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How much practice should they do?

Primary school students should practice for 20 min a day if possible. The time can vary, but every day is important. Some days, 5-10 min and they get bored, that is a win, other days when the student has found their inspiration, don’t be surprised to see 30-40 min happen organically.

For high school students, practice should be 30-40 min a day. If this can be maintained, it takes about 4 to 5 years to get to an expert/professional level.

How can I encourage practice?

Practice encouragement can be a tricky one. If practice time is enforced like a chore, as opposed to a hobby that can be enjoyed, it stops being fun. Its no fun for anyone when practice becomes a sore spot at the dinner table.

That can be the end of a person’s whole interest in the instrument. From that moment onward, they can say that they tried the guitar and they didn’t like it. They will never have their guitar for company during heartache and loss and that idea gets to me. I do my best to make the lessons fun enough to practice naturally. 

If you are having a hard time getting practice happening, try to assign a time every day that practice can be done and start with 2 minutes a day. But make it every day. It takes 21 consecutive days to build a habit. Slowly increase the time.

But always remember that inspiration isn’t a constant thing, it’s ok to fluctuate.

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What is TAB and Should they learn standard notation?

TAB is the 6 lines and numbers underneath the standard notation (the dots on the 5 lines). It shows you which string to play and which fret to push. Learning standard is much harder because you can play a note in more than one place on the guitar, unlike the piano. Standard can be used to describe which note to play and how long to play it on any instrument. The catch is, the guitar has 6 different strings, and each string repeats the notes of the string below it. The E on the top of the manuscript can be played in 6 different places (if you have 24 frets on your guitar) which can get very confusing.

The argument for learning standard is that you can communicate with other musicians who don’t play guitar. If you only learn TAB and no other music theory, you have no common language and can’t play spontaneously with other musicians. I teach all of the theory in my lessons (and in this book) so my students have a common language with any other musician.

What even is music theory and how important is it?

Music theory on guitar is a funny pickle. Artists like the Beetles and Dave Grohl have built an idea that it is not only possible but admirable to figure out the music with no help. As much as these artists have created amazing music, most often musicians who try and imitate this practice create generic results that a few theory concepts could create and expand upon. The music that is created with those centuries behind them normally creates a more interesting result. It is possible to learn to play the guitar without it, but that process doesn’t create musicians, it creates guitarists who have trouble interacting with other musicians.

I think that theory is one of the most important things in music. Without it, we are doomed to recreate what others have already created. That being said, I rarely use the word “theory” around students, it makes them instantly shut down. If I talk about it like it is a “musical secret”, students are keen to learn a secret. My students learn all the theory that I can teach them, but they aren’t normally aware of it.

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Music listening for musical education. 

My advice is to listen to as many different styles as you can at home. Lots of research has been done on study and early development when accompanied by classical music.

My interpretation of all that I have learned is that we can hear a mathematical correlation between contrasting sounds. 1:1 (unison), 2:1 (octave), 5:3 (major sixth), 3:2 (perfect fifth), 4:3 (perfect fourth) and so on. The more simple the ratio, the more pleasing the sound, the more complex the ratio, the more dissonant the sound is.

If you listen to a full orchestral arrangement of anything, you are hearing these ratios, but over all of the possible octaves, from the super low instruments to the super high. We aren’t doing it consciously, but we are doing a crazy amount of brain maths just by listening. With this in mind, computer and phone speakers have no bass. Most Bluetooth speakers have no bass, so all that sonic information doesn’t even get to your ears unless you are listening to it through good speakers. Make sure there are good-quality speakers and good-quality headphones, not those tinny earbuds.

Next up – different genres of music. The radio is very simple music. I would like to expect a much higher standard of music from my students. If I expect a higher standard, we need to share what that looks like. Find videos of live performances on YouTube, and play along videos. Classical music is the gold standard for music education, but kids don’t like that so much. Movie or video game music is often written to a similar level and is way more palatable to kids. Check out some of the Nintendo soundtracks, they are phenomenal. Try to go with as many styles, histories and cultures as possible.

