Teaching Children Guitar

Teaching children to play guitar takes a slightly different approach to instructing older people. Kids are less likely to take on board the notion that they have to practice technical elements of guitar playing for their own sake or for some reward (a better technique) at some indeterminate point in the future. Basically if it ain't fun NOW thy're not doing it and the guitar teacher who does not take this simple fact on board will not cut it.

The New Reality?

I've seen the books and the teach children to play guitar stuff thats out there and some of it (while worthy) is a bit wide of the mark. "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" "Merrily We Roll Along" and stuff like that. They have Playstations and School Of Rock for crying out loud. Show me a nine year old kid who wakes up with a burning desire to play "Twinkle Twinkle" and I'll show you a child stolen from the 1950's and beamed into the present day (and to be perfectly frank he or she would probably have been a bit wierd even in the 50's).

The only real reason that the stuff like "Frankie and Johnny" and "Merrily We Roll Along" is in the guitar books in the first place is so that the publishers don't have to pay the composers and owners of the songs because they are out of copyright. The fact that a tune is out of copyright presents no incentive for a nine year old to want to learn it.

As Guitar and Bass Teacher's we have to compete with the free stuff that's up there on youtube (some of which lets face it is very good) so it would seem a bit silly to rely on out of copyright tunes that are recognised by an ever decreasing number of people?

Single Note Favourites

Children wanna play guitar stuff that's relevant to them. I teach guitar to kids aged eight upwards and their parents are typically in their late 20's and early thirties. The music that these kids hear at home reflects that reality. Faves at the minute single note wise are the Simpsons Theme That three note thing from Shrek and (strangely?) Smoke On The Water(!) You can still get them into playing the odd Christmas Carol because streetwise and cynical as they may regrettably be they still love the season of getting free stuff but in the main, along with the classic rock they want to play the music of now (or at least of the fairly recent past).

Backing Tracks for beginners

The teachwombat guitar teacher's toolkit comes with three backing tracks (standard mp3's) to get you started teaching kids to play guitar. You can drop them onto CD's and mp3 players or even email them to your students if you like. The chord sequences use chords from the "First Guitar Chords" handout that you can download free from our Home Page.
We also have another package featuring a wider range of backing tracks and loads more handouts for teachers who like to operate with backing tracks for their students.

There is a progression that uses G Em C and D (two bars of each chord to give the novice player plenty of time to change position). A second progression featuring the chords of Am, Dm and E and a third (rockier) progression using the chords of G and A (this backing track is also great for use with power chords and barre chords).

You can read a more detailed explanation of how the handout and backing track might be used if you visit our "First Lesson" page which gives a detailed guitar lesson plan suitable for a complete novice
The progressions and the backing tracks are especially devised to help the teacher to put together the first few lessons for a complete beginner.

With beginners it is often a good idea to resist the temptation to teach them loads of chords. Instead experienced guitar tutors know that a much more effective technique is to teach them a few chords that will allow them to do loads of things. Again the seven chords (C A G E Em D and Dm) thet you can find on the free "First Guitar Chords" handout will usually provide a sound basis for (at least) a couple of months of weekly guitar lessons.

Modern Day Chord Studies For Kids

Below are details of a few songs that I find that kids (and adults) just starting out seem to get a buzz out of being able to play.
"Wild Thing" (two strums on A followed by two on D two on and E chord and finally two more on A) always seems to go down well and has the advantage that there is a gap between each chord change so that students have plenty of time to move their fingers on the neck.

"Rockstar" by Nickelback (two bars each of A D G and A again for the main part of the verse) and "500 Miles" by The Proclaimers (G C and D) also seem to hit the spot. In addition I have also had some good results results teaching power chords using "Boulevard Of Broken Dreams" by Green Day ( the verse features two even strums on F followed by two on Ab, Eb and Bb repeated for the verse until you get five strums on C). This gets students used to moving power chords around the neck and prepares them for the full bar chords to come.

Children's Guitar Chords for Smaller Hands

When first introducing Children to guitar chords it can be a good idea to speed progress by encouraging them to play four note versions of some chords rather than the full voicings favoured by more mature learners.

The chords of G and Em shown above are a great place to start. They use only one finger each and can be used for loads of songs (or fragments of songs) that kids may recognise (tunes like "The Locomotion" and "His Latest Flame" etc).

The teachwombat guitar teaching resources feature chord sheets aimed at guitar students with smaller hands designed to give results and encouragement to younger players. Once they have got used to the "easy" versions of common chords and their dexterity and reach improves they can be gradually encouraged to move on to more conventional shapes as appropriate

A Handy PracticingTip

Studies have shown that a child's effective atttention span in minutes is roughly equivalent to his or her age in years and armed with this information we can help them to progress without really practicing to much formally. You can get to see great progress in playing by simply getting kids to practice guitar during the commercial breaks on TV. When the adverts kick in they should mute the set and play. That way over the course of an evening's viewing they get to develop square eyes and a better guitar technique.

Guitar Chords For Children's Groups

A trick for teaching small groups of younger players is to "spread the chords around". Get each student to hold down a single chord and point at the relevant player when it is time to change. The more able kids can still change chords as required but everyone gets to stay involved and (hopefully) encouraged.

Parental Support

In order to see real progress in kids guitar playing it is neccesary to get the parents on board to help ensure that when the guitar comes home from the lesson it is taken straight out of the case and tuned. Children can't practice on a guitar that isn't in tune and just as importantly when they get home from school or guitar group they just want to dump their stuff (usually on the floor) before running off to park themselves in front of the XBox. If parents are not vigilant then a week can go by without the instrument ever leaving it's case. The results in terms of progress and acheivement (as well as let's face it guitar teacher's eventual income?) are obvious.

Children's Guitar Lessons

It may be a good idea (not just with children?) to teach fragments of songs rather than whole complete pieces of music. This way your customers feel as if they are learning more and are less likely to get bored and frustrated by being forced to bang away at the same thing for hours on end?

 

Here are a few ideas that I have found effective to mix and match during recent guitar lessons aimed at children who are complete beginners
Its nice to have a few sheets with versions of simple tunes and figures which use only a single string for absolute novices (this also has the advantage of allowing students to get a pleasing result from a guitar that may not be properly in tune)

The theme from Shrek
Happy Birthday
Police Siren (E string 3rd fret to the E string open and repeated as required)
Smoke On The Water (single note version starting from an open A string)

The teachwombat guitar teaching resources have a range of sheets with JUMBO sized Tab and notation so that you can easily create your own "Master copies" of often used fragments or licks (these sheets have large graphics designed to be studied from a distance ideal for shorter segments of music) from there it's just a case of scanning or photocopying the originals to ensure that you have a library of material that you can add to and use over and over again.
There is money to be made (and a lot of satisfaction to be derived) from teaching guitar to children but as with "regular" instrumental instruction the key to an effective, stress free (and profitable!) lesson is preparation.


Click this text to find out more about the full range of guitar teaching material available in the teachwombat guitar teachers toolkits