Tag: Technique

Weekly versus fortnightly guitar lessons

Nicole Neal1 Comment

This is one that crops up pretty frequently with me as I receive inquiries about lessons. From the teacher’s point of view, giving fortnightly lessons to students can be a good chance to see how they fly on their own for a little while – whether developments have been made in the playing, technique, musical development and so on or whether the gap between lessons is too large at a given stage in a student’s development.

For some teachers, providing fortnightly time slots can prove to be problematic from a simple time allocation and income point of view. There are certainly ways around this however, for example all my fortnightly students come to me on Tuesdays – some come one week, some come the next, alternating the weeks, which actually works pretty well from my perspective.

So it can definitely work for the teacher. But what about the student’s point of view? What’s “better”? Weekly or fortnightly lessons?

Weekly the way to go

In my own learning it has always been weekly lessons, so I may be accused of being biased when I say that weekly lessons, if practical, affordable and feasible for the student, is most definitely the way to go. Talking from my own personal experience of receiving lessons, the seven day interval really helps keep you on top of your game and pushing forward – any shorter timeframe than that probably doesn’t give you so much chance to soak in and synthesise the lesson, give things a whirl and make some developments for yourself. Any longer than that, particularly on a regular basis, can restrict progress a little.

But fortnightly can work

I’m not saying that folks that only do fortnightly lessons will never progress. Far from it – I have students that come on a fortnightly basis who are going great guns. And part of that comes down to the attitude and the application of the student when they’re at home practicing. Those that are highly intrinsically motivated to learn and to practice usually do pretty well with the fortnightly sessions. It can certainly have its benefits for the student, particularly financially, if they’re juggling other responsibilities in their life, or are travelling a considerable distance to attend a lesson. It can also be viewed a good developmental opportunity, particularly for more advanced students, in tutoring themselves and asking themselves key questions for their own development, rather than relying on the teacher.

Absolute beginner? Go weekly if you can

I do find, however, that particularly with absolute beginners or folks reasonably fresh to learning music or learning the guitar the gap of a fortnight can be rather a large one. At the very early stages in learning, the regular and consistent contact with a teacher can be crucial – no, scratch that. Is crucial. With two weeks between lessons, if a bad habit, misunderstanding, confusion or point of frustration creeps in after say three days of practicing the student still has another 11 days of either practicing something incorrectly, ineffectively or allowing confusion and frustration to build up. With weekly lessons, however, that time would be significantly reduced to only four days until the next session with the teacher. That’s a whole lot of time saved in development and progress in learning to read or developing a technique.

My advice? If you can, go weekly.

Happy practicing!

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Starting with the end in mind

Nicole NealLeave a comment

The concept of starting with the end in mind can be applied to a range of aspects of our playing, learning and practice. Equally, thinking in this way can bring massive benefits to all of those aspects.

Why is the end in mind so important?

Well, the simple answer to that is we’ve got to know where we’re ultimately going to be able to (a) head in the right direction and (b) know when we’ve got a particular destination, acquired something that we wanted to have, be something that we wanted to be, or do something we wanted to do!

It also lets us kick back (metaphorically speaking, of course – we’ve still got to do the work!) and enjoy the journey more knowing that we’re headed in the right direction with the intention of reaching our goal. We know what we want to achieve, devise a strategy for getting there, revise the strategy or change course slightly on the way if it’s not working, and set sail!

Being mindful and taking 5 minutes out just to think perhaps “OK, what am I going to have acquired have the end of my practice session today?” can reap massive dividends with your learning. This tool is useful for any player or learner, but particularly so for the time-poor learner. It’s about making your practice session as effective as possible.

You can also break that idea down into the elements of your practice itself.

Have a think on these…

  • What are you doing with your scales and exercises? What are they serving in your repertoire or pieces? What are they helping you improve in a technical weakness? What are they helping you maintain? What are they helping you to learn for the first time? What do you want to have achieved by working on a particular scale or technical exercise?
  • What’s happening with your pieces? How do you want them to sound overall? How do you want the separate sections and phrases to sound? Where are the challenging spots and how do you want these to sound?
  • Lessons – what do you want to achieve from these? Is there something you’re working towards? What would you like to achieve in your next lesson?
  • And of course performances. Let’s not forget those. What do you want your next performance to be like? Who’s your audience? What’s their reaction? The venue? See yourself 30 seconds after the performance receiving rapturous applause!! What are you doing and feeling 1 minute after the performance? After 10 minutes? 30 minutes? 1 hour?

Hmmmm? Interesting eh? Give it a red hot go!

I’m going to leave you today with a favourite quote of mine for your to ponder on: A goal without a plan is just a wish. Antoine de Saint-Exupery, French writer (1900 – 1944)