I’ll pass this along because its really helped me get back to playing after 15 years.
My original teacher had me practice chord progressions. like the most common I IV V in the common keys. GCDG, ADEA, CFGC, DGAD, EABE Extremely helpful in getting comfortable making chords and switching between them. I started just practicing with down strokes and a metronome at 60bpm. Gradually increasing my speed. After 6 months I was up to 90bpm. After a year, 120bpm. As I learned strumming I practiced them while doing this exercise.
Teach the minor chords.
I ii V I G Am D G, A Bm E A, C Dm D C, D Em A D, E F#m B E
1950’s Rock N Roll I vi IV V G Em C D, A F#m D E, C Am F G, D Bm G A, E C#m A B
point out this is identical to the first progression they learned. I IV V GCD ADE etc. except for the inserted minor chord
I love this progression. Theres several hundred songs just in it.
Barre chords are next. Same progressions up and down the neck. Building hand strength and speed. Eventually it helps learn the fretboard.
7th chords – explain which chord in the progression is Dominant. substitute a 7th for that chord. ADEA becomes A D E7 A etc.
Another advantage is getting comfortable changing keys. Knowing which chords to use.
Its helped me tremendously. I still do these daily for a warmup. I use a digital kitchen timer. 3 mins for each progression. I alternate from day to day.
Everybody wants to play songs. Finding easy songs to teach will keep it fun and helps motivate beginners. It motivated me to pursue singing lessons too. I wanted to sing and play my guitar.
The chord progression exercises easily translate into learning songs. They are the building blocks for songs.
Mister Rik, you say that the guitar goes out of tune easily and you have to retune it for her every time you are there. What about getting her an electronic tuner and teaching her how to use it? That way, you remove one more excuse not to practice from a learner’s arsenal.
Well, she knows how to tune her guitar. I think she asks me to do it for her because, as I have discovered, the guitar simply won’t stay in tune, and she must think she’s doing something wrong. So I’ll tune it up, and as soon as I strum a few chords, it’s “out” again.
I suppose a tuner would be helpful, though, since there are no other musical instruments in the house to use for reference. Though I’ve discovered some online guitar tuners that provide reference pitches for each string. I could point her at one of those.
Unless the strings are brand new and haven’t been stretched, then something’s off. Guitars must hold a tuning. Obvious places to check are the neck relief and tuning machine slippage. Whatever it is, it is worth getting addressed.
Like I already mentioned, nylon strings, blah blah blah, old strings, blah, blah, blah.
I’m going to encourage my sister to buy her daughter a proper, suitable guitar.
Like, maybe something like this:
Hrm. Except my niece is already out as a lesbian (as “out” as you can be at 13), so maybe she isn’t into the “girly” pink. That needs some discussion. She just needs a better guitar, which is my primary concern. But Daisy Rock makes guitars that are sized for young girls.
I’ve given a lot of lessons to guitar beginners. Here are some of my thoughts that really haven’t been mentioned.
Flat fingerboarded nylon string guitars are terrible for beginners UNLESS they want to learn to play Classical guitar. The strings go out of tune very easily, the strings sound dead rather quickly, and the wide flat fingerboard make learning chords difficult. Let me put it like this; back in my earlier days, my friends who played guitar had steel string guitars and my friends who didn’t play but “used to take lessons” had a nylon stringed guitar leaning in the corner of their bedroom with a quarter inch of dust on it.
Beginners learning chords spend a lot of time stretching their head over to see where they’re putting their chording fingers. To ease their neck, they also tilt the treble side of the guitar up. That puts additional strain on their chording hand (the wrists). Have your niece practice as much as she can planted in front of a mirror, so she can see where her fingers are there and not have to assume uncomfortable and unnatural playing positions. And as an added bonus, once she learns what the chords look like from the front, it’ll be easier for her to learn songs by watching other people play them.
As mentioned up thread, get her a Mel Bay Chord Dictionary. The big flat one that’ll easily fit in her guitar case along with the guitar. The one I had besides the diagrams had photos of a hand making the chord. If you want to encourage her as a bass player, early in her teaching, start her on alternate bass strumming and you may want to teach her some bass heavy alternate chord positions (332010 for a C instead of 032010 or X32010, or for an F, X33211 instead of XX3211 or X03211, for example).
Does she have a favourite artist or is there a song she really wants to learn? Get her the songbook or the sheet music for that. When I was starting out, I loved the Beatles and especially “I Should Have Known Better” so I did a LOT of my early learning from playing out of that songbook. Playing a favourite song is a much better way of learning to change chords than boring exercises (C / / / F / / / C / / / G7 / / / and repeat). It wasn’t until ISHKB was permanently burned into my muscle memory did I figure out that although the book taught me the song in C, the Beatles played it in G, so I never could play along with the record.
Oh, and hold off on teaching barre chords (like the F) until she’s gotten comfortable with a fairly large chord ‘vocabulary’. Those Fs are difficult to learn and were the fatal roadblock for all of my friends who only “took lessons for a while”. They never mastered them and quit in disappointment
Taylor GS-Mini’s are pricier than that, but great, smaller guitars - we keep one around the house. They are around $450 or so - perhaps you can find one used??
from Yamaha’s FAQ. They don’t see mention the truss rod in the product description.
I’d guess all models are adjustable. But I don’t know. There’s several models and price ranges in the APX line. I see they are discontinuing the APX. Thats a shame. They’ve been around for several years. They’ll be available on line for awhile until stock runs out.
Pretty late to the game, but I’d recommend checking out this beginner’s guide to how to play guitar guide if she’s just starting out. Also, you can pick up a tool like chordbuddy for relatively cheap (I think around $45) in order to get her started with playing chords correctly to keep her motivated. As she progresses, she can just use less and less of the tool and eventually won’t need the tool at all.
You may or may not be all that great a guitar player, but that may or may not actually be relevant. It’s possible that she just wants to hang out with her favorite uncle, and learning to strum is something to do while hanging out.
But, yes, I can picture a 15 year-old girl having radically different interests than a 13 year-old girl, even if it’s the same girl, so I’m mildly curious if she kept playing the guitar.
