The beginning music teacher is often faced with an overwhelming number of “first lesson” students, that is, students with virtually no significant experience in creating music. (CN) They come in, likely because they have a great love and appreciation for the music they listen to, yet have few ideas about how to start making it themselves. It is this love and appreciation that makes teaching a beginner a heavy responsibility for the instructor. Making music isn’t for everyone, but that is rarely cut and dry during the first few lessons. Any beginner is inevitably faced with a wall of impossibilities. A bad instructor will not be able to do anything about that wall. In order to be effective, a good teacher must shield the student from impossibilities by exposing them to all the possibilities. The beginning music student requires a foundation that is simple enough to be built up very quickly, yet challenging enough so that the student can feel a sense of accomplishment in their results.
Many of the traditional ideas, commonly associated with beginners, are not necessarily as all-inclusive as expected. Method books, for example, vary greatly. Many are nothing more than a collection of short pieces that were written to increasing difficulty throughout the book. In the literal sense, this is hardly a method at all. It should also be noted that on my instrument, top 40 guitar, in particular, nobody has yet agreed on a single, all-inclusive, approach to learning. Many guitar teachers, including the two that I interviewed, do not use a method series at all, for any level, unless it is specifically requested. A teacher should never assume that, just because he or she was taught with a method book, that a method book is the only approach. If it is decided that a method book is the way to go, it should be heavily supplemented by hands-on teaching and outside material.
A very direct approach to teaching guitar is to have the teacher give an oral explanation of what to do. There is no music and no diagrams on the music stand. This is a very hands-on approach. It isolates the student’s coordination because it does not require a significant amount of reading comprehension or analytical thought. David Newsam recommends teaching a beginner to play across a position playing each note in the position (no stretches) without worrying about what notes they are playing. (CN, 4/18) It is also important to keep in mind that younger students may not have the overall physical strength of an advancing player. (Newsam, 109) Dave Bell talks about just going through songs with beginners, one string at a time, and one note at a time. (Interview) As an advancing student, I can find this method frustrating, and did not previously consider it as an effective teaching method. This is because I have developed faster ways to connect with music. I can read off of a page and go at my own pace. Trying to get my mind in sync with the instructors mind just seems like a waste of time. However, the reason this method may yield good results for beginners goes back to the idea of a path of low frustration. A direct explanation of what to do is very similar to anything else we do in life. This is a direct contrast to reading and understanding music, which is something very new and mysterious to a beginner. Even students with the ability to begin reading may still not be emotionally ready for it. When I told my student for the class, Scott, that I was going to teach him to read on guitar, he felt that it was an unrealistic goal. This shows that a student needs to be comfortable with an idea, before they can approach learning it with the right attitude. There is nothing more comfortable than having a teacher take you by the hand and tell you, in a clear way, exactly what to do to succeed.
It may be decided that the explanation only approach is too simple or too boring and that working from a specific beginner book might foster better results through more structure. In this case it is advisable to choose a book that leaves room for work outside of itself. What works : instructional strategies for music education is not a method book. It is an instructional book for teachers. It includes many simple suggestions about different methods of engaging students. In determining a complete course of study for a beginning student, outside of a book, we will take a few of these unconventional suggestions into consideration. One suggestion is to have beginning students study rhythmic figures independent of melody. (Merrion) This is the opposite of most reading books, which, as mentioned before, are a series of pieces that attempt to merge many techniques simultaneously. For readers, Mike McAdam uses Music Reading for Guitar. (CN, 4/18). The author of this book is a believer that rhythm should be taught separately. (Oakes, 6) The first chapter of the book is rhythm only.
Another suggestion is that notes should not be taught individually, but only as a complete sequence. (Merrion) The idea being that the student will be able to subconsciously understand the scale. The beginner portion of the Oakes book is traditional in its teaching only one or several notes at a time. Learning from scales is very present in the Berklee ear-training curriculum. Every time I learn a new scale on the guitar I go through the solfege of it. This helps me to connect the intervals on the neck with my inner hearing, without having to think about it too much. I would consider this a personal proof that students need to be connecting their ear from the very beginning. Another effective device for isolating ear training for the beginner is learning the solfege hand signs. (Szőnyi) This works the same way solfeging a guitar scale works. It is a mind body connection. It is also very similar to making students feel comfortable through giving them directions in language, rather than music notation. Hand signs relate movements, which the average non-musical person can perform easily, to musical notes, which is the new concept.
A final aspect that is important for all students is originality. Tal Shalom Kobi, who has had success teaching jazz composition to elementary school students, believes it is essential. (CN, 4/11) Her thought was that students had to reach a certain point before they could compose. The idea is also applicable to beginners. My earliest music ed. memory is from preschool. Our music teacher handed each of us extremely wide ruled, laminated staff paper and gave us a handful of pennies. Our assignment was to come up with a song that she would then play for us on the piano. I didn’t know anything about ear-training. I had no idea what I was writing. The experience still sticks in my mind because it was a chance for me to take responsibility for the music I was making. There were no rules, no preconceived ideas of what I should sound like. I had to figure it out all on my own, and the whole time I was being introduced to standard notation. Note, that it was separate from rhythms, and all the notes in the key of C were made available. It all started with the student.
Whether you choose a method book that incorporates these suggestions or just introduce them to your new student independently is not important. The main goal is to keep the learning process diverse, without making it complicated. This is the only way to get your students to make the connections they need to move from the beginner stage to an independent musician.

