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Old 12-09-2019, 05:46 AM
neutron619 neutron619 is offline
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Question Teaching Methodology for Beginners

Hello Chaps,

I'm a new member here and joined to ask a question on behalf of my boy. He's only 5 (nearly 6), so internet forums aren't really age-appropriate yet! The questions we have are about the lessons he's been having through a music program arranged by his school and whether the approach they're taking sounds normal or unusual. (In case it matters, we're based in the UK.)

Some background:

I mostly play bass guitar but have a little experience with a 6-string. With the 6, I'm self-taught and not very good(!), but I can play "cowboy" chords am working on barre chords at the moment. Where I struggle is playing melodies / "lead" guitar, in spite of that being closer to playing bass. Something to do with the strings being too small maybe...

My boy meanwhile, has been having lessons for about 4 months. He's playing a ½-size classical guitar (a blue one - he says that's important!) and he's keen, although he finds doing "real" practice a chore at this point. This is is first instrument, although there are other instruments in the house and he's starting to have an awareness of music and theory.

His lessons are 20 minutes, once-per-week during the school day and he seems to enjoy them. His teacher asks him to play by numbers - i.e. she writes down a line of fret numbers for a nursery rhyme or song he knows and his homework is to learn / play them. This week's was Jingle Bells, for example.

He tends to be very good at learning the number sequences and when he practices, can usually remember them a day or two after the lesson. I think there's also some understanding of pitch / melody there - if he doesn't remember the fret number, he tends to work it out rather than look it up in the workbook which is good.

There are things I find odd about all this though.

Most odd is that all of this playing is to be done on a single string (usually his choice; often hilarious when he wants us to sing along) and all with a single finger. Perhaps I'm missing something, but I wonder whether learning to move between strings, rather than jumping from 3rd fret to 12th (as in one recent song) might be useful? Should he not be using all of his fingers in turn to build strength in all of them - not just his first finger?

Also odd is that there doesn't appear to be any connection between all these numbers and the notes he's playing. It's all very well saying 0-0-7-7-9-9-7, but surely at some point that needs to be connected to the E, B and C# he's playing for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on the E string?

The other thing is chords. There doesn't seem to be any focus on playing chords at this point or even an expectation that he will at some point soon. When I used the Hal Leonard book to learn what little I know, chords came into it pretty early. He's had a term of lessons without chords really being mentioned, apparently.

On that subject, I've taught him Em and A because he's wanted to know be able to strum as well as play single notes and he can change between them pretty well. He also learned D from a neighbor whose guitar he played once (which was what set all this off) but although he's demonstrated them to the teacher, she doesn't seem terribly interested.

I'm not expecting him to be a virtuoso or even to do anything remotely sophisticated yet as he's still so young, but I suppose I'm worried that he's not finding the lessons (or his homework from them) particularly stimulating and that he'll lose interest in the instrument. I think he'd probably practice more if he was stretched more.

I do what I can to encourage him, but I'm not qualified to know if what I've described is a normal / good approach to learning guitar or not? When I started playing a 6-string, I could already read music etc. and had experience of playing organ, piano, bass, so it's hard for me to remember what it's like for him, not being able to read music, understand scales, etc. Can anyone reassure me that he's on the right track / the teacher is using a good approach? Or am I being taken for a (reasonably expensive) ride?

Thanks for reading all of that if you made it this far. All comments will be welcome.
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Old 12-09-2019, 07:15 AM
musicman1951 musicman1951 is offline
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I started kids when they were about 10, so I have no actual experience teaching 5/6 year olds.

Generally, at this age I suppose anything they think is fun would be a good idea. I absolutely agree that at some point they need to transition to music notation, but that may already be in the plan. It couldn't hurt to ask.

I'm having a hard time picturing the size of the boy relative to the size of the guitar, but I agree that one finger sounds strange. But if he has to cover a major 3rd on one string he's going to be moving his hand one way or the other.

An expensive ride? You're paying good money for this instruction? In that case I'd definitely want a good look at the entire year's curriculum.

Worth it is something only you can decide, but so far it doesn't sound like anything you couldn't do at home.
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Old 12-09-2019, 07:35 AM
stanron stanron is offline
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When I gave private lessons I wouldn't take on any child under the age of 8 years. Size and attention span were factors in this. I vaguely remember having a guitar thrust into my hands at an age of not much more than five or six. It was enormous and the strings were very tight and unusable. It was nearly ten years later that I actually took up the guitar for real. I was a lot bigger and the guitar was relatively smaller.

