15 Major Guitar Teaching Mistakes You Must Avoid

The most effective way of becoming a better guitar teacher is NOT to make the most common mistakes others make when they teach guitar. By doing this, your students will quickly become great players and take lessons with you for longer periods of time.

Don’t make these common guitar teaching mistakes:

Guitar Teaching Mistake #1: Giving Your Students Way Too Much Information At Once

Refrain from teaching new things to your students each session. This increases the chances that they will become overwhelmed and leave.

You should be not only reviewing older material but teaching and training your students to apply what they know in different contexts. This will speed up their progress and keep them from feeling overcome with new information.

Check out this guitar teaching video to see how to help your guitar students overcome their musical problems:

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Guitar Teaching Mistake #2: Not Keeping Track Of Your Students’ Progress

These are the four ways tracking your students’ progress helps everyone involved:

1. It gives your students unquestionable proof that they are getting results. This gives them motivation to practice and get better faster.

2. Your students get the proof that YOU are a great teacher, and they feel inspired to study with you for longer periods of time... helping you make more money.

3. Since your guitar students see that you care about the progress they make, they become more encouraged to take lessons with you.

4. You better understand what your students need to learn to achieve their musical goals. This makes it much easier for you as their teacher.

Guitar Teaching Mistake #3: Teaching All Guitar Students The Same

Don’t use generic approaches or lessons for your guitar students (unless they are complete beginners). There is no single “best” method for everyone. Create customized strategies to help your students reach their specific musical goals.

This guitar teacher skills test will help you improve your teaching skills.

Guitar Teaching Mistake #4: Not Inspiring Your Guitar Students To Practice

You have to motivate your guitar students to become enthusiastic about practicing. Bottom line: if they don’t practice, they won’t make progress. This makes you look bad as their teacher.

This article explains how to motivate your guitar students to practice regularly.

Guitar Teaching Mistake #5: Not Training Your Guitar Students To Practice During Lessons

Don’t make the assumption that your students know how to practice the right way when they are alone. Most don’t, unless you:

1. See how they practice during your lesson together and point out mistakes.

2. Train their mindset while practicing to help them figure out their guitar playing problems.

Doing these things for you students will help them become great players faster.

This video demonstrates how to teach your guitar students to practice:

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Guitar Teaching Mistake #6: Showing All Your Students How To Read Music

Only show your guitar students how to read music if:

1. This skill is 100% needed for reaching their long-term goals.

2. They are at least intermediate level players.

If you try to show your guitar students how to read music when they aren’t ready, they’ll become frustrated leave lessons in the process.

Guitar Teaching Mistake #7: Not Teaching Your Students As “Human Beings”

Remember, you don’t just teach guitar... you teach people. Your students need to know that you relate with them and understand their challenges. This is what will truly motivate them to get better.

Get to know your guitar students as people. Learn what motivates them to take lessons. Then customize your lessons using this knowledge to make each lesson more focused on their specific interests.

Note: Be subtle when you do this.

Guitar Teaching Mistake #8: Asking Your Guitar Students What They Want To Learn In Every Guitar Lesson

Your guitar students don’t need to study with you just to learn whatever they feel like learning. They need you to help them solve their problems and achieve their musical goals.

As a guitar teacher, it’s up to you to forge a path for your students to follow to become excellent guitar players. To learn how, get training on how to teach guitar effectively to students.

Guitar Teaching Mistake #9: Not Teaching Your Guitar Students To Apply The Skills They Already Know

Your guitar students need you to show them how to apply all the skills they already have into actual music. If you don’t do this, most of your students will never think to do it on their own and will have difficulty making progress.

Try to find a balance somewhere between demonstrating new concepts to your students and showing them how to apply what they learn into music.

Guitar Teaching Mistake #10: Not Teaching Your Guitar Students To Combine Their Skills

In addition, you must help your guitar students put everything together by showing them how to integrate their current skills with all the new concepts you teach them. When you do this, watch as they become great players faster than ever.

Many students struggle to get their head around the concept of integration. As their guitar teacher, it’s up to you to make this easy for them.

Guitar Teaching Mistake #11: Teaching All Your Guitar Students In 1 to 1 Lessons Only

Your guitar students are going to require much more than just private lessons in order to become great players fast. If they only take one on one lessons, they won’t get the chance to play with other musicians in real-life musical scenarios. This also means they won’t be able to work on eliminating performance anxiety or performance.

The way to fix this issue is to teach in different formats. Combine 1 on 1 lessons together with group classes and other unique formats.

Guitar Teaching Mistake #12: Not Getting Your Guitar Students To Reach Specific Musical Goals

Not all your guitar students want to reach virtuoso levels, but all of them want to improve by taking lessons with you. You need to identify what it is that they want to do with guitar, and break down their goals into steps that you help them achieve one by one.

Hint: Make sure you let your students know that the things you are teaching them are going to help them reach their goals. This inspires them to do the things you tell them to do and helps them make faster progress.

Guitar Teaching Mistake #13: Teaching Guitar Using A Step-By-Step Approach

Your guitar students will transform into great players fast when they learn using a geometric approach instead of a step by step/linear one. Watch this video to see how this approach works:

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Guitar Teaching Mistake #14: Teaching Music Theory The Wrong Way

Don’t do the following things when teaching music theory to guitar students:

1. Teaching it in a linear fashion starting from the core basics before teaching chords/scales, etc.

2. Teaching it as a standalone, rather than showing students how to apply it on guitar.

To teach music theory correctly, you need to:

1. Help students understand how music theory helps them play guitar the way they want.

2. Teach music theory in a way that is congruent with your students’ musical goals.

3. Train your guitar students so they can apply theory into context.

This video shows how to teach music theory to your guitar students:

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Guitar Teaching Mistake #15: Teaching Guitar Only Through Songs

You can definitely utilize songs as teaching tools during guitar lessons, but students need more than this to become great guitar players.

To truly help your students advance their guitar playing skills, use songs as a way to explain examples of concepts you teach, but NOT as standalone replacements for actual guitar instruction.

To learn more about becoming a successful guitar teacher, take this guitar teacher skills test and learn how to help your students become better guitar players.