Teaching young kids to play guitar

[clearwater]

I think you will find that many who teach full-time, multiple instruments in particular, will start students from age four as a matter of routine, with great success. I have had students of this age who can use normal guitar chord shapes ( on a half-size guitar) with no problem, and in some cases play keyboard as well. Note reading is not a problem, either, in children of this age group, because they only have eight note names plus the #'s and b's to handle, and most kids in my experience can read words to some extent at this stage thanks to their parents.
Most of the greatest instrumentalists in recent history started learning around this age- very few, as suggested above, started at 11.

[Niels Vejlyt]

Hi there, in my experience the best you can do is to find out what your students like and give them that, even though the Level seems higher. My experience showed me that if you chunk the material down people will be much happyer and practice more if they are working on something they know and love than something that is "Just Easy"

[hMarianne]

Hi there.
I'm new to this forum. And kinda new to music world.
I just managed to fight through Green Sleeves tabs. What else can you suggest I learn?

[Malcolm]

Hi there.
I'm new to this forum. And kinda new to music world.
I just managed to fight through Green Sleeves tabs. What else can you suggest I learn?

First welcome to our World. I see that your instrument is the violin. I assumed you were playing guitar when I wrote the following.

OK you've found tabs. There are three other ways to play from sheet music. Standard notation and then fake chord or lead sheet.

• Tabs normally are about playing the tune - the part that is sung.
• Standard notation, piano music, can come with both treble and bass clef. So you can play the tune using the treble clef or play harmony, the chords, using the bass clef.
• Fake chord sheet music will only show the lyrics and the name of the chord active under a specific section of the music. Pop, Rock, Country or Blues musicians normally pass fake chord among themselves so makes since to know how to play from this sheet music.
• Lead sheet music will be like fake chord plus having standard notation (those fly specks) shown in treble clef.

What next? Which instrument? If guitar I would point you to playing harmony - the chords and providing the background harmony for others to sing or play melodic solo phrases over. i.e. rhythm guitar.

That somebody can be you. Great fun singing and accompanying your vocal by strumming the chords from the song.

Tell us what instrument you are asking about and a little more on where you would like to go.

Here is what fake chord looks like. http://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/n/no..._heart_crd.htm
Grab an A chord and start singing the song and strumming that A chord in time with the tune. When you get to the next "chord change word" (dream) change to the E7 chord, as that chord now harmonizes the melody, at this point in the song. Keep singing and strumming till you get to the next chord change word - change to that chord and keep going. It's not rocket science and will get you playing songs in short order. Singing out loud is optional, but, you gotta sing the song so you know when to change chords. The lyrics being sung set the tempo. What's that? Which strum? Right at first just all down strums will play a lot of music, plenty of time to get those up-down strum patterns later.

Again, welcome and have fun.

[Clevshred]

I'm learned how to play guitar at age eight and at that I'm just using my ear when I want to learn something new but to this generation, I think if a child or beginner is starting to play guitar maybe by introducing them the concept of music is a great idea

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