From what you describe, I would say continue as long as he enjoys it. Here's a thought. A ukulele would be more his size, and they come in reasonably low prices. Maybe having a uke around, and you strumming it and singing the odd daft song may get his interest. No teaching unless he actually asks. You strum it. you leave it lying around. He picks it up or he doesn't, but no pressure. If it's his own curiosity that drives him he could go far.
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Old 12-09-2019, 08:19 AM
rstaight rstaight is offline
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Sounds like they are teaching tabs. I agree that 5 or 6 is young to start but if he is showing interest.

Not a fan of tabs but at that age may be the best. The ability to read notation will definitely be of benefit.

But he does need to work on using other fingers. Work with him, show him that you can get same note at other places on the neck.

What does his lesson look like? Maybe that is how they are being taught.
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Old 12-09-2019, 08:28 AM
RustyAxe RustyAxe is offline
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At six there’s no need to focus too heavily on the particular instrument, but rather, on basic music principals. Playing one string by the numbers is very similar to learning the piano. Notes are arranged in a linear fashion, and scale intervals are easily seen, as well as heard. Using familiar simple tunes is early ear training. Elements of rhythm and timing are easily internalized by the student.

I started piano at age six, and played Row, Row, Row Your Boat until I thought dad’s head would explode. Everyone starts somewhere, and unlike many self taught musicians it’s best not to try to start in the middle. Lay a foundation, and and build upon it.
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Old 12-09-2019, 09:05 AM
neutron619 neutron619 is offline
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Thank you all for your replies.

To add some more perhaps pertinent information: he's a big lad. He came out at over 10lbs(!) and hasn't got any smaller since and there have been times I've wondered whether I should have bought him a ¾-size guitar. He goes through phases with it like any small person - some weeks he just wants to play, others, not so much. We try to roll with it as far as possible and not put pressure on him, beyond reminding him that when you have lessons, it's respectful to the teacher to do some practice.

I'll make some enquiries about the lessons and what they're planning to cover during the year as you suggest. My wife and I signed him up to the programme mainly because of his enthusiasm about playing that developed over the summer and the fact that it's not massively expensive, although it comes at a cost nonetheless. We're both musical, so we'll be pleased if he finds he wants to be too, but we don't want to push him and then turn him off it as seems to happen so often.

For the record, I don't think that I'm the right person to teach him much, temperamentally or in terms of capability, but I will try and do some of the really basic stuff like showing him using more than one finger and note equivalence between strings - hopefully without undoing / conflicting with whatever his teacher is saying to him. (Because it's provided through the school, the amount of feedback we're expected / able to give isn't clear at this point.)

Regarding the ukelele - well - I have two (younger) girls who don't like to be left out of anything fun, so soon after the blue guitar arrived, so did a pink soprano uke! I'll see if he wants to have a go with it, although he may have got to the point now where the colour is off-putting.

One idea I think I might borrow from elsewhere on this forum is writing out his numbers on a proper score. If they're using tabs to teach him, then I could put the tab staff with the numbers on it for him to follow whilst he's playing, with the standard notation written out underneath so he can see the shape of the music. As RustyAxe said above, it'll help him see the intervals and hopefully link the high / low sounds to shapes on a page (since a line of one-string-only tabs isn't going to show him that).

Thanks again for your input which is appreciated - I'll try to reply ASAP if people have more to say.
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Old 12-09-2019, 11:06 AM
DesWalker DesWalker is offline
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FWIW I think the teacher sounds pretty good. Playing and internalising intervals and melodies is far more important in the long run than strumming the odd cowboy chord and actually gets the child playing something straight away.

I can’t remember the name of the very popular YouTube piano teacher (Aimee something I think), but she laments how few people can actually figure out a simple melody by ear. Totally foundational IMO so I support the teacher’s aims.
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Old 12-09-2019, 11:08 AM
mr. beaumont mr. beaumont is offline
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Children should learn to read music. That 0-7-7-9 garbage is doing the child a disservice.

If you're taking lessons with me, and somebody else is paying for those lessons (i.e. parent) you're learning to read, plain and simple. Kids can pick it up QUICKLY.

