How To Find A Good Classical Guitar Teacher | tonebase Tips
“The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.” — Mark Van Doren
Finding a new classical guitar teacher can be difficult at any stage of your musical journey. However, arguably the most difficult is finding your first.
Being new to something is scary as we often take our first experiences as law. For instance, we may have a couple of initial lessons with a terrible teacher and decide forever that classical guitar isn’t for us.
That’s why it’s so important to find a good teacher from the start when your motivation to learn is at its highest!
Here are a couple of tips for finding a classical guitar teacher that suits you and will help kickstart your musical journey in the right direction!
1. Know what you want to learn
Unless you are open to letting your prospective teacher have total artistic control over your development, go into your first lesson with an idea of what you are interested in learning.
Don’t worry about being vague, or saying something that might sound silly — teachers are there to help!
There’s no point learning about left hand technique for 10 lessons if you are interested in learning right hand arpeggios….
A good way to pique your own interest for what you want to learn are looking at online resources. Head over to Spotify and create a playlist of pieces you enjoy listening to, or check out a few lessons on tonebase where you can get an exact idea of what you might be interested in learning.
2. Find someone you respect
They say you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.
Finding a teacher you respect musically is one of the most important steps to finding a teacher.
Look your prospective teacher up on YouTube and check out what they have on offer. Read up about them on their website or in an article. Make sure they are someone who gets you excited to learn!
After all, there’s no point being the horse led to water if it isn’t even the kind of water you want to drink…
3. Find someone who connects with you on a human level
Speaking from experience, most guitar teachers aren’t too busy to respond to messages or too sensitive to be dumped after one or two lessons.
Get to know the person you are learning from and make sure you get on with them!
Connecting with your teacher on a human level is so important, especially when engaging in your first experiences with music.
You aren’t taking math class — learning music should be a collaboration of enthusiasm.
Don’t believe the picture they paint of stoney faced strict teachers. Music is fun, let it be fun (even if you want to make it your job!)
At the end of the day, having a good teacher is important, but it isn’t the be all and end all of your musical journey.
A healthy music experience should include a good mix of guided information and questions led by curiosity.
While private lessons are a fantastic method for learning, always be open to courses, tutorials, guides and books that can aid your progress.
After all, you have the answers inside yourself already — all these aids are solely to help you draw them out!
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About The Writer — Rosie Bennet
Born in London in 1996, Rosie started playing guitar at age seven. She received her early musical education at The Yehudi Menuhin School of Music and went on to study with Zoran Dukic (The Hague, NL), Johan Fostier (Tilburg, NL), Rene Izquierdo (Milwaukee, USA) and Raphaella Smits (Leuven, BE). She has performed in festivals all over Europe, including Open Guitar Festival in Křivoklát, Czech Republic, Glasgow’s Big Guitar Weekend, Scotland, Porziano Music Festival, Italy and the West Dean guitar Festival, UK. Highlights of her concert career include performances at Wigmore Hall, London, The North Wall, Oxford and concerts given on El Camino De Santiago.
