How to Choose a Guitar Teacher

If You Need an Opinion, Ask Someone Qualified...

I find that there is a lot of disinformation on the web on how to find a good teacher and avoid people that will just rip you off. Everyone and his dog seems to have an opinion. Let me tell you, after years in this business some of these opinions and advices sound ridiculous at best, so I thought it was about time for me to write how *I* would choose a teacher taking into account all the things I know now. In the first half of this article I will list some tips on how to avoid the worst teachers. In the second half of these article I will show you how to choose between the good teachers left and find a GREAT teacher. I'm focusing on teachers that advertise on the net via their website, but everything I write can be applied in general.

How to Avoid Bad Teachers

Let's focus first on the most alarming signs of a bad teacher. If you find one of these steer clear of this teacher and you'll avoid bad surprises.

Be careful if: the teacher does not use his/her REAL name while advertising his lesson. The real name of the teacher should appear on any flier you see or at least on his website (if he has one). Pseudonyms are cool as stage names, but when it's time to teach a guitar teacher should be a professional like any other. Would you go to a doctor that styles himself as "Dr.X" or a lawyer that calls himself "Bob K"?

Be careful if: on the website of the teacher there is not a photo or video of him/her. It's a matter of a couple of minutes to upload a photo, so if there is not a photo this is a deliberate choice, and is not a choice of transparency and trust. By the way, photos or videos of the students are desirable too.

Be careful if: on the website of the teacher you can not find any of his music or samples of him playing. It goes without saying that any musician who wants to teach should be VERY familiar with playing his instrument, and this includes recording. Again, recording a solo takes 5 minutes at most, so if there is no music on the website this is a deliberate choice. Would you want to learn from someone who is not confident having is music heard? (By the way, you can find a video with me on the main page, and some samples of my music here)

You should NOT care if: the website is very "slick" and refined with lots of features or if it's just a rough page with the basic info. It is obvious, but there are lots of great guitar teachers who have no idea on how to build a nice website, so try to look beyond the appearances. You are searching for a guitar teacher, not for a webmaster. In fact I'd be really suspicious of sites that are too refined but do not have the real name of the teacher, one of his photos, and some of his music.

There are other things you want to look for, just to make sure that the teacher has some basic competence and is not just a hack.

Live playing/performing experience: while I agree that someone can be a good teacher without being a virtuoso player, I think that a music teacher NEEDS to have some live playing experience under his belt. He may either have a band, or play in his solo act, or he may be a session player - but he needs to have some performing experience. To use the same metaphors as above, would you choose a lawyer who has never been in the courthouse before? Or a doctor that has never visited a real patient? It is actually pretty easy to get some performing experience at open mic nights or jam sessions, so a lack of stage experience shows that the teacher is simply not confident with his playing ability and not willing to improve.

By the way, I am not saying here that the best player is the best teacher: this may or may not be true. What I am saying is that if someone wants to teach he needs to have a minimum of skills and be able to apply them in a real playing situation, like a live show.

Recording experience: has the teacher ever released a CD or some recording of his own music? Why not? Do not be fooled by people who tell you "I can record my music anytime, I just choose to do other stuff". If someone tells you this, he absolutely DOES NOT know what he's talking about. Either he can put a physical, real CD in your hand, or he's just trying to find some excuses. Here I would not require a full length solo album by the teacher (though this would be wonderful): any recording that features the teacher as a guitarist would be fine.

You should be able to find out both these elements by reading the bio of the teacher (as an example, you can see mine here), but remember to check for proof of what it's written there: live shows can be documented by photos or videos, while the proof of a recording it's the record itself. In particular "I do not have any copy of my CD right now" said in the teacher's studio is one of the lamest excuses ever (no professional musician would allow himself to be in this situation!). Do not fall for it!

Styles taught: there should be a clear indication of the styles that the teacher is comfortable teaching. RUN AWAY from people who claim to "teach all styles": this is just a blanket answer from someone who does not have the faintest idea of how to teach.

How to Find a Great Teacher

Ok, now that we have skimmed out the worst, you are probably left with 2-3 good alternatives.

