Calling All Teachers!

Teacher's Lounge
#23

East Denver. :slight_smile:

Over my 40 or so years with instrument in hand, I’ve got some unusual insights that are my own, at least in presentation. I work a day job though, so as far as teaching is concerned, I only take on a student when somebody shows strong interest. I’ve had some pretty phenomenal mentors that play way above my level that share freely, so I enjoy paying it forward. At some point we’ll have a critical mass of pedantic pick nerds this side of the rockies, I’m certain. Then we’ll take over the world. :wink: Send the guitar students the way of those actively making a living off of the same!

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#24

Hey Troy,

I didn’t know if I told you that I teach Jazz Guitar and Combos at Clemson University. I have been slammed with school starting, but i promise more videos to come! Thanks for spending time with my videos. I have made some awesome progress with DWPS and I plan on putting up some videos of my normal picking styles for you to look at. I try to read all the posts to keep up but I don’t always have time to post. Thanks for all you do!

Monty Craig

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#25

I’ve been a guitar teacher for around 15 years now and for the last 10 have taught at a school of rock franchise, of which I’m now the assistant music director.

I have applied everything I’ve learned through CTC with all my students with really tremendous results, and I’m trying to get the rest of our guitar staff into it as well.

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#26

Awesome, glad to hear it. Are these kids or experienced players? What specifically have you been showing them?

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#27

@Troy kids anywhere from 8 year old beginners to teenagers who I’ve got to the point where some of em can hang with Yngwie, Gilbert etc solos.

For the real little kids My first goal is to get their hand in position to do DWPS but I don’t refine anything more from that point until I feel it’s really necessary.

For my intermediate to advanced teenagers I will straight up mention your channel and reference your different YouTube videos. Mostly I get them on the Yngwie approach first, mostly because this is my personal stylistic preference and it has the least amount of things to think about. When I get them on the Gilbert 3nps shapes, I’ll introduce 2WPS and then kind of leave it up to them to decide how they want to approach licks. Most of them wind up being primary DWPS that also do 2WPS. At one point I even caught a student “swiping” from a DWPS position while doing the Gilbert classic REH lick.

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#28

That’s awesome. Why dwps as opposed to uwps, and/or do you find that any students have particular trouble with specific arm positions? Or is it simply a matter of showing them what to do?

I feel like we have a lot of viewers in the very general sense who think they “are” a specific kind of player, be it one style or another. I’d like to believe this isn’t really the case, and that this is mostly due to not having clear instructions on how to hold the instrument and move the hand/arm to execute the different basic movements.

#29

@Troy precisely. Most younger kids have a hard time strumming and hitting all the strings of a chord. DWPS goes in this direction, so it just makes sense to me to start with this from the beginning.

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#30

I really wanna teach guitar as a career, but it’s just unfortunate that music doesn’t really thrive on an island for job stability :confused: worked so hard on my Trinity Grade 8 and it gets washed down the drain because apparently they want guitar teachers who are “experienced”. If that’s the case I don’t know when I’ll ever get my shot at teaching.

There’s a huge demand for piano and violin players here tho, and prolly classical guitar too. The rock/pop electric guitar scene is so underground and all kids wanna learn these days are things they hear off movies or YouTube.

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#31

If there’s not a big potential-guitar-student base where you live, I wonder if trying some kind of online teaching could be a good option? Maybe not ideal, but could be interesting to consider at least as a way to get started / gain some experience.

Similar idea: could be interesting to start a sort of “teaching exchange”, perhaps here on the forum! We have many teachers and I believe a good number of folks who are considering doing more teaching. It seems it might be useful for people to connect and essentially practice teaching with one another…kind of like how in grade school classrooms occasionally teachers will sit in and observe one another teaching, give feedback etc.

I imagine interested teachers could basically just pair up, arrange a Skype call, and practice teaching each other for half an hour or something. Then a next step could be offering free lessons to beginners for a little while, to get more experience. Eventually you could set up a website where you offer Skype lessons, with testimonials from the previous “practice” teaching activities. And hopefully at a certain point that would help with getting opportunities to teach locally as well.

Just some rough thoughts, and I should be clear I have no guitar teaching experience so I’m sure others here may have better ideas! But to all teachers and aspiring teachers here: please feel free to use this space to organize anything like this that could be useful for professional development!

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#32

@Brendan I actually tried advertising online about guitar lessons but no one really took interest. I mean…usually someone will take notice if you have certain levels of achievements or experience and what not (that’s what it’s like here locally tho), but yeah I guess I could try again if anyone’s interested in my lessons. The Skype idea seems pretty cool tho! Hope we can get the ball rolling for it :slight_smile:

#33

Hello friends,

I’m a guitarist/guitar teacher from Rio de Janeiro - Brazil.
I’ve been playing guitar for 21 years and teaching for about 14 years.

