Strengthening Skills on Guitar - Individual Ongoing Class (Ages 6-9)

'Strengthening Skills on Guitar – Individual Ongoing Class (Ages 6-9)’ is a week-by-week class for individual students to learn the guitar, building on their skills steadily to suit their own needs. Students can join or leave the class at any time. This class naturally follows the 'Getting Started on Guitar - Introduction' class and/or the ‘Getting Started on Guitar - 5 Week Class (Individual Lessons)’.  However, if the student has not completed either of those classes this class can be adapted if necessary to include that content.

Each lesson will build on progress from the previous lesson, but lessons typically include:
Learning a range of chords (conventional open chords, progressing to barre chords when the student is ready).
Learning to accompany songs and play in time.
Understanding and reading chord diagrams.
Working on strumming patterns.
Playing individual notes to form melodies.
Playing bass notes with chords (and progressing to fingerstyles).

Each student will need a guitar with six strings. Please send a message to let us know in advance of the first lesson whether the student is left or right-handed, as the guitar is normally strung differently for left-handed players - we can advise about this. 

Before each lesson starts the guitar should be tuned with adult help if necessary. The easiest way to do this is to download a free app called 'GuitarTuna' from Apple App Store or Google Play. When you open the app on a phone, tablet or similar device you will see a picture of a guitar.  Click the button marked 'auto', then play each string in turn. The app will tell you whether the sound is too high or too low in pitch. Turn the tuning peg for that string to make the sound higher or lower. Try this out at least a day before the lesson, and check the tuning again half an hour before the lesson. Please ask if you need further advice with this. We can go into more detail about tuning during the first lesson if this is needed.

The class will be taught live by online video using Zoom. For good safeguarding practice, an adult with parental responsibility for the student will need to be present at a distance in the room but not on camera. Video and audio will need to be enabled throughout the class. Students must be appropriately dressed. No recording (video, audio, photo or screenshots) of the class are permitted other than authorized recording by Outschool.

I will be interacting with the student as I teach. I will show them what to do, then listen as they play to check that they have understood. At times I may share my screen to show a picture or words to make clear what is being taught. For some songs I will show the student how to play along to a practice video.

After each lesson I will give feedback and when new content is taught I will send some notes to summarize what has been learned. For some of the songs I will send a practice video so that the student can play along when practising. Students should practise for 10-15 minutes every day to make good progress.