Beginner Curriculum

My beginner students follow a curriculum. Everyone learns at his or her own pace but ends up with the same vocabulary of chords and techniques. I have one curriculum for acoustic students and one for electric students.

A reasonably motivated student who practices three times a week can expect to get through it in nine to fifteen months. Highly motivated students finish the work in six months or so. Most students like to supplement my curriculum with the kinds of songs that interest them. I encourage this, provided the songs the students bring are level-appropriate.

Sometimes I read ads written by other guitar teachers in which they brag about creating a unique course of study for each student. I believe it's appropriate to do that at the intermediate level, but not for beginners. This page will show why.

Benefits Of Rounded Skills

Students change teachers a lot. They move to other cities. They try group guitar classes or ensembles such as the class offered at the Outpost Performance Space. In fact, when a student is interested in a style I don't teach beyond the beginner to intermediate level, I give that student a good foundation and take that student as far as I can. Then I refer him or her to someone who specializes in that style.

Many advanced classical or jazz teachers do not accept beginners. They focus more on "what to play" and are repertoire teachers as opposed to technical teachers, who focus on "how to play". So in order to prepare you to study with such a teacher, I must ensure you have good technique and a reasonable understanding of the theory appropriate to your style. It makes no sense to refer you to such a teacher and then have you fail the audition.

My students can function socially as musicians. By the time you reach the intermediate level, you will have at least one song in every major popular style. So if you're at a party or a jam session and someone hands you a guitar, you can participate. Also, checking out styles that are similar to the ones you like may surprise you. You need not fall in love with every song I give you, but you need to be able to function in the styles appropriate to your instrument.

Ignorance is not bliss when you're around musicians. Being unable to join in a theory conversation with other musicians because you don't know what a dominant seventh chord is, or being flamed off an Internet message board because you ask a "stupid" question, is not much fun. I don't like it when that happens to my students, so I'm not going to set you up to be humiliated. The best way to keep this from happening is to see to it your theory skills keep pace with your playing.

There's also such a thing as getting your money's worth. If each lesson builds on the one before it, you make better and faster progress than if you learn a random hodgepodge of things that have no relationship to each other. You also get the ability to extrapolate what you've learned and apply it to similar songs. If you're the kind of person who picks up on patterns, you'll be far better able to notice the patterns if you aren't jumping around randomly. This means that after a year, if you've followed a reasonable course of study, you'll know more than you did if you jumped around based on whatever seemed fun at the time.

Similarities And Differences

All paths lead to the top of the mountain, and at the very advanced level electric and acoustic players have both mastered the basics of the opposite style. Yet at the beginner level, electric and acoustic styles are different and players need different techniques in order to be effective right away.

Both the acoustic and electric cycles are based around a set of fifteen songs, yet there are another fifteen or twenty "optional" songs that you can learn in addition to these. If you like a style or a particular key and want to go deeper, or if there's a special song or artist you want to study, we can branch off from the regular curriculum once in a while as soon as you've got the skills to be able to handle the music.

In both courses, I generally add only one or two chords or changes at a time. I stay in each key for several songs, adding rhythm patterns or more sophisticated finger or picking techniques.

Beginner Acoustic Curriculum

My acoustic curriculum is based on "The Path" by Jamie Andreas. This book starts out with the most basic supported chord changes in the key of G. My students get their first classic rock song on the first day. It uses only two chords.

I teach the keys of G, D, A, E, and C in that order. To do that, I have a series of fifteen songs in my "beginner" curriculum. By the time the student gets to the end of those fifteen, he or she will know all the open position major, minor, and dominant seventh chords. He or she will be able to make smooth, clean changes and transpose at will from one key to another. He or she will also be exposed to classic rock, blues, folk, modern and old school country, jazz, bluegrass, and traditional music such as Christmas carols or "Happy Birthday".

All my acoustic players learn both pick and finger style basics during this fifteen-song series.

Beginner Electric Curriculum

My beginner electric curriculum is also based on "The Path". A few of the songs I teach are exactly the same as the ones in my acoustic curriculum, yet since electric players need different techniques than acoustic players, I get into power chords right away. These begin with the open position power chords, and continue with movable power chords.

As with the acoustic curriculum, my electric curriculum has fifteen songs in it. These songs include both lead and rhythm work. We start with the rhythm and add in fills, and we introduce one position of the pentatonic and blues scale for an introduction to improvisation.

Theory

With me, you learn the theory as you go. You learn exactly as much as you need to understand why you're doing what you're doing, and what you're about to do next. I don't dump a bunch on it right away, and I don't force you to learn to read staff music right away unless you're interested in a style that requires it, such as classical guitar or jazz. That's because a guitarist needs five different kinds of music notation, and staff notation is just one out of five. My goal is to get you playing the kind of music you want to play as quickly as is practical.

I take an applied approach to theory when it comes to teaching the guitar. There are already enough people who can tell you exactly what a minor mixolydian scale is, but who can't play one at a reasonable tempo. If you stick around to the advanced level you will definitely have to learn the theory that applies to the kind of music you want to play. But I require you to understand it so thoroughly that you can play it. Otherwise, you don't really understand it.

If you plan to study guitar at a university, you will have to learn basic theory and sight reading. Otherwise, the only reason to learn more than you need to make the music you like is if the structure of music interests you. Some people truly are interested in pure music theory for its own sake and would like to learn what a twelve-tone row is or how to construct a fugue, I can teach you. I do teach theory-only classes particularly for non-guitarists. But it's not part of an ordinary guitar lesson.

Exercises

Everyone gets right and left hand exercises designed to build strength and stretch, and to get the fingers to work independently of each other. If you start out with a lot of strength, you'll do the strength exercises more easily but you'll need to devote more time to stretch. Likewise, if your hand is very flexible odds are you'll need to build strength.

