Questions Regarding Children Learning the Guitar

1. When is the best age to begin learning the guitar?
When the child is showing interest. I find most kids become interested in the guitar around age 10 to 15 but you can start at any age.

2. How do you approach teaching kids?
I have found that kids tend to approach guitar the same way they do a sport like hockey. Kids involved in hockey just want to get on the ice and play. They would rather learn the theory and fine points of the game later. Typically I find that kids learning the guitar don't want to spend hours learning how to read by playing songs like twinkle twinkle little star or by doing scales. They simply want to be able to play songs that are cool by bands like Green Day or Sum41 that they are currently listening to. My objective is to get them playing the tunes that they like as soon as possible.

3. Do you have an actual course for kids or is it just song by song?
I teach the same 9 basic chords and rhythms that I teach in the campfire guitar course. The difference is that the songs are usually different. Once the 9 chords are mastered, we move on to bar chords and playing by ear. My goal is to give the student the skills to be able to put on a recording of their favorite song and figure out how to play it by ear.

4. Do you teach reading music?
Because I use a video based computer learning system, the student learns to read while playing his/her favorite tune with interactive sheet music on a monitor as he/she plays. Each song is burned onto a disc as a movie file which can be taken home and used as a backup band that is there whenever the student feels like jamming. A big advantage of this system is that the student learns to play in perfect time as a result of playing to a computerized backup band. The student improves much faster while having fun doing it. In the future, if he/she goes on to play in a band he will already have the experience of playing with a drummer, bass player, and keyboards. He will already know what to do.


5. Why practice while watching TV?
Many teachers would disagree with this. This is a technique for training musicians that is currently taught at "GIT" (Guitar Institute of Technology in California) and is practiced by most of the great guitarists. 99% percent of the challenge for a student learning the guitar is teaching the muscles to change chords and perform the moves accurately. I.e. - the actual intellectual process of learning the fingering of a "C chord" and changing to a "G chord" takes very little time even for a kid usually a matter of minutes. But after that, it takes a great deal of practice to get good. Muscle training is done by the subconscious and does not require giving the job 100% concentration. For example one can stretch, ride or a stationary bike while watching TV. The body still gets the required work out even though the persons mind is elsewhere. This type of practice is not good for developing areas such as ear training, theory or reading. But for a kid who just wants to learn how to play songs, it is a great way to practice.