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I'm sure that you would be able to teach your child how to read music and play simple pieces; the nice thing about the piano is that the basics are easy to pick up. Where you'll run into trouble is technique; a lot of what my teacher drilled into me at a young age is stuff like "keep your wrists up, make sure your fingers are curved, don't tense your ...

Qualities a guitar teacher needs to have: Patience. You need patience to sit through lessons with struggling students while keeping a positive attitude. Motivation. You really need to be motivated about teaching. A lot of guitar teachers aren't motivated about teaching but see it as a way to earn money with their guitar skills. Communication. This is a ...

I think if one wanted to be a concert pianist or part of a symphony or something, there's no question that one should get a good teacher. Precision is necessary in these areas, and precision is exceptionally difficult to teach oneself. As well, you might never be exposed to some concepts through picking up things on your own that a teacher would deem ...

I think you should start as if it is a game. Your child should be interested in this game, and its rules should be easy. There is nothing hard about creating a random sound with a harmonica, and at first it will be ok just to leave him to this. Once your son is more familiar with the instrument, you should start the main phase of the learning: Find the ...

I think @Ulf is on the right track--I'll elaborate here. It sounds like your student is at the point where you'll need to work on the absolute basics of rhythm. Before you get anywhere near subdivisions, time signatures, even the concept of a quarter note, your student needs to become proficient with steady beat. This is, in many ways, the concept that ...

When beginning with a six-year-old, all they really need is to learn (as much as they can) the names of notes and their positions, the basics of tempo (mostly "play evenly"), and rudimentary sight reading (a couple types of notes, a few positions on the staff). It's more of a get-used-to-this-new-way-of-making-cool-noise process than anything else. As such, ...

As everything teaching "device" (and there is a lot of academic literature studying this, across disciplines, this is not specific to bowed string instruments), fingerboard tapes or any kind of marks on or on the side of the fingerboard should not : be used systematically without observation phase be permanent be used alone without having an exit strategy ...

Is the quality of online lesson good? With very detailed, in-depth instructions like Youtube:ProfessorV's Violin lessons, one can confidently start learning an instrument. (find something similar for your instrument) Are you aware of your mistakes? Would you know if your posture is wrong or stressing some of your muscles unnecessarily? Could you detect ...

I've had two guitar teachers. One of them was a solid, competent musician and an incredible teacher. I learned more in the year-plus I studied with him than I've ever learned about any subject from anyone over any two year period. The other teacher was a brilliant musician, highly regarded and successful, played with some of the biggest names in the ...

From learning the flute as a kid, I would say that you will probably benefit from an instructor. But I don't think you need to see the instructor very often. If you can get to an instructor once every couple of months to make sure you aren't making any mistakes in your basic technique, that is probably enough. So maybe instead of an instructor, you can call ...

If you need somewhere to start, I would make sure he can hear differences in pitch. This can be as simple as playing a note, playing another note, and then asking if it was higher, lower, or the same. Then you can start applying that skill to his own voice, though, it sounds likely that he has some production issues to work through first. The ear isn't going ...

I think that every piece of music deserves the best possible method of being prepared in a such a way that both the musicians and audience have a pleasing experience. Preparation includes time, rehearsal, and every member stepping up to meet the challenge including the conductor's interpretation so that the entire group is a part of the solution. If your ...

Perhaps you could try working on walking in time. That should be simple enough to explain and includes basic physical feedback on the activity. The difference in the pace between walking and running might be helpful. Gradually you could add extremely simple hand clapping patterns while walking. (Your question is really interesting, and I'd love to hear an ...

Ear training is an unfortunate problem here in America. For children during their earliest formative years, precedence is given to visual and tactile learning. While this learning is undoubtedly important, too often are ears left under-developed. If hearing were trained the same way as sight, everyone would have perfect pitch. If I were teaching this ...

If you want your child to actually have a musical future, I'd refrain from teaching him/her yourself. Technical problems are very hard to correct down the line. The early years are the most important! So I don't seem totally unhelpful, buy a copy of Barbara Lister Sink's "Freeing the Caged bird" It discusses the basic piano technique in a fairly ...

Dance! If you can forget about the actual playing of the guitar, play a recording of the tune which we're learning, and ask your student to just groove in their seat. Then introduce a bit of free-style muted strumming, but continuing the chair dancing. The most important aspect in this approach is to get them to loosen up and not be shy about it, "look at ...

Getting everyone "on the same page" is probably not the best option in this situation--it would probably end up being stifling and uninteresting for those with more aptitude, or the less advanced students would end up getting left in the dust. If all of the students are self-motivated, then keeping each person moving at their optimal pace (whatever that may ...

Am I correct in assuming this is a theory for non-majors course of some kind? If that is the case, you're going to have a huge variance in the amount of reading ability, from none at all to students who could have been music majors if they had chosen to. However, everyone is probably going to have some similar intrinsic knowledge about the aural aspect of ...

I took 4-5 years of lessons starting at age 8 before dropping them, and here is my information. You don't have to have a teacher every week for a year or more like some people do. You might do well to get started on your own and then have a teacher for about a month to check that you are on course. It is up to you and in this point of view you will probably ...

It does sound like you are teaching some sort of "Fundamentals of Music for Non-Majors" course (whether formalized as such or not). Put yourself in the mindset of your students for a moment, if you can. You have probably had a fair amount of training, and connecting the "written theory" concepts like IV-V-I with actual sounds and actual music probably ...

I started learning with a few pointers from my dad. he showed me 3 chords that happened to fall nicely into a 1, 4, 5 progression then he went to the pub. I proceeded to spend a good while improving my changes between em, and finding that no matter what order i strummed them in, it sounded good :) Quickly getting to the point of playing something cool is ...

At four years old free play is best, with age appropriate instruments. You can get some really cute little percussion instruments and whistles made for tiny hands, and you can make instruments with beans for shakers, etc. Formal learning and games can come later, at about six once his musical ability is more developed. I'd also suggest lots of singing of ...

You could try severals things: Intervals training (you can check my answer to this question) Then have her sing the root of each chords of different chords changes. Then the third, and the five. Eventually, have her sing intervals that are not in the chords (play root and fifth and let her sing the thirds) Plus the regular singing exercices: five notes ...

Perhaps record him playing and have him listen to it. It could be that the act of performing the motions and remembering what comes next are taking up all his available attention. Listening to playback, however, has none of these distractions. Another idea is get him to listen to lots of rhythmically-interesting music. Art Blakey's African Drum Ensemble, ...

After having some problems with my throat, I found a similar issue, losing up to 2 octaves from the top end of my range and gaining about half an octave on my lower range. What I found to help was, as you said, doing siren exercises and simple control exercises (running scales and trying to hit that next note until I was comfortable with it). While I didn't ...

Chapeau to the directors you encountered. I can only speak for orchestras, but there I've seen more than once the over-ambitious director, frequently choosing pieces, which were (at least one level) too difficult. It's always a tight line to find, but the danger of musicians stumbling through a piece completely absorbing all concentration, so that none ...

I think your ideas look good. What length of sessions do you plan on providing - remember not to make it too long, both for attention span and pain in fingertips reasons. For teaching, I always tried to make sure that they could play a basic blues progression by end of lesson one, usually A, D E to keep things simple, and end with a quick demo of a range of ...