How To Choose a Guitar Teacher

Congratulations on your decision to take guitar lessons! This is the single most important thing you can do for your desire to be a better guitarist. Having a great teacher that works for YOU is the easiest path to turning your dreams into reality in a fraction of the time. Having someone to motivate and guide you to become a world-class player, or to simply express yourself, is priceless. While there is no wrong way to explore the artistic expression and freedom that the instrument provides, there is a definite way to arrive to that point years sooner: Finding the right teacher that works for YOU. The greatest guitarists in the world had great instructors and mentors.

So how do you know which teacher is right? Here’s a quick guide to find out.

First, the difference between having an average teacher and a phenomenal teacher: Having an average teacher means you will spend a lot more time, money, and energy on the training process, and in the end, you’re going to be left with mediocre results. You have the risk of setting yourself up to fail, only to blame yourself in the end. You’re going to wonder why you don’t get better when in reality it’s your teacher’s fault. After many years of working in the industry, I have come across teachers with questionable skill sets, at best. A perfect example was one teacher who refused to teach Nirvana’s ‘Come As You Are’ to one of his students because Kurt Kobain wasn’t telling the truth! It could be as simple as this appalling mismatch, and there are only a few factors you need to know before choosing a teacher.

Having a great teacher is going to dramatically change the outcome in your favor. Think of how good you would feel about saving many, many hours of practice, unfocused trial and error, which ultimately lead to frustration. Add a few guitars to your collection with the money you’ll be saving, and picture the results of yourself playing with the world-class skill set of a rock star. That’s the difference between a mediocre teacher and a phenomenal teacher.

Three things you should know before you start:

1. The prime factor, especially for beginning students:

If you can’t vibe and connect with your instructor, don’t even bother! Find someone you like to hang out with, who doesn’t judge you or your playing abilities, someone who can take care of the frustrations you’re going to face. The beginning stages of learning guitar have little to do with the musical abilities of the instructor. Unless your teacher genuinely cares about YOU and about YOUR goals, motivations, ambitions, it’s going to be very difficult to get what you want. Never choose a teacher based on his playing skills alone.

2. If you’re a parent of a child taking lessons:

Most guitar teachers have experience with teaching kids. Some enjoy working with children, some don’t. Some teachers will teach kids because they have to, not because they want to. Find out if the teacher actually wants to teach kids, and have your child do an initial free lesson. Then of course, base your final decision on whether she likes the teacher, and you’ll be good to go. I make my lessons with kids a lot of fun.

3. Making decisions based on price:

Don’t make the mistake of choosing the lowest priced guitar teacher! Generally, you get what you pay for. If you’re paying twice as much while getting three times the results, you’re saving money. Teachers who are just starting out often teach for free or at incredibly low rates in order to get experience and more students.

5 questions you should ask to find a phenomenal instructor:

1. “What styles of music do you teach best?” Match your genre and playing style: Many teachers will tell you that they teach all genres and all playing styles. It is extremely rare to find a guitar teacher who’s an expert in more than two or three playing styles. Find the teacher who is an expert at the kind of music YOU want to play. If you want to play blues, specifically ask the teacher what his strengths are BEFORE you tell him what you want to learn. This is especially important for intermediate and advanced players.

My greatest strengths are congruent with my musical identity: Rock and virtuosic lead electric guitar. While I appreciate all music and love acoustic guitar and ballads, I am not an expert in country, pop, and jazz music beyond the fundamental level.

2. “How many positions do you have available?”  Less than 10 is a good answer. This question will help you find a teacher who’s busy. The teacher should also have at least 3 years of experience and presently teaching many students. It takes quite some time to become a great teacher, and you don’t want to be a test subject. If there’s room for 30 students, chances are the instructor needs more experience. It’s pretty rare to find an inexperienced teacher who’s naturally talented at the art. Look for positive feedback and a history of good players.

3. “What will our first lesson be?” This is a trap for incompetent teachers. It is impossible to answer this question without an understanding of your goals and current skill set. If the teacher doesn’t specifically ask about your desires, interests, and who you want to be before training you then find a different teacher. Those teachers fail by not customizing each lesson to fit your dreams and ambitions.

It could also weed out those giving you a linear program that they’re copying from a book or a DVD. That might work for math, but music students don’t progress quickly and lose interest by mastering one concept at a time. Lessons designed to take you the highest level of results will take on several topics at a time and implement those in a geometric fashion.

4. “Do you teach group classes or private lessons?” Some experienced teachers will determine for you whether you should take group classes or private lessons. Learning private-on-one lessons is not always the most effective and most enjoyable way to learn the instrument. Having one or two partners in a class learning the same topic gives you many benefits, among those being: Having more fun with the peers, learning from different perspectives, networking and additional motivation, to name a few.

5. “Do you have an personal strategy for me on how to reach my goals?” The objective of this question is to find out if the teacher is organized with a vision in mind instead of just “winging it”. Having a long, medium, and short-term strategy is your outline to success. Teachers who don’t utilize this weapon become reactive to your challenges and function only to correct your mistakes. You’re searching in the dark and that kind of teacher is there to make sure you’re holding the pick properly in the process. Einstein said that it’s impossible to solve a problem on the same logical level that it was created. The whole point of having a mentor is to show you the steps to take, not just how to walk properly.

Bottom line: Getting a great instructor will set your results on fire and make you bulletproof.

No matter where you are, how many false beliefs you have about what it takes to play guitar, there is no limit to how good you can become. That is, providing you’re in the right environment and smart enough to apply good information.

The most important thing to do right now is to utilize this information to your advantage! If you don’t have time to personally investigate many different teachers, contact me directly by answering 5 questions here, and I will either train you myself, or refer you to a more compatible teacher.