Next up is me as a case study. If I am trying to write up a song and it is the first time I have heard it, I need to hear the song a few times before I can lock in the melody and write it down. If I have heard it 10 times or more, all I need to hear is the first note and my memory can do the rest. Music practice can happen just by listening to music, so listen to as much as possible at home.

Learning from the parents (Sharing enthusiasm). 

I am not the biggest fan of Haydn (classical composer). My 20-month-old baby is not interested if I put it on. But if I put on some Arch Enemy (very fast metal) his eyes light up and he starts running around in circles. When I had him around my Dad, (his Grandpa) and we put on Haydn, Dad got all excited and started furiously conducting his imaginary orchestra and Baby Wolf instantly understood and got into it. I am not a big fan of my partner’s music, but they have little dance parties to the trashiest of tunes and he loves it. My point is to share what you love with your kids and be open to others sharing what they love with your kids. They will find the most exciting one and run with it. 

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My approach to different learning styles. 

There are 3 main learning types on an instrument, visual, aural and written. Everyone is kinesthetic (touch – it is impossible to get better at the instrument without touching it). If you give a student homework in their preferred style, they learn it faster than if it was given in a different format. However, if you give students homework in a format they don’t go prefer, it takes them much more effort but the information sticks much better.

I like what I call “the shotgun approach”. This is where I cover all 3 areas in one go. I give the students the task in written format, they can hear me play it and they can see me play it. The student can take in whichever format works best for them. This makes it easy to cover as much ground as possible in the lesson time. 

ADHD

I believe ADHD is a superpower when it comes to music, as long as the teacher is capable of rolling with the punches. If you give a kid a guitar and some skills, all they want to do is learn to better impress friends and family. It is an easy cycle to get on board with if you are looking for the right cues.

Attention span can be an issue in the traditional schooling system. In guitar lessons, those random brain fart ideas that pop out at any time can be great lesson content. I just try to link it back to music somehow and accept that the lesson plan that I had worked on for hours during the precious weekend would not be used in this lesson. It is OK. I just try never to get frustrated by it. 

Dyslexia

Again, what is hard in school (I speak from personal experience) can become a superpower. It is not easy to take in the written word, pictures are much easier to process. Written music is pretty much a recipe for a song in picture format. My student book and normal lesson content is dyslexic-friendly. You can see if you flip to any page after the index. The only text is the title. The rest is explained by a teacher, and once the student has a basic idea of what things mean, they can speed ahead. No text is required.

I have endured uni for a total of 5.5 years and I am dyslexic. I have needed to read whole textbooks multiple times. I hated every minute of it, but I read every sentence 5 times the first time. As a result, I never needed to revise like my peers (and I killed them in the results).

My approach to discipline – I don’t often use discipline in my teaching style. I use games as distractions and try to make everything fun so it doesn’t occur to most kids to act out. I see lots of different home dynamics regarding music. The ones who normally get the best result encourage practice, and shrug off no practice. This way guitar is always associated with positivity. That being said, some kids thrive in a highly disciplined environment. If you think this is your kid, I won’t be offended if you pursue a different teacher who specialises in making music hard.

Working with children.

Always remember when employing people to hang out with your kids to check that they have a working with children check. I have mine obviously, but I am shocked to see how few people ask to see it. 

30 min vs 60 min lessons.

This depends entirely on the student. If the attention span is there, I highly recommend that you go hourly. In an hour lesson, much more can be covered and a chunk of practice can be covered in the lesson. The biggest benefit of hour-long lessons is having the breathing space to talk about non-guitar-related things for a minute or 2 here and there. This has a similar effect to sleeping on the information and coming back to it with fresh eyes.

Every kid that I teach who gets hour-long lessons progresses at roughly 4 times the speed of their peers who have half-hour classes. That being said, I have some students who have 20 minutes worth of guitar time in them before they are pooped and doing hour-long lessons would be absurd. If you notice that guitar lesson time goes by way too fast for your child, it may be a good idea to try out 60-minute lessons.