There are also exercises to give you musical "building blocks". Exercises to switch back and forth between chords are an example. Scales and arpeggios give you little movements that you will later use in playing. The same goes for bend and legato exercises.

I will not load you down with exercises. The lesson will be evenly balanced between technical exercises and repertoire. I also promise not to make you do a bunch of meaningless exercises in a vacuum. The exercises will be applied in the repertoire as soon as possible. So you're not going to spend hours on scales without learning some nifty fills or runs where you can apply them. Wherever practical, your exercises are going to come from the music you're actually working on at the time.

Variations

A few of the songs are simplified from their original as-recorded form. We learn them in a form that has easy, accessible chords. That's because my goal is to teach the chords in the key, and correct form on the chord changes. Later, if you want to add a more complex finger-picking pattern or a more sophisticated chord change, we can do that once your hands are up to it.

Sometimes I return to a song three or four times over the first couple years, adding a layer of sophistication each time. That way you get to focus on the specific thing being learned, without having to divide your attention between the new technique and, say, a new series of chords. The result is that you pick up the new technique, and then you can apply it to all the songs in your repertoire.

Customizing

Within these fifteen songs there's lots of room to customize. If you're an acoustic student but absolutely can't stand Tom Petty, I don't make you learn to play "Free Falling". You can learn that key with "Surfin' USA" instead and I'll introduce chord melody later. Or, if you find another song that has the same chords as the one you want to skip, you're welcome to substitute it.

What you do not get to do is to eliminate an entire style. I don't care if you think folk is lame or if you hate country, or if you think grunge is for losers. Part of what a teacher does is to broaden a student's knowledge, and a lot of students have tried an unfamiliar style and found to their surprise that they like it. Exploring other styles also gives you a better insight into the structure and history of the kind of music you love.

You get a bigger say in the kind of music you play if you buy your own music and bring it to class. If it's appropriate to your skill level and has the chords we're working on, you can play it. So if all you want to play is jazz and you don't care if you ever see another rock tune, go down to the music store and buy the Easy Real Book. If you want to rock out, get some easy metal arrangements. There are plenty available. Some libraries even have music books available to borrow. Some bands license their music to free Tablature Web sites for you to download. If you don't want to go to that effort, or if you don't want to pay for a copy of the music, then you're stuck with whatever I write out for you. So the amount of control you have over your lesson content is related to the effort you put in.

The Fair Chance Philosophy

I follow the Fair Chance Philosophy. If you and I disagree as to whether a musical style or a specific technique is going to work for you, I'm willing to let you have it your way, provided you try it my way first and give it a Fair Chance. This means that you don't have to study a particular style, or use the classical playing position, or hold your pick in a particular way, provided you know for certain that it won't work for you because you've given it a Fair Chance.

For music in a particular style, a Fair Chance is one song. If you hate an entire genre of music such as country or jazz, learn just one song from that style. Play it for me competently from memory, and I will give you the right to veto any other song in that style provided you can play that one song for me, on the spot, every time you exercise that veto. Forget that one song, and you lose the veto. If you're willing to invest the effort to learn and maintain one song from a style you dislike, I'm willing to not load you down with any more.

For physical techniques, such as how you sit or how you hold a pick, a Fair Chance means forty days of practice. If you practice every day, you get through your end of the deal in forty days. If you practice just three times a week, it's going to take you longer. So the harder you practice, the sooner you can say: "Yes, I've tried it and I've given it a Fair Chance, and I'm still not comfortable."

For the record... I have permitted students to switch from the classical to the casual playing position based on the Fair Chance policy. I've also let students exercise their Fair Chance veto to avoid styles they dislike.

Level Appropriate Music

Some songs are more beginner-appropriate than others. In fact, some entire styles are easier for beginners. So most of my beginner curriculum starts out in those styles. That doesn't mean that the styles you like are completely inaccessible. It simply means that we limit ourselves, at first, to the easier selections from that style. At times we simplify or rearrange a piece to remove the more difficult fingerings.

A few styles are so advanced that in order to play them at all you need very well developed skills. Advanced classical repertoire, Travis picking, and 80's hair metal or death metal come to mind. It is impossible to do the advanced finger style or pick work well until you have mastered the basics. It's like trying to sprint before you've learned to walk, or competing in the Indianapolis 500 before you've gotten your driver's license.

If you attempt very advanced material before you're ready for it, three things will happen. First, after an incredible amount of work (far more than it would take if you waited until it was level-appropriate) you'll be able to stumble through it and get from the beginning to the end. But you're not going to be able to play it flawlessly at performance speed and it's not going to sound professional. Second, because you're trying to make your hands do things they don't yet have the strength or flexibility to do, you're going to be making some compromises in your form, and these bad habits will spread into the other work you're doing until they become very hard to correct. They will impose an upper limit on the speed and technique you can achieve in general. Finally, because you're forcing your body to do more than it can safely do, with extra tension and incorrect form to boot, your odds of injury skyrocket.

I'm not prepared to let any of those three things to happen on my watch. Although I'm willing to help you push the limits of what you can do by helping you with challenging music and working into it, I'm not willing to help you limit your own progress or hurt yourself.

Safety Issues

Your health and safety are just as important as mine. That's why, when it comes to safety, I don't fool around. Nobody gets more than one warning or one second chance. The stakes are just too high. In fact if you read my studio rules and mobile lesson rules, you'll see that there's such a thing as a crash and burn offense. Failure to follow directions or to work on things in a safe manner is one of them.

Conclusion

I think I've set forth my reasons for requiring a curriculum. Others are free to disagree with me. I welcome well thought out feedback and comments.