What is the right age to begin guitar lessons?

By Scott Gossage

Everybody always asks me this question. The answer depends on a number of factors. Students can begin as young as three years, or even two years. There is a great advantage in beginning early, which is it gives us more time. The disadvantage is that students are up against the limit of their development in learning a lot of the basics: balance in sitting and standing, fine motor control, focus and concentration, following directions. This means we will go slower than if we start a little later. It also means that the student needs lots of help from his parents. The parents need to learn a lot to help the student effectively. Parents who feel they may not have the time or inclination to work very diligently every day, and attend to many details of the child’s study, progressing pretty slowly at times, will probably want to wait until their child is a little older, say 7 or eight, to begin.

At the age of seven or eight, the student will be able to learn more quickly. The disadvantage of starting lessons at this age is that the student will have less time before she reaches high school and time demands become acute. Another problem with starting at 7 or 8 is motivation. When they are 3 or 4, they want to do stuff with mommy and daddy; kids will naturally model the behavior of their parents, and so it is relatively easy to motivate the child. At Silicon Valley Classical Guitar School our teachers are experts at using the Suzuki Method to help parents and young students learn in this way. At ages beyond 7 a child comes strongly under the influence of their peer groups and media, and parental influence diminishes.

As long as the student has a little time every day to practice, it is possible to get good results at any age. It helps to have a good teacher, who is skilled at guiding you toward the most effective way of practicing. Here at Silicon Valley Classical Guitar School, we have a lot of experience helping students of all ages in this way.

Rob Watson has a new blog

So, I've made a sort of 'sub blog' to this main blog, called the "Practice, Technique, and Appreciation" blog.

You can find it here

(Click on the above text)

What is the right environment for learning?

By Rob Watson

What’s important when it comes to the teacher/student teaching environment for Suzuki guitar lessons? First and foremost, to borrow from the old real-estate saying that it’s location, location, location – it’s parent, parent, parent for Suzuki guitar lessons. The parent teaching time and environment between parent and child is very important because that’s where much of the critical learning occurs.
One of our parents has been using their living room for practice for several years—so their daughter always calls it “the music room.” He says the room has enough room to be comfortable; it’s familiar as the place where they practice, and it is within reach of their stereo so he can play any of the Suzuki music if he wants to for a lesson. Now, they change rooms occasionally to “mix it up” and keep it interesting. Every family should experiment with rooms to find the one that works best for both parent and child.

We designed our facility to inspire a sense of community among parents, students, and our surrounding community. Scott and I each have private sound-insulated studio rooms for our one-on-one lessons. We have an open area that facilitates group lessons comfortably. Our movable stage gives us a simple and flexible platform to configure the room for any requirement, whether it’s a practice for a student or a group concert. We have a comfy couch and coffee table to students and parents waiting for their lesson can relax and feel at-home while they wait. Our whole approach in design centered on making our school comfortable, accessible and functional. We set out to create an intimate and open environment that encourages working closely with our students and parents in the spirit of the Suzuki tradition--with fun, laughter, great music learning for the Silicon Valley lifestyle.

How do I choose a Suzuki School that is right for my family?

by Scott Gossage

When looking at the choice of Suzuki music lessons, I believe the most important factor is parent education. Parent education is the soul and essence of the Suzuki method. It is the defining element. The importance of parent education cannot be overstated, from either the perspective of outcome or process.

This series of articles concerns the operational implementation of parent education, and how our approach, here at Silicon Valley Classical Guitar School, may differ from that of other schools with which the reader may be familiar.

My background, in terms of my training and professional experience, is very traditional Suzuki. Hard-core, if you will. Consequently, there is a large component of parent education in my experience. Before my colleague, Rob Watson, and I started up our own studio here at Silicon Valley Classical Guitar School in Sunnyvale, we both taught at Longay Conservatory of Guitar in Santa Clara, California. LCG is known throughout the world as a center for the Suzuki method, particularly as a destination for teachers seeking professional development. It is an excellent school. One of the many great and wonderful things I got to do as a part of that extremely rich and intense experience, was to work directly with Frank Longay to create and implement his parent education course.

For over three years, I team-taught the course with Frank, under his direct, personal supervision and guidance. Frank taught the philosophical, theoretical portion of the course, comprising half of the content. The other half of the course, the technical portion, was my responsibility. In addition to teaching the course together and observing each other’s work in the classroom, Frank and I met weekly to discuss the course, its content, and how we could tweak it to optimize results. Through this process, I learned a whole lot about doing parent education for Suzuki parents.

In addition to my work at LCG, I have taken additional professional training, most notably with Jeanne Luedke, and the great William Starr. I have also hung out and discussed this topics informally with many of the world’s most notable Suzuki guitar teachers, who come regularly to LCG to do teacher training there. The distillation of all that I learned is this:

Parent education is very, very important.

There are many different ways to implement parent education.

Each of these have both advantages and disadvantages. Parents looking for a Suzuki school for their children should learn as much as they can about each school’s approach, and choose the program that is right for their family.

In a future article I will discuss the details of how we do parent education at Silicon Valley Classical Guitar School, and compare our approach to that of other programs.