Monthly Archives: February 2014

What You Must Do To Become A Successful Guitar Teacher

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By Tom Hess

Having no success building a thriving guitar teaching business? One of the greatest ways to become more successful is to look at how successful people think in other fields. For instance, if you have ever watched the Olympics, you know that there is an extremely thin margin for error that decides who takes the gold and who never make it to the podium at all. Only a precious few of these athletes win medals while the rest have to go home with nothing.

Truth is, teaching guitar in your local community is not so different from this. There are tons of guitar teachers around the globe, but only a tiny fraction of them build successful businesses and get significant results for their students. Everyone else works just as hard at becoming successful but are unable to realize their goals, make a great living through guitar teaching and produce great guitar students. How do I know? I’ve been in both positions. Many years ago (when I first began teaching guitar) I struggled while trying to put together a profitable teaching business before becoming the world’s leader in online guitar lessons and mentor to many guitar instructors all over the world.

Most guitar teachers who are struggling in their businesses think that successful teachers simply ‘know more’ about music or guitar instruction. There is ‘some’ truth to this, however, these things are NOT the greatest factors for why some people are able to build highly successful guitar teaching businesses why others don’t know how to help their students get big results and end up working full time day jobs just to get by. Over the years I discovered that the main factor for becoming the most successful guitar teacher in your local area is related to that which makes up the foundation of your teaching business (not simply ‘how you teach guitar’).

Of course, it should be understood that you always need to work on becoming a better guitar teacher by improving your teaching methods. However, if you want to achieve great success in your teaching career, you must focus less on working IN your guitar teaching business (by ‘only’ working on daily tasks relating to actually teaching lessons, preparing materials, etc.). and you must invest more time into working ON your guitar teaching business as a whole.

There are many things that make up the core of any massively successful guitar teaching business. Some of these things include: developing a specific guitar teaching niche, putting together student referral systems, creating a solid teaching policy, understanding the process for attracting new students on a consistent basis, building Win/Win partnerships and much more (you can discover what specific elements are needed for building your guitar teaching business by downloading this free guitar teaching eBook). Truth is, the majority of guitar teachers either ignores the elements mentioned above or do not develop them enough to quickly expand their business in order to overcome local competition.

If you haven’t already become the number one guitar teacher in your area, here is some good news:

1. It’s much easier than you would think to change the way you run your guitar teaching business. It just takes a strong desire to get started – the work is not actually very hard at all. Most of the guitar teachers I train are surprised when I show them how easy it is to become successful in this business.

2. The benefits you will get from doing this will be HUGE, both for developing your guitar teaching business AND helping your students.

This is how building a strong foundation for your guitar teaching business will help you ‘break through’ and achieve success that is far beyond what most will ever experience:

You Will Help Your Students Make Fast Progress And Get BIG Results In Their Playing

Here is why this will happen:

1. As discussed above, when you work hard to develop a strong foundation for your guitar teaching business, you will naturally attract more serious clients. These people will have a much higher level of motivation to get better on guitar and closely follow your instructions for doing so. This means they will get better at a much faster rate than other guitar students. As a result, all your other students will (usually unconsciously) become inspired to get better so they can reach the same level as your serious students. By applying what you learn from this article to develop your guitar teaching business, you will inspire all your students to get better results.

2. Once your guitar teaching business begins growing and you make a lot of money, it will be much easier for you to get better results for your students using unique approaches you never could’ve used if you were struggling to make ends meet (like the majority of guitar teachers).

You Will Naturally Attract Tons Of Serious Guitar Students

Any guitar teacher would prefer to work with serious, highly dedicated students who practice often, respect lesson policies and make the fastest progress. These kinds of students are fun to work with, but most guitar teachers are clueless when it comes to attracting them. In order to get these students to work with you, you must first create an environment that is optimal for these students to work in. Working on the elements above will help you do this.

Your Students Are Going To Take Lessons With You Longer

Once you are able to attract serious guitar students, you will also be able to keep your students taking lessons for longer periods of time. The reasons why this happens are a) serious students are more likely to study longer with you and b) finding creative ways to inspire your students to keep studying with you is a critical aspect of building a successful guitar teaching business in the long term.

You Will Make A Great Living From Teaching Guitar

When you start thinking of guitar teaching as a ‘business’ and invest time into developing the foundation that is required to run it effectively, it’s very likely you’ll be able to make a lot of money (100k+) while working relatively few hours in a week. However, before you can do this, you must do the things that most teachers don’t do. I talk about this in more detail in this free online resource on how to make money as a guitar teacher.

