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ZOT Zin Music is expanding. This was long overdue, as I have literally been teaching 45-50 students/hours a week in past years, and have had to turn lots of students down on a weekly basis. New teachers are currently trained to adopt my teaching style, teaching approach and techniques. The soon to become licensed ZOT Zin Music teachers are also working very hard to get up to speed with my extensive guitar curriculum, before they will be assigned their first students. As I am training teachers: I see many “teaching mistakes” happening, and following is part 3 in a series of blogs about teaching mistakes. While this is a series discussing “teacher mistakes”, the info discussed here can also apply to guitar students who might make the same mistakes during their practice time at home. Putting the volume too low on a song you want the student to play along with. This might not seem like a big deal, till you understand the importance of how this negatively affects the student’s lesson experience. It seems trivial, yet this something that happens over and over again and keeps being overlooked by music teachers. Say: you teach a beginner guitar student the chords to Mustang Sally in their first lesson. That student never played guitar before, and you taught C, F and G chords, then got the student to be able to switch between those chords adequately enough to be able to tackle Mustang Sally (possibly at a reduced speed, slowing the song down 10 or 20%). You drop the song in Amazing Slowdowner, slow the song down a bit, count the student in and hit your space bar to start playback. You of course play along, you count out loud saying ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR over and over again, to guide the student through the beats, give the student constant feedback and corrections, etc… You noticeable see the student improving in the ability to switch between the 3 chords with every verse that passes by. But… somehow the student keeps getting lost in the timing, and keeps missing beats, slowing down (or speeding up) out of sync with the musicians in the recording, etc… Rather than giving the student extra pointers and guidance in keeping time: 9 out of 10 times you tremendously improve a student’s ability to play in time with the song by turning up the volume a bit. (Or conversely: turning down the students and/or your guitar). The part in this that most teachers overlook is following: While the music might clearly be loud enough to YOU (the teacher): it is the student’s perspective you have to think from, not your teacher’s perspective. I have heard teachers respond to a student asking to turn up a bit with: “Really? You can’t hear the music”, with a hint of disdain in their voice, feeling that the music was more than loud enough. The student’s perspective is following: “Oh crap, my fingertips hurt! Whow, how do you play a G again, oh yeah, like this. Hmm… am I strumming this right? Wait: I’m not sure where I am in the song. Yeah… I need to follow the lyrics so I don’t get lost… but no, I really need to look at my hand too so I can switch between the chords because it is hard to keep up with the chord changes. My fingers are not fast enough yet. I wonder if guitar is for me?”… etc.. In other words: so much of the student’s brainpower is consumed with the physical aspect of having to switch between chords, trying to get used to the coordination necessary to strum rhythms, lining up the strumming in one hand with the chord changes in the other hand, trying to follow the chord progression, trying to figure out what to listen for in the song, etc… that very little brainpower is ultimately left to “hear” or even (better “feel”) the rhythmic flow of the song. It’s not that “the song is not loud enough”, it’s simply not loud enough for the song to be “noticed” amongst the many other things the student is dealing with and going through at that time. The solution is simple: by turning up the volume, you in a sense, “penetrate” through the students mental clutter and make the drums and rhythms of the song more clear, more noticeable. It’s always fun to see the instant improvement in the student’s ability to lock in and keep up with the rhythm after turning up the volume. The great teacher will also point this out to the student, that it is important to always play along with the recording (when learning a new song) and that it is important that the song is loud enough (or the guitar volume turned down a bit) when they practice the song at home. Turning up the volume when practicing along the recording of a new song, helps to really feel the rhythmic pulse of the song while playing along. How can a student know when the song needs to be louder? Well; if it is challenging to play along in time, and keep up tempo, those are good indications that you might not hear the song as well as you think you do. If you turn up and you notice an immediate improvement in your rhythmic performance along the song, that means that you needed to turn up indeed. However: you could also have the music too loud. This topic is discussed in next installment in this series of practice and teacher mistake discussions. Author's Bio : Vreny, is a patient and an enthusiastic teacher in California. With 17 years of teaching experience, he offers the best Intermediate Guitar Lessons. His life's goal has been to make the world a fun place to live in, sharing his love for music through education.
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