Teaching Beginner Guitarists From Scratch

This question comes from a reader who was expecting to teach intermediate to advanced level guitar players, but is finding most of his enquiries are from beginners.

Here is his question in full:

In starting out, I feel more confident to teach intermediate adult players, but in “testing the water”, it seems that the greater interest is coming from parents for their children, and complete beginners / individuals returning to guitar having forgotten everything. I know where I want to take students, and once they have some basic skills and knowledge, how to take them there. The issue for me, is that I don’t have any real insight or experience of taking a student from nothing to a basic functional grasp. I believe this is because my personal experience of tuition has been as an intermediate / advancing guitarist where I have been coached rather than taught, plus formal academic training at university level. I suspect the answer lies in an off-the-shelf method.

Here is my video reply, and a written answer below:

(apologies for the quiet volume in this video)

I feel more confident teaching intermediate adult players

When I started teaching, I felt the same way and I was expecting or looking for intermediate late-teen to adult players to teach.

But in general when it comes to teaching guitar, most enquiries are going to be from beginners. Beginners will always be your biggest market.

When it comes to marketing and advertising lessons, you can’t control what people are interested in. You will probably find that your local market is mainly beginners. You may find that your local market has a lot of intermediate players.

At the end of the day, you can’t change what people want, and if you want to teach, you have to teach the people that want to be taught.

Teaching a beginner

When teaching a complete beginner, I would first ask them what they’re interested in. I’ll then take them through the parts of the guitar, how the strings and frets are numbered.

I am not going to teach them to tune the guitar - I’ll tune it for them. I’ll teach them that in lesson two or three.

It’s worth noting that sometimes beginners don’t have a guitar. You should have found this out when they phoned you. At the introductory lesson they can borrow one of your guitars so they can find out if they like the instrument and lessons with you.

I then take them through playing Ode to Joy. It’s a simple recognisable melody that most beginners can get the hang of pretty quickly.

I’ll have a print out of the tab that just has the tab, no notation, no rhythm marks. I’ll show them how to read the tab and show them the notes that they just played when I took them through the melody.

Have them play that tune using the tab. Point to the tab with a pen, as a beginner they are going to lose their place very quickly. Help them through it note by note.

What to teach next?

Simple one sting riffs and classical melodies are all great for next lessons. The main aim is to help them get familiar with the guitar and finding their way around the guitar and the tab.

What do your students want to learn?

You have to teach students what they want to learn. This doesn’t mean you 100% stick to only teaching them the songs they want, there may be the odd topic you think is necessary, but the bulk of what you teach them should be the things they want, related to the things they want to learn or helping them towards learning the things they want to learn.

For example, a student may say want to learn to play Taylor Swift songs. They haven’t said they want to learn to read rhythm notation, but it would be useful and support that goal of learning Taylor Swift songs, so you teach them how to read rhythm notation.

A student may say they want to learn to improvise, they haven’t said they want to learn the notes on the neck, but you explain how it will support their goal and guide them through learning the notes on the neck.

Don’t wait to be perfect

At some point you have to just get started and start teaching people. You’ll quickly work out how to help your students.

Be wary of overwhelming students, it’s always better to give them a little and then give them more, don’t give them too much that they can’t manage.