giving guitar lessons....

[thajeremy]

I have been playing guitar for 10+ years....I dont consider myself a great guitar player by any means, but I can get the job done....My wife wants me to give her lessons...since I am self taught, I really have no clue how to give lessons....

any suggestions on where I should start?

[philboyd studge]

You might try subscribing to one of the online guitar instruction sites, that way you can go step by step with your wife over the fundamentals without domestic friction. Besides, you'll learn a thing or two as well. I subcribe to Jam Play and I got to say it's helped me quite a bit simply by watching several other instructor's methods. My ability to assess and take a student to the next step has really improved and since I'm dealing with classes of middle school kids with vastly different abilities and skill sets, it's a great tool.

With any luck I hope to have the time this summer to camp out on that site on the advanced levels and learn some things for me. Same for banjo and mandolin.

Anyway, be patient and she'll progress right along.

[RejectionNinja]

Strongly suggest starting with an actual book, and then work through it with her. You might learn a little along the way as well. Most importantly, you'll be able to take what is on the page and show her, and ensure that she's doing the exercises properly.

Private instrument lessons are almost always done from a book, with the instructor 1) making sure that progress is made (no slacking, quitting, etc.), 2) the exercises are done correctly (no bad habits creeping in), and 3) answering questions and clarifying what's being taught in the book.

I don't have any recommendations for a guitar book but I'm sure other people will.

[dogonjon]

Attempting to teach your wife, friend, sibling etc can create friction and adversly affect relationships. If you wife truly wants to learn and isn't trying to get some attention and affection (there is nothing wrong with that), find an instructor for her and then lavish her with your attention and praise. If it's your attention she craves then use the guitar to create the intimate contact putting your arms around her to assist fingering and strumming. This is not the methodology a guitar instructor employs. You may not get results in her learning to play but you may get results in the area of intimacy. Don't expect that your wife will learn from you. When she is truly interested she will seek instruction from a teacher who can coach her. You can assist with searching for the proper instructor and encourage her practice and praise her performance. Once she has the basics there can be a lot of intimate fun playing guitar together. Instruction takes paitence and the student has to be open to accept feedback. Relationships make this difficult as you want your wife to progress but may become impaitent with her progress making her over sensative to your feedback.

[ggunn]

Originally Posted by dogonjon

Attempting to teach your wife, friend, sibling etc can create friction and adversly affect relationships. If you wife truly wants to learn and isn't trying to get some attention and affection (there is nothing wrong with that), find an instructor for her and then lavish her with your attention and praise. If it's your attention she craves then use the guitar to create the intimate contact putting your arms around her to assist fingering and strumming. This is not the methodology a guitar instructor employs. You may not get results in her learning to play but you may get results in the area of intimacy. Don't expect that your wife will learn from you. When she is truly interested she will seek instruction from a teacher who can coach her. You can assist with searching for the proper instructor and encourage her practice and praise her performance. Once she has the basics there can be a lot of intimate fun playing guitar together. Instruction takes paitence and the student has to be open to accept feedback. Relationships make this difficult as you want your wife to progress but may become impaitent with her progress making her over sensative to your feedback.

Second that. Send her to a neutral instructor. Combining the teacher/student roles with the husband/wife ones is asking for trouble. That's not to say that you can't give her tips and show her riffs, but let someone who is detached from your personal life do the heavy lifting.

[R!ck]

It's always a hard decision when to begin implementing proper guitar technique, some teachers say right from the word go you should equip them with correct technique to prevent them from learning bad habbits, others say allow them to familiarize themselves with the guitar and allow them to have fun before cracking the whip so to speak. I've been teaching guitar for 2-3 years now, which isn't a vast amount of experience, but I have payed really close attention to when the best time is to introduce fundamentals to a brand new student. As with anything in music there are no hard and fast rules, you need to pay very close attention to the way they're developing and the level of interest they're taking. That didn't give you any answers, sorry about that, but basically my point is keep your eyes and ears open and structure the direction of your lessons based on the individual.

Good luck mate, let us know how it goes.