The first tip here is DO NOT choose your teacher based on price or location. I know that these elements SEEM very important to you right now, but believe me they aren't. I have people driving for 90 minutes to come at my lessons, even if they have other teachers close to them, why do you think they do it? Because with me they are actually saving time and money by learning faster.

A first thing you should search for are the credentials of the teacher. Do not be impressed by college/university diplomas - I know plenty of amazing teachers without a diploma and many abysmal ones with one or more certificates of famous schools. Think back at your time in school: all the teachers you had were QUALIFIED, but where they all GOOD? With "credentials" here I mean proofs that the teacher is ACTIVE right now in making and teaching music and improving his own craft. I will list some of the things that I would value while searching a teacher. None of them is strictly necessary (one can be a good teacher without any of them), but they are all signs that you have found someone who is serious and professional about music.

Testimonials and Quotes. The difference between a testimonial and a quote is, in short, that the testimonial is given by a student, while the quote is given by another teacher or musician. Both are good (but I will put more weight on testimonials though). Since a guitar teacher is supposed to teach guitar, he is also supposed to have some students who are hopefully happy about the lessons - so he should have no problem showing some of them.

A testimonial can be either a video or a paragraph of written text. While videos are difficult to fake, written testimonial are easy to forge. If you have any suspect of false testimonials, you can ask the teacher if he can give you the contact information of a couple of his students. Be very careful here: the answer you want is NOT: "yes, here are their phone numbers". What you want is: "I will contact my students and ask them permission to share their info with you". A teacher has to respect the privacy of his students.

For quotes, take the name of the musician/teacher that gave the quote and search him on Google.

Articles and Columns. The net is full of websites who publish articles by musicians from all around the world (cyberfret.com, ultimate-guitar.com, guitar9.com, insaneguitar.com, just to cite a few). Having some article published is a sign of being a professional and has the added advantage that you can read the articles and have an idea of the teaching style of the author. It's a great way to know something about your teacher before you meet him. REMARK: articles published only on the website of the teacher do not count (anybody can publish an article on his own website). Search for articles published by recognized sites like the ones I mention.

Newsletter. A newsletter is a service provided by the teacher that will write you an email periodically with some interesting information (you can find mine here). A newsletter requires a certain amount of work to run (with no monetary compensation) and shows that the teacher actually cares to keep contact with the people interested in him (fans, students, guitar players around the world).

Endorsements. One of the most difficult things to find in a guitar teacher, but a sure sign that he is a serious professional, an endorsement is an official "alliance" of a musician with a particular brand (be it guitar, amplifiers, pedals, or other gear). The musician mentions the endorsement on his website and the brand features the musician on its website too. Endorsements are quite difficult to enter into, since the brands wants to be sure that the musician is a professional and knows his craft. For that reason you can be sure that if a musician has an endorsement he has been thoroughly interviewed and background-checked, and came through clean. I mention endorsements last since they are quite rare to find - there is plenty of good teacher without an endorsement, but it's still a good thing to look for.

Interview Your Teacher

What you need to do now is to have a list of the teachers that passed the test in the first half of this article and possibly have some of the credentials that I mentioned. Then you need to call/write all of them and interview them. My own teacher and mentor Tom Hess prepared a nice guide on this topic, and I can not hope to do a better job about it. You can download the guide simply by clicking HERE. You can use this guide as a script while you interview the teacher by phone or by email.

Finally, if the teacher has passed the interview then (and only then) you want to meet him in person. Most teachers offer a first free introductory lesson: I suggest you take advantage of that. Here is the last tip: a good teacher will ask you about your goals: what kind of music do you want to play, if you have any specific songs you like, or if you want to learn to improvise, etc. A bad teacher will simply start showing you things. Especially if you are a beginner, you may not be clear about your goals yet, and this is not a problem: what I want to stress here is if the teacher is LISTENING to you or not. You want a teacher who listen to you, otherwise how is he supposed to help you?

Hope you got some useful tips from this article. Good luck in your search for a guitar teacher!