Guitar Lessons - Figuring Out the Frets
Welcome, new music student! If you're reading this, you've taken the exciting first step toward a lifelong journey with the guitar. Deciding to take lessons is a fantastic decision, but it's natural to feel a mix of excitement and nerves.
This page is designed just for you. We'll walk through what you can expect from the experience and, most importantly, explore the incredible benefits that guitar lessons bring.
Meeting Your Teacher
In your first lesson, enjoy meeting Dan O. He is a teacher of over 12 years, a multi-genre teacher, and professional classical guitarist. As an expert in the field he loves to answer questions and is easy to talk to.
Absorbing the Basics
Posture, instrument position, finger placement, holding a pick or using the fingers, and more are commonplace in a first lesson. Dan will meet you where you are with coordination, information, and ability.
Practice Routine
Lessons are where you learn what to practice, but the real progress happens at home! Dan loves to provide clear, simple, and time tested exercises that have a purpose. Consistency beats duration. 15-30 minutes of focused practice, four or five times a week, is far better than a single marathon session.
Better With a Guide
The Guitar is a beautiful instrument, but beyond enjoying its sound there are many widespread benefits to taking music lessons and learning from an experienced teacher. As you confront personal challenge and obstacles, Dan is an emapthetic guide who can see where you are in your journey. His support will smoothen your learning and keep guitar playing exciting and rewarding
The Benefits Beyond the Sounds
Cognitive
Playing guitar stimulates several parts of the brain simultaneously (motor, auditory, and visual processing). This is known to improve spatial-temporal reasoning and math skills.
Coordination
The guitar is a true full-body workout for the mind. You must read two lines of music, process rhythm, and move ten fingers independently while operating the foot pedals—this vastly improves hand-eye coordination and dexterity.
Discipline & Focus
Mastering a piece of music requires consistent, daily effort and the ability to concentrate. You learn to break down a big goal (a piece of music) into small, manageable tasks (a few measures at a time).
Emotional & Social
Playing music is a wonderful way to express yourself. It’s also a powerful stress reliever and performing for others provides an incredible source of satisfaction and confidence.
Why Aren't Tabs Enough?
I don't judge guitarists who can only read tablature. At the end of the day, this business of placing fingers on strings ends up being about making music. Music is king, and the audience won't know what etchings were on the paper that lead to the music if the music is solid.
However,
There's a huge difference in the kind of internal experience you will have as a player, and the capacity to understand what you are doing and both how and why it works that way, if you learn to read. There's a different sense of intent and direction that's available to a player who understands say, the dramatic import and harmonic tension of the flat five in a blues scale, than a player who simply followed the directions and got their fingers to the right string/fret combo.
Further, literacy actually opens up the imaginal plane of guitar practice, both for improvisation and composition. Paradoxically, you have to be literate (to some degree) to have optimal instincts when playing away from the page.
Yes, there are geniuses and legends whose abilities perhaps defy this. I don't argue with them and I also don't need to teach them lessons. We have an equilibrium.
As an educator, it's simply not enough for me to direct your fingers to the numbers on the tablature page. There's not as much for you to gain, and it reduces the world of music to something far too small.
Tabs are a great tool. They have a historical basis as old as Lute Tablature. I teach on tabs when they're the better tool for the job (certain fingerstyle arrangements for beginners, and lead guitar with high density of shifting and bends).
But, all of my students read.