Oh boy - got sucked into giving lessons - how to do it?

[TBman]

One of my best friends in town is surprising his 17 year old daughter with an starter electric guitar and a small amp for Christmas. He asked me to teach her to get her started. I've never really played an electric, although we did buy our son a starter kit a couple of years ago (that he picked up twice). So I was planning on teaching her the names of the strings, how to tune, a couple of cowboy chords and the one finger barre in the first few lessons to get her playing up the neck almost immediately. I was also planning on teaching her how to improvise her own tunes so she wouldn't be locked into the "gotta buy a book/cd to learn something new" trap. Any suggestions?

My fee is going to be pretty steep - a couple cigarettes or a cigar and a cup or two of coffee.

[coreybox]

Most the stuff sounds pretty good.

If she's never played a musical instrument before, learning to improvise isn't going to happen in the first few lessons.

Don't just teach her the name of the strings, but make sure she understands that each fret is a half-step, names of these notes, ect. Teach some basic music theory (instead of just saying "this is a G chord", say "this is a G chord because...").

Anyone can learn new songs from tabs, so I'd advise not going over tabs and learning popular songs. I'd stick to music theory and technique stuff.

And of course put the focus on FUN.

[ship of fools]

Just remember you are playing it forward, forget the couple of cigarettes and the cigar and that will give you plenty of time for coffee and playing, and make sure the coffee is the good stuff.You know it will give you another whole aspect to looking at playing,and don't worry about your son, I had three kids that all started and got as far as learning the Duelling Banjo and they all gave up after that,well except the last one,she also plays piano, trombone (very well ) sings jazz and dare I say it pop (yuk that was hard ) so its not all bad.Ship

[Acoustic~Guitar]

http://www.homespuntapes.com/prodpg/...1431&prodType=

[leeasam]

one of the first things I found when showing my 11 year old son some stuff was proper technique. how to position your left hand to make fingering easier-- proper pick holding and strumming techniques etc. Thsi should be done with showing them a simple open D chord. Then maybe an Am and then a G have her play these and watch the hand positions and correct if needed. Once they get that down some you are more able to move on to more intricate stuff.
I have found that if you don`t for the first couple of lessons show a couple of easy chords and let them practice using good technique it will discourage them as things will seem hard because of poor technique. Also remeber one VERY important factor. When you show her something even if it`s not alot make sure she PRACTICES it. I have found that even showing a person like a few cowboy chords with proper techique and PRACTICE they will go off on tangents them selves and possibly create a style of their own!!

Lee

[ljguitar]

Hi Barry...
One of the first things I show new players is how to play an E chord with fingers 2-3-4, and then move them up to frets 6-7 then 8-9 and we use them for I - IV - V chords to play a modal sounding Hang on Sloopy, & a bunch-o-other-tunes.

Later they can learn to add the barre...

[TBman]

Originally Posted by ljguitar

Hi Barry...
One of the first things I show new players is how to play an E chord with fingers 2-3-4, and then move them up to frets 6-7 then 8-9 and we use them for I - IV - V chords to play a modal sounding Hang on Sloopy, & a bunch-o-other-tunes.

Later they can learn to add the barre...

Good idea. That's exactly along the lines I was thinking. Get her moving up and down the neck with some simple movable chords and teach her a couple of moveable scale patterns later on down the road. I want to avoid the 3 fret lock-in that happens with alot of new players. I'm thinking a couple of treble triads too might be a good idea. I'm going to keep a log so I know what we cover so I don't get a senior moment. The cowboy chords I'm planning on were mentioned by others here and I want to show her how to use single notes and intervals as steps between the chords as fill in transitions also, but this all depends on how serious she is about learning. In a nutshell it I would like to show her for example, here's the D chord triad, but here's how you can slide into it from above, or change it to a sus4 for a different sound, drop the f#, hammer it, etc. I not planning on doing G C D until her fingers fall off, LOL.