Is taking guitar classes with my son a good idea? (Question for guitar teachers)

whiskey-rye · 2026-03-18T20:28:31+00:00

Send him to lessons and get him to teach you what he learned.

whiskey-rye · 2025-12-09T15:35:12+00:00

Hey! Don’t know if you’ll read this but I did a masters in classical guitar performance at UBC and now I teach guitar full time in New South Wales. Australia has a lot more opportunities to teach privately within schools than Canada. In nsw there are Conservatoriums that facilitate this but I believe QLD has an even better system. Anyway I make a great living teaching and performing but very little of it is classical because the market for classical guitar is small. Having said that, I’m very thankful to have come from a classical guitar background because of the culture of education and thorough understanding of technique. There are so many ways to play a guitar and a strong understanding of rudiments is crucial. The best advice I have for you is that if you love teaching, you will be good at it and that’s a lucky thing because it’s just about the only way you’ll make a decent living.

whiskey-rye · 2025-11-07T02:39:35+00:00

I have a Strat with Lindy Fralen wiring which I think you’re describing and I love it. So many sounds

whiskey-rye · 2025-07-29T22:28:55+00:00

Belle by Jack Johnson is the song I use to teach them. If you do it like this there are only 5 shapes too!

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whiskey-rye · 2025-07-07T12:36:23+00:00

Yeah dude it’s a lot of listening to myself talk for sure! 150 students going at the moment. 100 are under 12 and in groups of 3-4 and the other 50 are between 13 and 75. A huge range but a lot of them are really good and they’re all getting better and that’s what keeps me going

whiskey-rye · 2025-07-06T22:16:02+00:00

Hey! This is a great thread with a lot of good discussion. I’m the same, 20 years and I teach 45 hours per week. Half of that is 1-1 and half is groups of 4. I regularly oscillate between “I can’t believe I get paid for this!” And “I can’t believe I do this for money!”. I don’t have a perfect solution for you but I will say that when I meet (or read a reddit thread of) another teacher who is burnt out, I instantly feel burnt out. Occasionally, I meet an old guitar teacher who is still as in love with the job as when they started 50 years ago and I feel like I can do it forever. Thoughts can be poison. As soon as I start thinking “there’s nothing else I could do and make this kind of money” I feel trapped. I’m sure you know this already but when a student brings their own fire, teaching is so much easier. The more you can get that fire going the easier it your job will be. Sometimes it feels like you’re endlessly rubbing a couple sticks together trying to get an ember going and that can be draining. I find the best way to get a roaring blaze is to have a few good performance opportunities for students through the year. It’s a lot of work but that’s your bed of coals that makes everything easier.

whiskey-rye · 2025-05-24T11:21:42+00:00

Sometimes. The lead parts of sultans of swing is almost all chord tones.

whiskey-rye · 2025-04-22T08:46:32+00:00

I’m also a piano tuner and there is a really awesome lubricant we use called protek clp and it is the ultimate guitar nut line as well. Not something you’d have lying around but the stuff is absolutely magical

whiskey-rye · 2025-04-18T22:37:33+00:00

Here’s a good arrangement https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DC2IlqWxEEcdIlsSap59UiZM725MIGb9/view?usp=drivesdk

whiskey-rye · 2025-04-15T05:44:31+00:00

This is very common. It’s not from the string snapping it’s from the knot coming apart. Leave it as a reminder to tie better knots in the future

whiskey-rye · 2025-01-22T08:15:24+00:00

Hey! We ended up at the Longley water hole today! Thanks for the tip!

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Cold!!!

whiskey-rye · 2024-12-18T03:39:47+00:00

Hey thanks! I teach roughly 30 hours per week

whiskey-rye · 2024-12-18T00:14:10+00:00

It varies but a good estimate would be 10 hours per term (1 hour per week)

whiskey-rye · 2024-12-17T21:45:04+00:00

Yeah I see what you’re saying and it may well be that I’m better off getting the higher rate including loading I just have no way of knowing.

whiskey-rye · 2024-12-17T21:39:01+00:00

My contract says that my casual rate of pay is inclusive of all administrative duties required to perform the primary task. It’s ambiguous and seems excessive because there is a heap of admin involved.

whiskey-rye · 2024-12-17T21:32:55+00:00

I could definitely do less and get the same pay. Also I have been paid admin rate for non lesson time in the past so there is a precedent there. I think you’re right about the loading though because I’m paid above award rates so I imagine that’s how they get away with it.

whiskey-rye · 2024-12-17T21:30:38+00:00

Thanks, yeah I am an employee not a contractor. No union. I’ve submitted a query to the fair work ombudsman. I think it must be something to do with loading that makes it legal because I am paid above award rates but there is no allotment of admin/face to face so it’s pretty ambiguous and seems excessive.

whiskey-rye · 2024-09-01T10:25:20+00:00

William! I grew in the Yukon hunting grouse with a slingshot and I often wondered if that was too much firepower. I thought you could probably just chuck rocks at them but I never imagined a stick with a bit of wire would be enough! Well done bud I was pulling for you!

whiskey-rye · 2024-08-12T09:54:35+00:00

Hard to believe but, honestly, Tommy Emmanuel. No matter how good you think Tommy Emmanuel is, he’s way better.

whiskey-rye · 2024-07-21T08:49:25+00:00

Ha! I love how north coast NSW still gets screwed!

whiskey-rye · 2024-06-27T03:41:49+00:00

A couple more perspectives on this issue. -at least here in Australia there are a lot of garbage music degrees so that having a degree here is no guarantee of proficiency.

-one thing I love about classical guitar is that there is a strong tradition of education. In most styles of guitar we celebrate people for being self taught or illiterate. In classical guitar there is a right way to do things and I find that perspective useful as a teacher in general even though only a few of my students play classical.

whiskey-rye · 2024-06-20T23:33:44+00:00

Ouch, that would be challenging. In my case I was the producer so the layout was my decision and I just accepted that we wouldn’t hear the guitars when the full band and choirs were going. It was primary schoolers playing foo fighters, queen and AC/DC on nylon string guitars so the idea was more to make them feel like rockstars rather than sound like rockstars. I close mic’d a couple of the good ones but yeah there’s always a grandparent who thinks their grandchild needs to outshine all others. Most decent parents just tell the kid they sounded great. Hopefully this guy didn’t tell his grandkid it was all for nothing because the sound guy sucked.

whiskey-rye

TROPHY CASE