Getting interested
Buying a guitar
My teaching method
I started playing guitar on my early 20's. It lasted for about 10 years.
I took lessons for about 2 years, but honestly, I shall admit I am not a so good player.
However, as an excellent football coach is not necessary a good player and vice-versa, I decided to teach my kid myself for the following reasons:
- I know the basic theory to play guitars.
- There are many famous players who learned how to play by themselves.
- There are many who failed to learn with a teacher. So, having a teacher does not necessary means you will learn.
Also, I am not expecting him to become a professional.
This will probably not happen, because those that play very well (As these kids video), practice a lot, I believe. A few hours a day, I imagine. My son will not do it. He is an Enneagram type 7. He wants to do many things a day, not having much time only for guitars.
Before buying his guitar, I had to be ready to teach a 4 years kid, because of my mistakes to teach with my electric guitar.
Also, kids have different personality. A method may work for one, but not for other.
And my kid is the type that don't want to be controlled... Many times he does not want to follow instructions, unless he knows he needs to. If he thinks he know a little bit, he would not want to try new ways...
So I was constantly trying to find new ways to teach the same thing, being patient to the point that sometimes I need to
wait a long time until he was ready to hear my suggestions.
My first conclusion was that I should apply the "Divide and conquer", which means breaking a lesson in even small lessons, because a little boy still don't have skills to learn a "big" lesson in one step.For example, initially, I realized it was too difficult for him to learn how to move both left and right hand fingers at same time. I had to start with the right hand first, and then the left.
During the process, I also searched for many hints, like make the lessons as fun as possible, and also never being angry. The later is very important, I believe, because if you get angry, *you* will make your kid loose interest, and he will not want to play anymore. If the kid is not improving, it's the teacher's fail. The teacher shall improve his/her method.
On the other hand, unfortunately, fun things does not last. You will have to find another one every now and them. Fortunately, there are many suggestions out there (ex: here and here).
This was also like a laboratory for me. I had to test many methods to find out a good for him.
A method that worked for someone, may not work for another kid and vice-versa.
I used only nursery rhymes, because these are the only ones he knows and likes.
On the other hand, he wanted to play only songs, that is, he did not want to play only sequence of notes or chords devised to training. So, I had to find songs with repeated sequences.
The musics I found easy to teach are the following (English):
Melodies: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, ABC Song, Happy Birthday
Chord: Wheels on the bus, Head Shoulders knees and toes (These uses mainly C/G/D, and don't change chords so often)
⬆C/G are reduced versions.
Here are the steps I made during the first year:
1) The first decision I did is that he would start only with his right hand. I realized it was too complicated to him to learn moving both hands at same time.
We would take a kid song he knew, and move only the right hand on all open strings. The sound did not match, only the rhythm.
2) To make him realize we had 6 strings, I asked him to play only the 6th or only the 1st string to few the difference of the low/high sounds.Or also this link.
3) Still, I realized that it was too difficult to him to move each of his right hand fingers.
So, I decided to make him use a pick, but he did not want to. My solution was to put a sticker on the picks as below. He liked the picks with his favorite pictures, and started using.
This was around a week after our first lesson.
4) To make things more funny, I made a stamp with a guitar picture, and we started stamping days that we did lessons on a calendar. This motivated him to play almost everyday.
This lasted for a few months, until I became too busy on my work, and we could practice only on weekends.
5) After 2 weeks, we started with the first 6 notes of "Jingle Bell", which is a sequence of "0" on the 1st string.
6) To make the lessons more fun, I showed him the sounds of effects on my electric guitar. He got so amazed that we would do this on all lessons for a while.
7) After a month and half, I started with "Happy Birthday" only with the 1st String (link).
--3-3-5-3-8-7--3-3-5-3-10-8--3-3-15-12-8-7--13-13-12-8-10-8--
Initially, he played only the right hand on the 1st string, while I used my left. Yes, two guys playing one guitar at same time.
Than, he would hold only the 3rd fret with his index finger, while I would do others. This is the first time he started using his left hand!
Since he could not memorize all the frets, I decided to mark the frets for this song:
And finally, he memorized it with the marks, and was playing, although only with his index finger.
8) On mid-March, I decided it was time to teach him reading guitar tabs...
I know the Suzuki method that teaches young kids to play violin (or guitar) without using musical score.
However, because we taught our kid the alphabet letters and numbers in a fun manner (as home education) since he was 3 years old, I though he could start learning guitar tabs.
The first problem I realized is that he could not understand the relation between the real strings and the strings on the tab.
That understandable, as the inversion in the following. At least for my 4-5 years old kid, I believe he could not reverse the inversion on his head.
Thus, I decided to start with the 1st string. To make easier, I "colored" the strings.
Here is the first example with "Happy birthday".Note that I have a red label also on the neck. This picture shows all the colors, but I started only with the red, and added others as he progressed to next step.
I picked red because this was the first color I could imagine..
To make funnier, you can also add pretty pictures (Such as birthday cake above) on the tabs.
This also helped him finding his favorite tab: by looking at the pictures.
Here are some guitar tab examples to download (Click to enlarge and get).
| Twinkle Twinkle Little Star |  |
| ABC song |  |
9) At some time I though it was time to start using all fingers on his left hand, because so far, he was using only his index finger.
The difficult thing was to convince him to use other fingers. He thought he was good enough with only one finger...
Also, he did not want to play sequence of training notes...
He wanted to play only songs he liked.
Things started changing when I found the right songs: Twinkle Twinkle and ABC's song.
These uses only frets 1, 2 and 3. So, I "labered" the frets as well as his fingers with numbers, and instructed him to use one finger for each of first three frets.
He liked having his fingers "labered", and started using the proper fingers on the frets.
10) On May, I bought a strap. This motivated him to play standing up.
11) Now I thought it was time to teach him chords.
The first thing I realized is that he simple could not make C or G because of his hand size.
Take a look: For C, if he has the index finger on string 2, his ring finger just can't reach string 5.
So, I got a suggestion here and taught reduced versions of C and G.
We tried some songs including "Wheels on the bus" and "Head, shoulders, knees and toes", but for the first 2-3 months, he was playing the entire song with the first chord only.
Although still a little boy, my son sometimes don't want to see his weakness... So, I could not know why he did not want to change chords, until one day I pressed him, and he finally told he was feeling some pain to press the strings.
That's when I changed the string to silk and steel. Even so, it still took some time until his fingers got more comfortable, and could play the entire "Wheel on the bus" by playing both C and G.
So, if you are using an acoustic guitar, my first suggestion is to use a silk and steel string.
On the other hand, I did something wrong : during this time, I tried to use videos while he was playing. I got some videos of the musics we would play, edited it by inserting the chords synchronized with the song. So he could watch the song video, and also see the chord he should play at that moment.
At first, it seemed OK, because he really likes the song, and he was enjoying them. But still, he was playing only with the first chord of the music.
That when I realized that he was more interested in watching the videos than playing.
So, I stopped that method, and he finally started changing the chords.I guess this cost about 2 months...
This did not work on our case, but may work for other kids.
What I need to do from now is try to convince him to practice most of the days, as we did for the first few months, as well as find more easy songs.
Thank's for reading!
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