Works Cited
• Class Notes Spring 2008 (David Newsam, Tal Shalom Kobi, Mike McAdam)
• Dave Bell Interview, 2008
• Duckworth, William. A creative approach to music fundamentals : with CD-ROM. Thomson/Schirmer, c2004.
• Merrion, Margaret Dee. What works : instructional strategies for music education. Music Educators National Conference, c1989.
• Newsam, David R., 1959. Making money teaching music. Writer’s Digest Books, c1995.
• Oakes, David, guitarist. Music reading for guitar : the complete method. Hal Leonard Corp., c1998.
• Szőnyi, Erzsébet. Kodály’s principles in practice : an approach to music education through the Kodály method. Boosey & Hawkes, c1973.

There is a very common misconception that studying with a teacher means you will be put into a mold & forced to learn in a way that is not consistent with your goals. This comes with ideas like, “there is one right, formal way to play guitar, but if I learn to play like that, I won’t be able to make the music I want to make.” If this were true, there would be no reason to take lessons. In fact, depending on the teacher, this is often not true at all. I personally believe that there is no “right” way to play the guitar.

That being said, it is a balance. A true beginner does not even know enough about guitar to make their own goals, so I have to start somewhere. There has to be some structure in the beginning, just for the sake of getting the student doing something. I don’t care if it’s sight-reading, or memorizing a song on one string. Goal number one is always “get the student playing something.” & in order to do that with a beginner, it is helpful to look at “right” & “wrong” ways to play guitar.

On the long term, however, I try to teach with only two constraints sound & efficiency.

Sound is about listening to yourself. For example I might ask a student if he or she is aware that they are allowing strings to ring out, when they might sound better silent. Many times students are not even aware of the sounds the strings are making. So I show them how they might correct it, but in doing so remind them that it is just a choice. “Let them ring if you want to, but learn to know when they’re ringing, & learn to control it so you can make them ring or make them silent at will.” The same things will go for control over rhythm, tone & anything else that effects the sounds you hear when you play.

Efficiency is about achieving the sound you want with the least amount of physical & mental effort. For example, when I see a student playing a passage of a piece in a way that is different from the way I might play it. I show the student my way of playing it. I show them that my hand is moving around less than their hand. Even though we are making near identical sounds, I am expending less effort to make it. Like with sound I tell the student, “there is no single “correct” way to play this passage, just more & less efficient ways. Play it the way you had it, if you want to, but understand the logic behind my way as well. It may help you when you want to play faster, or if you want this passage to come easier to you.” Often times there will even be two or more ways of playing something that are equally efficient physically.

An example of mental efficiency might be when a student is struggling with a fingering because he or she is looking at it as a standard scale form, while they might be opened up to looking at it as a chord form. Either way is correct, but sometimes a different perspective helps your mind better connect the sound you are going for with a fingering you already know.

There is no right & wrong beyond sound & efficiency.