How to teach without reading?

[Pitar]

Originally Posted by fazool

Ignore theory entirely.

Just teach her shapes of chords. Give her a chord chart and point out (circle) the easy and common ones. That's all she needs.

And, I suspect, that's how the vast majority of guitar players learned.

It sounds like you are massively over-thinking this and likely to confuse and discourage her.

Completely agree. Playing and theory are mutually exclusive goals.

[MC5C]

I'm enjoying this discussion, and appreciate the advice. My thinking on theory with this student is to keep it to a very dull roar. I think that knowing that a chord is made up of notes in a scale is important, that a major chord is the I, III, V of the scale is important, that a dominant 7 chord has a flat 7 added to a major chord is important - but that once you explain that's where chords come from you can ignore it and just learn the chords. And that focus on a few simple songs and getting some basic rhythms down is far more important. I have to remember this is a highly intelligent woman in her late 50's, so complex concepts are part of her life - but that keeping things as straight forward as possible and focusing on the "lets make some music" part is the most important. To be honest, the physical part of fingering notes on strings is the first large challenge, and the idea of basic rhythms is the second large challenge.

I will re-read and absorb all of the great advice. It's been 40 years since I was a music teacher last, so I'm learning as much as anyone in this game.

[GHS]

I agree with simple chords, I - IV - V in C,A,G,D, major will get her going. After having fun with that for a while a little theory on making 9ths, 7ths, sus chords, dim. chords, etc to expand to latin, and jazz songs will help. Scale lessons should come next so the patterns become visible to the eye. Inversions for finding proper fingerings for classical songs will come later. It never ends but make it fun first so they can play along to easy songs and sing to them too.