it, as a teen I took to guitar myself, had some lessons with a nice talented older guy who played a nice jazzy style and hated it. basically we just taught ourselves loving black sabbath with its horrid guitar and zeppelin with its sloppy but wonderful style.

im all about playing music being practical and enjoyable first of all, introduce the theory and teach it to those who show an interest.

[Pepperbelly]

11. I actually started out on trumpet in the school band and picked up ...

everything else on my own.

[Ron Green]

12. I think yours is a valid point of view, but I don't know if a kid is going

to find his way to the hard work of learning the instrument on his own. Maybe he will. I don't really know the answer to this, but I suspect there are lots of adults who wish they were held to a more rigorous standard when they were young, so as to have the fundamentals to build on. The young person who is allowed to follow his own likes, usually sucky pop stuff, may or may not find his way to better music, but at least he will have been exposed to the real stuff. He can always find the crap music on the radio.

And I think the reason to teach "Red River Valley" is to show how a I-IV-V progression works, and that's one of the fundamentals.

[toddzilla]

13. because..

if you spend a year learning songs at the end of a year you know.. a bunch of songs.

If you spend a year learning songs, and how those songs are written within keys, how chords are constructed, and how scales are used to create solos within and outside of diatonic melodies, at the end of a year you're on your way to being a musician and not "some kid who plays guitar"


Plus, the parents want to know that the 150 bucks a month they spend on lessons has real knowledge within it.