How the right teacher can inspire a music student to success

An exploration of the impact a good music teacher can have on influencing the progress of a guitar student.

I was really inspired to read Dan Hall's story of his experience as a guitar student this week. Dan started playing the guitar at the age of 13, however, by his own admission he "really struggled" during the learning process. Despite being able to access videos for almost any song via the internet he found that even after a couple of years he "was still unable to change between C and G". He bought books, he read articles and he understood guitar tab. Yet, he continued to struggle to get to grips with learning the instrument he wanted to.

This all changed when as "a last-ditch attempt" Dan reached out to a local guitar teach to book lessons. Taking lessons with this teacher Dan was suddenly provided with a very structured process of knowledge acquisition. Ensuring that if he didn't understand a concept the teacher would take the time to represent the material in a different way so Dan could grasp the concept. This patient approach, combined with the teacher's ability to organise courses of lessons into an order that slowly built up Dan's ability made the learning process fun and enjoyable. It was also extremely effective.

This made me reflect upon the profound impact that a particular music teacher can have on a student. Whether it is helping them to grasp the instrument that they have been struggling with for many years before lessons or pushing them onto new heights that they never thought they would reach. Dan's story was particularly interesting because it highlighted two key concepts that we as professional music teachers are able to provide within lessons (that perhaps static resources like books or pre-recording resources like YouTube videos cannot).

Firstly, an ability for a teacher to understand when an approach to conveying a concept to a student isn't effective, enabling a teacher to re-approach the idea in a new way to ensure that the student understands the concept. This might mean reapproaching the idea in question via a different learning methodology, for example, using kinetic learning over visual learning. Or it might simply mean using different analogies to transfer the knowledge from teacher to student.

Secondly, having a professional music teacher select the right lesson content for you in an order that makes logical sense is massively impactful on the progress of that student. For example, guitar exercises to ensure finger strength is strong enough to play lead riffs are crucial to practice before tackling quick riffs that require the use of multiple fingers. When a guitar "learner" is left to their own devices perhaps the lack of understanding of the right order to tackle musical content is a major factor in the lack of progress these learners experience.

For me, it was really interesting to explore this topic as Dan is now himself a professional guitar teacher. He runs a guitar school in Manchester using the experiences he had as a guitar student to shape his teaching philosophy. Indeed, he explained that he believed that anyone could learn to play the guitar if they gave themselves enough time to practice and progress on the instrument, as long as this practice was focused on utilising the right resources. Dan's progression from a frustrated guitar learner, on the brink of giving up, before taking guitar lessons with a professional guitar teacher and then graduating himself to become a guitar teacher just highlights the impact that a good music teacher can have on a student. It is a real testament to Dan's guitar teacher that he has now taken up the profession himself and Dan's thoughts on what a music teacher, compared to "static resources" can offer were incredibly insightful.