I'm gonna go kick a box or something now, that teacher who's 1000's of miles away from me who I don't know got me angry
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Old 12-09-2019, 03:48 PM
neutron619 neutron619 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mr. beaumont View Post
Children should learn to read music. That 0-7-7-9 garbage is doing the child a disservice.
Sorry for enraging you! I think my wife and I both feel the same, but at the same time, we don't want to undermine the teacher's efforts since that's also likely to prove unhelpful.

Not knowing what else to do about that, I did what some other clever person I read about earlier did and transcribed his tabs into standard notation, with the tab and the numbers on the top stave and a smaller stave with the notes / rhythms / lyrics below. "Arrangement for a single string" - I smiled when I wrote that as a subtitle for the first time.

Hopefully he'll work out the relationship between the two staves without too much difficulty - he's a bright enough kid and seemed pleased when I showed them to him. (I was going to post a screenshot but I haven't worked out how to put pictures into my posts yet.)

Thanks again to all for their input.
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Old 12-10-2019, 04:02 AM
Su_H. Su_H. is offline
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Hi Neutron,

I agree with the few. Your son is in good hands. Trust your school. Chords are not important right now.

I see where the lessons are going. Notes are being taught and played on one string to teach the kids intervals(distance), pitch, and direction of intervals and pitch. Once these lessons cover all or most of the strings, the new lesson will integrate these children's tunes where the tunes will be played using multiple strings.

Remember, these lessons are geared toward elementary kids. Moving too fast may backfire....as the case with my 6 year old. I taught her one simple tune. She got it. The next day, she was so pumped, she begged me to teach her another. I gave in and taught her the song which was twinkle twinkle little star. She started out good and then struggled because there were too many different phrases....and she got frustrated and hasn't touched the keyboard since.

At this age, we don't want to make anything difficult. We want the kid to be pumped and begging for the next lesson.
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Old 12-10-2019, 04:54 AM
JonPR JonPR is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by neutron619 View Post
My boy meanwhile, has been having lessons for about 4 months. He's playing a ½-size classical guitar (a blue one - he says that's important!)
Of course! With me, my first electric guitar had to be a red one! And I was 19!
Quote:
Originally Posted by neutron619 View Post
and he's keen, although he finds doing "real" practice a chore at this point.
He's normal then. Just don't make him practice. He has to want to do it, to own the process - to see it as a game, as "play", not "work". There's really no point in practice if you feel it's a "chore" - it does more harm than good.
Quote:
Originally Posted by neutron619 View Post
This is is first instrument, although there are other instruments in the house and he's starting to have an awareness of music and theory.
And theory?! Wow!
Quote:
Originally Posted by neutron619 View Post
His lessons are 20 minutes, once-per-week during the school day and he seems to enjoy them. His teacher asks him to play by numbers - i.e. she writes down a line of fret numbers for a nursery rhyme or song he knows and his homework is to learn / play them. This week's was Jingle Bells, for example.

He tends to be very good at learning the number sequences and when he practices, can usually remember them a day or two after the lesson. I think there's also some understanding of pitch / melody there - if he doesn't remember the fret number, he tends to work it out rather than look it up in the workbook which is good.
Yes, that's definitely good, if he's using his ear to remember and correct himself.
Quote:
Originally Posted by neutron619 View Post
There are things I find odd about all this though.

Most odd is that all of this playing is to be done on a single string (usually his choice; often hilarious when he wants us to sing along) and all with a single finger. Perhaps I'm missing something, but I wonder whether learning to move between strings, rather than jumping from 3rd fret to 12th (as in one recent song) might be useful? Should he not be using all of his fingers in turn to build strength in all of them - not just his first finger?
You're right, I'd be concerned about that too, although maybe not too much. At that age, one string and one finger is a lot easier to think about, while you're remembering which frets you're supposed to play. I used to teach kids from age 7, and getting them to use more than one finger was really hard - and they definitely preferred to use one string if they could, rather than move from string to string.

The surprising thing for me is if he is actually being taught this way, rather than just choosing it himself. I'd guess the teacher is just going with the flow, out of experience - allowing him to play in the most natural way for his age, with the expectation that he will be able to play more normally (more fingers more strings) as he matures. The really important thing at that age is that they can play a tune they recognise - it gives them a crucial sense of pride and accomplishment. I'm sure you're seeing that!
Quote:
Originally Posted by neutron619 View Post
Also odd is that there doesn't appear to be any connection between all these numbers and the notes he's playing. It's all very well saying 0-0-7-7-9-9-7, but surely at some point that needs to be connected to the E, B and C# he's playing for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on the E string?
At some point, yes. Not yet though.
Note names are only labels to help find your place. Fret numbers do just as well. Hey, there are some very good adult players who'd struggle to name the notes they're playing - it doesn't inhibit their technique.