When i first start learning i’ve tended to play very “intuitively” and only focusing on learning lots of musical theory, but for the last 6 years or so i’ve decided that i would take a closer look on my technique, specially in my picking technique, since i always felt i couldn’t get the accuracy, precision and speed i wanted (even though i almost always could play the riffs/licks/solos of my favorite players with relatively ease).

That’s when my younger brother, who is an excellent amateur guitar player too (and has a technique that i sometimes suspect is more efficient than mine) showed me the Cracking the Code Series on youtube.
I was IMMEDIATELY blown away by the “nerdy” approach to every detail imaginable of the picking mechanics.
It was what i always have looked for in instructional videos, but in a even more modern, comprehensible, beautiful and fun way to learn.

I became obsessed with every lick and exercise and became totally motivated to start practicing on DWPS and 2WPS on any time i had.
I became a member os Master of mechanics, and was even more delighted to learn from the “Volcano”, “Cascade” and “Antigravity” seminars.
The way that Troy communicates the concepts just make me want to grab the guitar every time i watch him speak.

After some weeks/months i noticed my picking technique become better and better by QUANTUM LEAPS!

I can’t be thankful enough to all the effort and generosity of Troy and his team for putting so valuable material and information here to everyone.
I think this work is really an education every serious guitarist own to himself.

I teach on a musical school and do private lessons (in person and online) and it’s needless to say i teach this information every time i have the chance.
My primarily style is rock and blues, but i give a shot at other genres.
My students ages range from 8 to 45 years old and i find it easier to teach these mechanical concepts to teenagers and adults because of the mechanical complexity involved, but the results i’m getting with the students that can absorb this information is just amazing!

I’m now trying to understand the crosspicking mechanics, but finding really hard to do as i see much of you guys are too.

Thank you Troy and cracking the code team for the awesome educational and revolutionizing material you brought us! :wink:

p,s: sorry about my english!

3 Likes
#34

I do teach in good old Germany, Dresden to be more specific.

I studied Music (Acoustic and Electric Guitar) at Music Conservatory in Rostock and Dresden (yes, together with Martin Miller, he actually was my fellow student… :wink: ).
Then I went to Brazil (oi @felipearanha, como vai? que bom ver brasileiros aqui! :slight_smile: ) to study Chorinho and Brazilian Popular Music (MPB) in Salvador da Bahia and since 5 years now I’m a professional music teacher with diploma.

I do workshops, one by one lessons and band coaching.

Main topics are “how to play by ear” (I wrote a [guitar] method on how to develop this at the same time you get to know your instrument… applicable to other instruments as well), “rhythm and body percussion”, “guitar technique” and “writing riffs”/“composing” (as you can see in my recent posts to using Konnokol/rhythmical structures on [metal] riffs: Making Riffs using Konnokol)

My main instrument is obviously the guitar in all it’s forms (6, 7, classical, electric, fretless), but I also play and teach mandolin, piano, bass, ukulele and drums (on a basic level).

If you’re interested in my stuff, feel free to check out:
www.stephanpankow.de
(still only in German, but I hope one day I’ll fix this with a newer version of my site…)

1 Like
Skype teachers?
#35

I’m looking for a teacher who knows the CTC framework and am interested in this directory, if it’s still acive! Please email me at skeller88[at]gmail[dot]com.

#36

Hi Snake from Australia,

I’ve taught guitar since 1987 back then it was mainly metal, Racer X, Yngwie, George Lynch, Warren DeMartini, that style. I always taught theory and lot of different techniques including 8 finger tapping.

I’ve incorporated USX, DSX and DBX into my lessons, one of the first things I teach is the traditional 1234 exercise starting with a downstroke (USX) and then starting with an upstroke (DSX)

I have 3 string exercises for 2-way pick slanting and DBX.

I also have a lot of methods for memorising the neck, locating intervals, reading charts, standard notation, rhythm, transcription, music software and much more.

I’ve posted some of my stuff in this forum.

I’m available for Skype, Zoom, etc lessons.

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#37

As a way to give back to the community, I’d love to return the favor and offer forum members one-to-one skype lessons at a very fair rate.

I can teach you:

  • EJ style economy pentatonics/patterns/variations/runs
  • Solid foundations in vibrato and string bending
  • Basic improv over single chords and progressions
  • Tone-making and above all, how to have fun while learning

You may check out my short tributes playlist here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBySypTY6QjnufTsu0vXTvFaKyHpLunG4

I’m currently on a personal trip down south in Adelaide in South Australia, and currently teach two other students- but I’d love to welcome members here.

You can reach me at [email protected] or through private messages here.

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#38

Uh Troy, you and your fantastic material are my teachers now.

Seriously, your videos and the Pickslanting Primer really made my picking much more accurate, something I was trying to find a solution to. I wasn’t AWFUL at picking technique, but you and the Pickslanting Primer gave me a game plan for improving my picking technique.

So I want to say thank you! :slight_smile: