Guitar Teaching Mistakes To Look Out For As A Student

Learning Guitar As A Beginner

Learning guitar on your own makes it difficult to improve for many reasons, so seeking a teacher is the natural step to take. However, if you take guitar lessons with an ineffective guitar teacher, you may unknowingly be holding yourself back from becoming the kind of player you want to be. This makes it important to understand the habits of ineffective guitar teachers vs effective ones. The points on this page are 4 crucial teaching mistakes to look out for. If your guitar teacher is making them, consider finding a new one who doesn’t so you get the best results from your lessons:

Teaching You (As A Non-Beginner) From Books Or Using Other Generic Approaches

Many guitar teachers either do not know how to help students reach their specific musical goals or never thought to ask about them. This is a bad sign from the very start, and leads to directionless learning. To cover this up (or simply because they don’t know any better), guitar teachers teach you directly from generic music instruction books or through songs.

To make the most progress on guitar, it is important to learn using a lesson strategy that was created specifically for your goals, strengths/weaknesses, learning style and skill level. A truly great guitar teacher does this for all his/her students. Always make sure that your teacher asks you about your musical goals before taking lessons with them.

Overwhelming You With Too Much Materials

Another sign of poor guitar teaching is when teachers constantly teach you new material, but never show you how to use it together with your other skills. Many guitar teachers fall into this trap because they feel like they are not “being teachers” unless they are teaching you something new every lesson. The result in most cases is that they overwhelm their students with too much material to learn. The student then begins to struggle because they are taking in too much information at once and/or don’t know what they should be practicing.

An effective guitar teacher doesn’t make this same mistake. He shows you how to integrate new skills together with your old skills. This helps you learn to play actual music with what you know and eliminates holes in your playing that can hold you back from getting better. This approach makes it fun to learn guitar, rather than overwhelming and frustrating.

Only Offering 1 On 1 Lessons

It’s easy and fun to get better at guitar when you work in groups. Many teachers neglect group formats because they believe the myth than one on one lessons are the best way to get results. Fact is, you get the same results and more from taking group lessons. Working with other guitar players helps you improve in ways that private lessons can’t such as learning to overcome the fear of playing in front of others, playing music with other musicians and gaining motivation through friendly competition.

Not Showing You How To Practice

Poor guitar teachers do not show their students how to practice. This directly results in less progress and more frustration for you. It is absolutely crucial that your teacher shows you how to practice what they teach during your lesson. This ensures that you know how to practice, practice correctly and make fast progress between lessons.

Apply the points on this page to your guitar teacher (or if possible to any guitar teacher you might work with). How do they stack up? If they make many of these mistakes, it’s time to find a new guitar teacher who doesn’t.