What is the musical environment like in your area? HOw does this affect you?
junplugged said:
does anyone teach thru a music store? does anyone stress reading or sight reading or more of playing by ear and what the student wants to learn, if it's not reading, etc.
I have thaught through a music store, but as they did not have enough space it was better for me to take the pupils home and teach them from my house, so the store would just pass on the pupils to me. As a reward for them passing pupils on to my way I gave them some money in return. Fair enough eh? These days most of my students come to me on their own account, yes they did find my phonenumber somewhere [Musicstore or any other public place] or got recommended by another pupil.
The sightreading is a deep one. I feel any pupil will benefit from this, and will also appreciate it within time, however a lot of this depends on age. A 14 yr old who starts out may just want to rock, but within two years time this kid may become also interested in acoustic guitar, and may want to go deeper with harmony and melody.
For people who are more intermediate I will recommend the reading idea, as their fretboardknowledge and general musicianship will benefit from it.
Being able to sight read will also give you access to different styles of music, usually styles which depend a bit more on written notation such as classical music.
Really sight reading is just another tool for communication, just as tab. is. Having access to both tab. and the notes is great as you can make your own choices about how to learn new pieces. Would you like to notes for a Satriani riff or just the tab.? Changes are you will have access to the music, so using the tab. may be far easier. What about learning a Bach violin sonate? Well with this one the musical notation may be easier to use as you may not have a recording of this piece, and even if you have it may to be to complex to nail it precisely by only using your ears.
Would I stress playing by ear? Certainly as we are dealing with sound, we are "soundmerchants" so you need to develop your hearing and also become free with your instrument. I value the fact that people can work out songs by ear rather than using tab. as it will make them freeer on their instrument. Okay I agree it is a process, and there are different levels of this too. Most of my pupils will start with the tab. of their favourite songs, but within time they will mange to hear the chordsequences by ear, and yes I will give them pointers as in what to listen out for when working things out by ear.
Would I let people decide what they want to learn? Well most of the time it is like: "I want to get better" and they do not have any idea how to do this, so it is for us, teachers, to see how you can take them up to the next level, and the better you are at this the more successful you will be as a teacher.
Now some more questions for all of you:
How is the average environment where you life. I mean what kind of students do you get?
I live in Leeds in England [UK] and this is a city of moderate size, however there are many many musicshops [at least more that 10], there is a University with a music department and a Music College as well. All of this helps to stimulate the musical environment. What is not here is a thriving recording industry with major artists and major record labels, so anyone of you living in LA or New York may find themselves in a totally different environment.
You see in LA you may get advanced students who would like to take lessons from a well-know player. This calls for a totally different scenario teachingwise, as prices, attitude ect. may be completely different from the environment I am used to.
Most of my students are beginners or people who have played a little bit, so they may just be looking for some inspiration which would take their playing up to the next level, but teaching them for example "Eruption" of Van Halen will go straight over their heads. To be honest in all my years of teaching I have not had many requests from people doing this song [or any other "tech. challenging guitarmusic"] Change are, anyone who would like so learn this kind of stuff already knows how to help themselves. For that matter, how many of us here would take lessons themselves from someone? You probably know how to learn any kind of thing musicwise, you may just need some time and patience to get it right.
The average person I see wants to make a start with guitar, or improve upon what they already know, or would like to learn to improvise or get deeper into classical or any other kind of fingerstyle guitar.
So how often do you get requests to work out Satriani songs or anything of that kind?
Cheers,
Eddie