Evaluation- find out what you know, what you want to learn, and talk to you about your musical interests. Review what you already know and figure out what skills you would like to strengthen. Provide a practice routine and an assignment to learn for next lesson.
Students can bring in material they wish to learn or we can continue with the curriculum I provide based on their evaluation in lesson 1. Standard chords, scales and basic music theory build the cornerstones for success. We will go through exercises to help solidify these fundamentals and build a strong knowledge base.
At this point, we will go over various techniques on the guitar to improve tonality, add flair and style, and define your personality on the guitar. Influences from favorite bands, artists, and genres will begin to show themselves in your playing. We will continue to learn theory and chord shapes that lend themselves to improvisation. We will work on rhythmic exercises and practice with a metronome. We will learn modes and begin to understand how to apply them within the framework of a song.
At this point, a beginner has most likely advanced to a higher level class. Depending on the pace of the student, we will continue with exercises to strengthen core skills, build and improve on fundamentals, and advance to more complicated music theory. We will practice changing chords and seek to understand relationships between chords. We will learn full songs and performance techniques. We will use dynamics and flat picking techniques to embellish melodies and fill out empty spaces in songs. We will strum chords and pluck melodies that come from those chord shapes. We will explore different positions up and down the neck and learn how scales connect with chord shapes as we move along.