I do think that proper school-based lessons should be teaching notes too - at least open position C major scale (using simple tunes in notation to do it). But that can come a little later.
Quote:
Originally Posted by neutron619 View Post
The other thing is chords. There doesn't seem to be any focus on playing chords at this point or even an expectation that he will at some point soon. When I used the Hal Leonard book to learn what little I know, chords came into it pretty early. He's had a term of lessons without chords really being mentioned, apparently.
When I taught kids in school (London UK), we worked from a basic classical book. Notation, not tab, and picking with fingers first, bringing thumb in after a while. At the very end of book 1 - after around a year of playing - there was a chord: one chord, Em.
I should say the book wasn't my choice, I inherited the system from a previous teacher, working for the local schools music service. But it worked very well. Kids at that age weren't yet interested in pop or rock music - they just wanted those nursery rhyme type tunes, and even the tunes in the book they didn't recognise they got a sense of accomplishment from mastering. They loved moving on to a new page!
By the time they started getting into pop and rock, and needing to know chords, chords proved quite difficult for little fingers. Getting all the fingers in the right shape and the right place, and doing it in time - that's a huge ask for kids of even 8 or 9, in my experience. Some, a minority, will get it. And of course it helps immensely if they want to get it, if it's for a song they want to play.
Quote:
Originally Posted by neutron619 View Post
On that subject, I've taught him Em and A because he's wanted to know be able to strum as well as play single notes and he can change between them pretty well. He also learned D from a neighbor whose guitar he played once (which was what set all this off) but although he's demonstrated them to the teacher, she doesn't seem terribly interested.
Well, that's a shame, but I wouldn't worry. The teacher obviously has an agenda which doesn't include chords at the moment. And maybe she's taken aback that a kid so young can do chords at all. I'd have been amazed if any 7-year-old I started teaching had been able to play chords - let alone a 6-year-old.
Quote:
Originally Posted by neutron619 View Post
I'm not expecting him to be a virtuoso or even to do anything remotely sophisticated yet as he's still so young, but I suppose I'm worried that he's not finding the lessons (or his homework from them) particularly stimulating and that he'll lose interest in the instrument. I think he'd probably practice more if he was stretched more.
Well, I hate the word "stretched", but I agree he has to have a reason to practice. He has to find "practice" exciting and challenging to some degree. He has to want to do it without being encouraged - like any game he likes playing. If he finds the stuff the teacher is giving him boring, that would be a concern.
Quote:
Originally Posted by neutron619 View Post
I do what I can to encourage him, but I'm not qualified to know if what I've described is a normal / good approach to learning guitar or not? When I started playing a 6-string, I could already read music etc. and had experience of playing organ, piano, bass, so it's hard for me to remember what it's like for him, not being able to read music, understand scales, etc. Can anyone reassure me that he's on the right track / the teacher is using a good approach? Or am I being taken for a (reasonably expensive) ride?
It's a tricky one. He sounds like he's ahead of where the teacher is expecting him to be. IMO, there's nothing wrong - and everything right - with a classical, notation-based course. The really important thing - if he is to improve - is that he enjoys playing. It doesn't matter at all what he plays, as long as he has fun doing it.
The problem with classical lessons is when they get to a point - or the child gets to an age - that they no longer have any meaning for the child; when they seem just like any other school lesson - pointless and no fun. The sense of challenge and excitement disappears, because they find other things more fun. Sport, video games, whatever.
That's not a problem, except for you in that you're paying for these lessons!

Maybe ask your boy how he would feel if he stopped the lessons - and if you bought him a more pop- or chord-based book (or two) to learn from, and showed him stuff yourself? Do you think he would miss the lessons? How would he feel about being "taken out of" a school lesson? That may be more upsetting than putting up with boring homework!

It may well be that he loses his enthusiasm for guitar at some point anyway, regardless of anything you can do. Kids change their enthusiasms all the time. One way to make sure he loses his enthusiasm would be to make him practice when he doesn't want to, or to practice things he doesn't want to play! So just make sure he has plenty to stimulate him and get him playing at home. Let him listen to lots of guitar music, and - especially! - let him play with you as much as you can.
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Last edited by JonPR; 12-10-2019 at 05:03 AM.
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