No-Fail Classroom Guitar 

Starting up classroom guitar in your school is a win-win situation.   Kids don’t have to take it; they want to take it, because really, who doesn’t like the guitar?   Developing and sustaining a guitar program is another issue.  Its success depends on whether or not teaching is truly goal-oriented, and if so, failure will not be an outcome.   The question is, what should goals be?

Musicianship and technical proficiency are the top priority. Seems like a given — we all want students to be musically literate and to play with the greatest efficiency. If accomplished, these goals support all areas of music development as well as nurture life-long interest and learning.

Positioning

Positioning and posture go hand in hand.  Students can’t have good posture without good positioning.   I always tell students that positioning is the “foundation of the house, upon which all technique is built.”  If the foundation cracks, the house falls.”  It’s helpful imagery, but still requires reinforcing positive habits, tweaking students’ position on an ongoing basis until it becomes “automatic.”

How many times do we see students holding the guitar correctly, then as class wears on, guitar necks slope down and footstools get kick out of the way? At those moments, we choose either to ignore (thinking, ”students will eventually learn it”), or we fix—“nipping the problem in the bud.”  Being proactive to the latter, recognizes the power of positive habits, the more aggressively we address, the less prevalent the problem.  It can be fatiguing.   It can take a couple of weeks, months or the entire 1st year, but in the end, it’s worth every bit of effort for you and them.

Positioning begins with the type of guitar required for your class.  The nylon-string guitar (such as a Yamaha CG40 or Cordoba C5) is by far the most comfortable for seating and, with a properly positioned neck, allows optimal L.H. reach on the fingerboard.  While steel-string acoustics (played with a pick) sound great for strumming, picking single notes can be difficult on non-adjacent strings.   In addition, acoustic guitars are often cumbersome in a seated position.  In addition to its long neck, its lower bout width can be anywhere from 16”-20” (as opposed to a nylon guitar width of around 14”).

This brings up another issue: smaller players need ½, ¾, or ⅞ guitar that correctly fit their body size.    A full-size acoustic guitar on a small body can completely throw off positioning, negatively impacting body alignment, and technique.  Lastly, to ensure proper body positioning, all students need some kind of seating appliance (foot stool, ergo play, strap, etc.) which angles the guitar neck at about a 45o from the body.  This provides optimal left hand/arm joint alignment as well as optimal finger access on the fretboard.

As far as proper position, good methods offer clear guidelines—with pictures and videos.   The key point is that the body doesn’t conform to the guitar, rather the guitar conforms to the body, allowing the greatest advantage in playing both right and left hands. The worst thing teachers can tell students is “hold the guitar in any way that’s comfortable, ” which could be interpreted as a “slouch on the couch.”

Alignment

Midway Position

Optimal Posture

Optimal posture means keeping the body joints—most importantly the hands and arm—in alignment and resting in their midway position (between extreme flexion and extreme extension).  Once set, optimal posture enables optimal movement, which includes follow through and uniform direction of movement—a way of moving with utmost relaxation and the least muscle resistance.

Like positioning, posture needs continual reinforcement and should be applied in an integrated way along side the development of other skills— technique, sight-reading, ensemble, etc.  It’s amazing how many technique issues can be resolved with just a few tweaks to positioning/posture.    

One of the best ways to monitor is to frequently walk around the classroom (using a guitar strap), interacting with students.   It’s a great time to not only tweak their hands (both in front and behind the neck), check-in on their individual needs and issues, and possibly a quick assessment.

Level Appropriate

Determine whether the method is truly sensitive to needs and challenges of students.   For example, consider the Au clair de la lune melody, as a first exercise for notes on :

Au clair de la lune

At first glance the melody seems to be appropriate for beginners.  But the right-hand fingering—involving index, middle, and ring fingers with alternation and string crossing—is more suitable for an intermediate student.