What is the right age to begin guitar lessons?
What is the right age to begin guitar lessons? This is a question
that is frequently asked by many parents who have young children
who are five to eight years old. Many times they have taken them
to a music store for lessons and were told that the child is too
young to start and they should be ten to twelve years old.
However my answer is start as soon as they’re interested, but
you have to have realistic expectations. For example a child who
is five years old says “I want to play the guitar”. Most of the
time they have no preference as to what style of music, rock,
country, jazz etc… to them it’s just “I want to play the guitar”.
On the other hand the parent, who can’t really remember what its
like to be five, may be thinking “how could they possibly ever
play like ________” (fill in the blank with your favorite artist)
or that their fingers are too small or any number of reasons that
would convince them that maybe they should wait till they’re
older. So what is important here is to focus on the child’s
interest not the multitude of limiting factors that an adult can
postulate.
When a teacher says a child is too young to start it’s due to
the fact that they do not know how to teach a child or they’re not
willing to put out the effort that it takes to teach a young
child. I see it this way, a child eats the same food as an adult
but its cut in smaller pieces. The child has to learn the same
way but it has to be broken down in very small attainable bits of
information that can be easily acquired intellectually as well as
physically.
A rule of thumb that I like to use is that you have one minute of
attention span for each year of the child’s age, some have more
some have less. So if I have a five year old for a half hour
lesson I change the focus every five minutes, or when I see that
the attention is drifting. I also like to make the lessons fun by
joking around and relating to them on their level. I leave room
for fidgetiness and don’t make repetitive harsh demands to sit
still, sit up straight, pay attention etc… This would only make
the experience miserable.
I also think it’s good for the parent/s to sit in on the lesson
so they can understand the learning process. The main purpose of
starting early is to develop the basic skills needed to play the
guitar, not necessarily playing songs like an accomplished
musician. The goal here would be to keep the child’s interest
while developing the coordination between the right and the left
hand and the individual use of fingers so eventually they will be
able to produce a good tone.
The first thing may be to get them to pick just one string
without hitting any others while getting them familiar with the
names of the strings, then eventually how to place one finger on a
fret and play a note on one string. Don’t expect that the notes
will sound good, most likely you’ll hear a lot of doinks and
buzzes and this is normal, remember the goal is keep the interest
and develop the basic skills and at the same time you will be
developing their attention span as well as their discipline.
What about practice time? Remember the rule of attention span,
one minute for each year of their age, don’t get hung up on the
hard line rule that they should practice at least a half hour a
day. It would be better to take full advantage of whatever
attention span the child has and formulate daily practice based on
that amount of time. For example a five year old with the average
attention span of five minutes can practice five minutes a day. A
plan like this will achieve very important results as far as
developing basic skills and discipline at an early age and as time
goes on increase the amount of practice time as the attention span
increases.
A parent can make practice a fun time by asking them to play for
them rather than demanding that they practice. Ask questions
about what they learned during the lesson. Sometimes they don’t
remember anything but it makes them think and focus their
attention. They should always keep a positive attitude and
compliment their effort.
I use the example of a five year old but that’s not to say that a
child can’t learn or at least develop the interest at even an
earlier age. My oldest daughter started learning when she was two
years old. I bought a cheap, junkie beat up guitar for five bucks
and just left it sit around in reach. One day she just sat it on
her lap and began strumming on the open strings. From there I
showed her how to pick one string, then one note and so on, but
nothing heavy or formal. It was just a minute or two here and
there along with cheering her on. However it wasn’t until she was
about six or seven when we began a more structured lesson time,
she started to learn how to read music and had some regular
practice time.
What is
the right way to learn?
It's never too late to start.
What is the right age to begin guitar lessons?