Finding the Right Music Teacher
Las Vegas, NV
Of all the education a guitar player can get, I really believe that the most important relationship we encounter is between us and our private teacher. It goes way beyond a purely musical relationship, when the right teacher is sought out it’s almost like a combination between a coach, a sensei, a mentor, and a close personal friend.
There are a lot of disappointing private instructors out there. Many guitarists don’t really have much of an investment in being teachers and just use it as a way to make money. Let’s be frank here, you don’t really have to be all that accomplished on your instrument to teach young kids and beginners at the local neighborhood music store. Me and many others I know started out that way, but a lot of us have moved on since then to more intensive levels of teaching.
The really, truly good private guitar teachers care deeply for their students and make a serious investment in them. They start and end lessons on time, they have all the necessary materials needed to present what they teach, and they get results from their students. This is why when you’re exploring your options for instructors you should try and communicate with some of their other students if you can, to get a sense as to how the learning process goes before you invest your hard-earned money.
If you are a beginner, you have a lot more options for teachers, so you can be much more picky. Make sure that you find a teacher with a personality that you think you can identify with, because in those tender beginning stages where the fingers often hurt and things are a little unsure, a pleasant teacher will help things along for you a bit better. There are of course financial considerations as well, as in how many lessons you can afford, or what you can afford per lesson. Know that in many ways you get what you pay for, in that a higher profile teacher will demand more money than the guy at the local guitar shop. While in L.A. I took a few lessons with a few different people. I studied with Joe Diorio at USC, and tuition there is quite stiff. I paid over $100 for a lesson here and there with people like the legendary Ted Greene, Frank Gambale, and Carl Verheyen. I also paid $280 for a day-long master class with Robben Ford. Incidentally, the great Ted Greene had a certain policy, if you couldn’t make the lesson you had to send a sub!
If you are at the intermediate or advanced level, you’re gonna want a teacher with some more specialized abilities, like emphasis on a certain style. Say you’ve been a rock player for years and now you have interest in jazz, you’ll find a jazz guy in town who perhaps also has a rock background. Say you’re a classical player and you have interest in flamenco, or bossa nova, you should seek out the right guy who plays whatever that style is very well.
If you desire to become a professional, or if you already are a professional and you wish to improve your skills and marketability, this is when the selection of teachers becomes a little smaller. I believe that you should first go out and find the local player(s) who you enjoy watching the most. Find those players with the style you most admire. Support them by paying the cover charge, watching intently, and perhaps buying records. If you show respect to a high-profile guitar player in town it will carry you a lot farther towards whether or not you become their pupil.
It’s also important to find a teacher who is working in the professional circles that you want to work in someday yourself. If your desire is to be a great jazz guitar player and you live in New York City, have the guts to go right up to Mike Stern or John Tropea and ask them for a lesson. If you desire to be a studio musician and you live in L.A., ask around when Dean Parks or Mike Thompson or Tim Pierce are playing, and see if they won’t give you at least one lesson. If you live in Nashville and want to up your chicken pickin’ skills, I know for a fact that Johnny Hiland gives lessons, however Brent Mason does not.
One time, while I was on the faculty at GIT, I was playing a gig at a local Los Angeles jazz club, with three close friends of mine. It was a really loose gig with a very open format and lots of wild improvisation. I believe it was a Monday or Tuesday night, and me and my friends were just kinda doing one of those “art for art’s sake” gigs, where money didn’t matter. A young guy, around 21, came up to me and said, “Are you Matt Baldoni?” I said yes, and he introduced himself as a new GIT student and that he was enjoying the show. He also told me that he asked for me by name to be his private instructor. I was curious as to why, being as though I was one of the more low-profile and unknown instructors there. He said, “Because I heard three teachers talking in the hallway the other day, and they said that Matt Baldoni was one of the busiest performers on the faculty.” I have no idea if that was true or not at the time, I hope it was, but he expressed that he was ready to do whatever it took to get out and make money playing music, and he wanted me to show him how. That guy is now 25 and playing 5 nights a week.
The point is, if you can find a teacher that’s working in the environments you want to work in, not only will they give you insight as to how to do it, but there is even the possibility that they will begin to sub you out eventually. That happened to me with a few teachers, including Warren Haskell, Charlie Robinson, Steve Trovato, Richard Smith, Allen Hinds and Carl Verheyen.
So, once you have found that teacher and can afford to study with them as regularly as possible, make sure you have some sort of way to keep a record of the lessons. Ask them if they feel comfortable having themselves recorded, and see if you can’t bring some sort of tape recorder, or minidisk or micro dat or something. There’s a lot you can learn from listening to the lesson a second, third, and fourth time. It’s like seeing a really deep movie a second time, there’s always new things you catch that you missed the last time. If they aren’t comfortable being recorded, just make sure you take the proper notes. If they give you materials, keep them organized and bring them to every lesson. Also, make sure you make it clear to the teacher that you actually learned what they gave you. At the beginning of the lesson see if you can’t play them what they handed you at the last lesson. They may not be checking up on you that much, especially if the lessons are not within an academic program, so showing them that you put in the work will motivate them to challenge you more.
Other than that, please, please just make sure you pay us on time, and cash is preferable!! Good luck fellas.
About the author
Ted Greene made students send a sub! That is so awesome.
12/11/2008
I couldn’t agree more. My teacher back home is exactly what you said. He’s a combination between a coach, a sensei, a mentor, and a close personal friend.
I go to Berklee and I love it here. There are some amazing players and teachers here, but they just don’t work for me after having taken lessons with my teacher, Bob Thompson, for over a year. I end up translating everything they tell me to what Bob would tell me, and most of the time I can find everything I’ve worked on in my binder of stuff from Bob (He also makes sure I record my lessons). When I don’t feel motivated to practice what I’m given to work on, I don’t think of how my current teacher would react, I think of how Bob would react and what he’d say.
Part of me can’t wait for the semester to end so I can go home and take lessons with Bob again. I can get better faster for less money in four months of lessons over the summer with Bob than I can here in a year.
And I always pay in cash :)
3/25/2009
Leave a comment
Do you have a general question or a discussion topic? If so, please consider posting it in the forums.