If your reading this, it’s safe to assume that you’re looking for a guitar instructor, and have most likely checked out other websites like this one. So how do you know which teacher is going to be right for you?

Price

Let’s face it, cost will enter into your decision. However, beware of extremely low lesson rates, it’s usually a sign of someone looking to make a little extra money on the side by teaching guitar. This person is usually not a professional guitarist, and most likely has next to no teaching experience. Starting out with a bad teacher could really ruin the whole experience, and turn you off to lessons or even playing the guitar entirely. On the flip side, some music schools are charging really high tuition fees, the teachers qualifications are good, what you would expect from any teacher, a music degree, performance experience, and the like. The extra money goes into the facility and overhead, not an exceptional teacher. So in this situation you have to decide what’s important to you.

Experience

This is a big one. You can’t really be taught how to teach, you learn by doing. To put this in perspective, my first five or six years of teaching weren’t so good, in fact looking back, I now know I wasn’t a very good teacher. Obviously I got better, every year since I’ve noticed improvement, if this wasn’t the case I would have been out of business a long time ago. So now, after twenty five years and more than 50,000 lessons, I think I’ve encountered all the problems a student may run into, and I’ve learned how to overcome them. So definitely find out how long an instructor has been teaching, experience is an important factor.  Performance experience is something else to consider. A teacher that performs regularly knows what it takes to bring his or her playing up to a performance level, a non performing teacher most often times doesn’t, so how can that instructor show you?

Styles Taught

This is pretty cut and dry, just make sure the instructor teaches what you want to learn, even better if it’s the instructors specialty. A teacher who can teach various styles can also be desirable too, since it gives a student the opportunity to learn a little of everything, and they may really take to a style that they didn’t even consider or know about. I know with myself, I like to play different styles to keep things fresh, and one style may improve your playing in another. For example, learning classical guitar greatly improved my rock guitar playing.

Location

Obviously close proximity to where you live is good, but also a location that is easy to get to. For example, downtown Nashua, Daniel Webster Highway, or Amherst St. during rush hour can be a stress inducer.

Personality

You should feel comfortable with the teacher to get the most out of it, but this is something you won’t know until you take a few lessons. This is a pretty personnel thing, what works with one person may not work with another, so it’s something you won’t know until you try. You may want to check out one of my videos, they’re not really lessons, but you can get a little bit of a feel of how I approach things.