A day in the life

Today is looking a relatively busy day ahead. Have a guitar lesson at 11 in Bristol, one at 3 in Singapore, one at 5 in Indiana USA, then one at 6… here in my living room. Well, I s’pose all of them are in my living room, in a way…
#guitarlessons #lifeofflav #zoom

Guitar Grade Exams?

Are guitar Grade exams good for you? Are they something you should be pursuing? The answer varies, I find. For some people they are very useful -they give concrete goals, a timeline with a deadline with clear material to practise and at the end of it an assessment of level and the sense of satisfaction, of achievement of having completed a goal. This is not true for everybody, though. For some people the study of the instrument done that way becomes ‘another school subject’, a chore that they feel limits them, circumscribes them. On the other hand, studying for an exam means you have to, in addition to the pieces, prepare the technical material (like scales, arpeggios, aural comprehension tests, etc) that you might not be so inclined to do work on if you didn’t have to for an exam.

I teach guitar in two secondary schools. At least in one of them I am expected to prepare people for exams -I’ve never been told I should achieve a quota of pupils doing them or of grades achieved but I know it is expected of me to put a certain percentage of people through them. What I normally do is, I prepare them until they are at a point where they could reasonably well pass a Grade 1 exam and ask them whether that is something they might be interested in doing. I do try to put across the possible pros and cons in them. Let them decide.

There are some practical benefits for pupils that age: UCAS (the UK entity that grants and allocates University entry) ‘likes’ to see you having done a Grade 6 instrument. Of course they are not interested in whether you play music but in whether you can develop a discipline and method that enables you to achieve a goal like this. Also for pupils that age there is the fact that parents like to see that there is a level of achievement stated in a diploma, again a statement of level reached.

It is a bit different with adult learners and the answer is more often (but not always!) that exams would not be a good idea. It is however a good idea, again, to discuss the issue when it looks like it would help keep the interest and the regular practice, etc.

It is always a good idea to discuss the topic and put forward why it might be a good idea or otherwise.

Advertisement

Waking up to a new post-Covid world of music teaching practices

A friend was writing in his blog about the changes that large companies are considering in their practices as a consequence of this year of predominantly ‘work at home’ ways of doing things brought about by the pandemic. WFH and different mixes of WFH and work on site will probably become the norm for many people.. Away from the corporate field, me as a private music teacher have found (or confirmed, at any rate) that I can do what I do anywhere in the world where there is good internet (this does put into question, why then live in one of the more expensive cities in the world). With some limitations but one can get around those and my pupils can learn and get to where they want to be, without all the travelling (mine or theirs) etc. There even are some small advantages. For instance, I record (with their consent, of course) small sections of the lesson when I need to make a particular point clear and mail the resulting video to them -and this has turned out to be very useful We cannot play together, clearly, because of the latency in those systems but I can record second guitar parts for them to play along with. All in all, a little more preparation on my part but the results have been satisfactory. There is one big fly in the ointment: I teach in two secondary schools as well as private lessons. Online lessons there have been a different thing and had, say, mixed success. And the schools want face-to-face lessons to resume as soon as, probably in three weeks’ time as I write this (15 Feb 2021). I’m finding I don’t like that idea very much, from practical points of view (sharing air and mingling with a thousand-plus kids in the middle of a pandemic, etc), having to deal with the thousand little annoyances (the bathrooms..) and little things like, again, getting up at ungodly hours and commuting after I’ve found that it is not really necessary to do things in this way. We’ll see how this all pans out.

Zooming in

So, what can you _not_ do in a Zoom guitar lesson?

The most important one, probably, is being able to play together. There are many occasions in which being able to do this would save many words and get the pupil to understand what you’re trying to convey or what you’re trying to get them to do or change, much more easily.

There are some possible work-arounds. One that I find myself using increasingly more is the recording of short snippets of video during the lesson, illustrating a point of technique or interpretation. People have done similar things before, I know of several guitar teachers who would make audio recordings of the entire lesson -but who is going to wade through an entire hour of guitar lesson? I have found much more effective to make a very short video about one single point or a very short bit of music, often just a few notes or changes. Something that doesn’t take a lot of time and effort for the pupil to understand and follow and incorporate in their practice.

This idea of the very short and to the point video snippet is something that I will be keeping even when we are able to go back to face-to-face lessons. I’ve found them very useful for the pupil and for myself.

of advertising, domains and this music teaching thing

Considering whether to set up my guitar teaching page on WordPress.com. I’ve set up a basic site at https://camdenguitar.wordpress.com. It works but their basic templates are so ugly!

There is a clash of names between my previous site (camdenguitar.co.uk) and a local music shop with an almost identical url, which has resulted in people finding them instead of me when they search for guitar lessons in this area (even if you type my address in a search box Google will still ask you ‘did you mean… x’ x being the guitar shop’s url. So I have a small problem right there; thinking of several possible solutions but don’t want to ditch the domain just yet, I’ve had it for over twelve years and put it on lots of stationery and advertising.

In the meantime, I’m still here. Three of my pupils have recently successfully done  their ABRSM Grade 8. I have a very interesting set of existing pupils, including a very capable electric guitarist wanting to explore and expand his skills and a fledgling composer with enormous passion and drive and vast erudition on matters of theory of music and composition, even though his practical skills need some polishing  on harmony, counterpoint and other matters-but that’s why he’s coming for lessons. I’m not getting bored! But I do need to get a bit busier.

[ guitar lessons] a day in the life

Yesterday brought a couple of lessons and helping a mature student buy a guitar. This took only about 20% of the time I anticipated; we went to the London Guitar Studio, Steffi asked my pupil what sort of budget he had, he mentioned a figure, she produced three or four guitars in that range, he liked the second one he tried and that was that. I was expecting to spend half the afternoon pondering about the different tone, action and feel of the different guitars. Only had two lessons yesterday (itself not that good a thing, I should be much busier this time of year). One was a lad doing so-called ‘acoustic’ guitar. He’s a Beatles’ fan and we have been doing Blackbird, Walrus and a couple of RCHP things (yes, that one..). The other lesson is a young professional lady about to do a grade 3 and doing very well in spite of busy busy life. Very different and satisfying lessons in very different ways.

Also, I have dates for my pupils’ ABRSM grade exams for this season. This is good: they gave me late dates so I have a little more time to make sure they’re ready on the bits nobody ever wants to do. You know which ones: scales, sight-reading, aural comprehension. I have another Grade 8 this term, the aural test can be a bit of a nightmare and there are bits of it that, with my goldfish memory, I’m not sure I myself would pass without some training. All good, though.