Your Guitar Students Will Tell All Their Friends To Take Lessons With You

One of the perks that comes along with having serious guitar students is the increased amount of referrals you will get compared to the amount you will get from ‘regular’ students. Chances are, your most serious students already know several other guitar players who are also serious about improving (and will be interested in working with someone who can help them get better). Once they find out that their friends are taking lessons with you, you will instantly be put on the top of their list when it comes to choosing a local guitar teacher to work with.

Now that you know the main difference between highly successful guitar teachers and mediocre teachers, it’s up to you to decide which group you want to be a part of. If you are 100% serious about becoming a highly successful guitar teacher, this is what you must do right now:

1. Get as much information as you can about how to build a strong foundation for your guitar teaching business by downloading this resource on how to make money as a guitar teacher.

2. Invest some time each week into working ON your guitar teaching career rather than only concentrating on preparing lessons, teaching materials, etc.

3. Take the same path as successful Olympic athletes: find an experienced trainer who helps other guitar teachers achieve the greatest success possible in their local areas and who will show exactly how to do this for yourself. Your trainer will not simply tell you what needs to be done, but will hold you accountable for completing all the necessary steps for building a successful teaching business.

When you follow the steps above you will put yourself on a whole new level above all the local teachers in your area and achieve more success in your teaching business than ever before.

Start making good money as a guitar teacher by reading this eBook about make money as a guitar teacher.

 

About The Author:

Tom Hess is a highly successful guitar teacher, recording artist and the guitar player. He helps people from all over the world learn how to teach guitar. Visit his website tomhess.net to get free guitar teacher resources and to read more guitar teaching articles.

Tom Hess is our resident author, for other information including how to become an online guitar tutor go to http://www.internet-guitar-lessons.com/

The Secret To Playing Killer Blues Guitar Licks Part 2

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By Tom Hess

This article is a continuation of the first part in this series about creating blues guitar licks. Before you read any further, make sure you fully understand the ideas discussed in part 1. To speed this process up, simply watch this short video about how to play blues guitar licks.

You are now going to learn how to use the muting technique you mastered together with additional blues guitar phrasing techniques that will make your playing much more expressive and creative.

To get started, watch the video below and observe how to perfectly use the techniques I will be discussing:

 

 

 

 

After watching the video above, you now have a clear understanding of how to use the following ideas to enhance your blues guitar licks:

Step #1:Quickly create a short blues guitar lick that you can easily play several times without making mistakes. Make this lick contain no more than two to five notes. By using only a few notes, you will enable yourself to get the maximum amount of expression possible when you use the techniques discussed below.

These are a few samples of the types of blues guitar licks you could create (I have not included the rhythm here – it’s up to you to be creative with the rhythms you use):

Example No.1 Example No.2 Example No.3

Notice: the licks I have provided for you above are NOT complex (on purpose). I want you to focus heavily on the techniques mentioned below in order to make these ‘plain’ licks sound totally KILLER. Watch the video above again to see how you can do this.

Step #2:Once you can very easily play through your lick several times, use any of the following techniques to enhance it. Do this one at a time, beginning with technique 1, then technique 2 and last technique 3. Re-watch the video above if necessary to see how these techniques should be used.

Technique Number One: Sliding Ornamentation:

Select any note within your blues lick and use the finger that was fretting it to quickly slide up 3-5 frets or so and return back to the original fret before continuing the lick. Don’t focus too much on the specific amount of frets you are sliding to. Instead focus on enhancing your lick with the unique sound that is creating while using this technique (rather than trying to pinpoint a specific note to slide to). When you apply this slide to a note in your lick, it will greatly increase the overall level of expressivity in your phrase. After you have become comfortable with this technique, come up with several variations of your original lick by applying slides to the other different notes within it. There are many ways to implement this idea into your playing (each one sounding more interesting than the previous one).

Technique Number Two: Delayed Vibrato

Emphasize the notes within your blues lick by using heavy (delayed) vibrato to make them sound more intense. The longest held notes will usually be the last notes of the phrase. The key to making this technique so effective is waiting to apply vibrato until a few moments pass after you’ve played the note you want to apply it to. Then apply the HEAVIEST vibrato you can perform! This vibrato in combination with a slight delay will increase the intensity of your lick by tenfold due to the anticipation that is created in the process. Work on this technique for several minutes until you have comfortably integrated it into your blues lick, then make several variations of your original lick that incorporate delayed vibrato into the notes for by varying the amounts of time you wait before applying it.

Technique Number Three:Slow, Crawling Bend

After playing the penultimate note of your blues guitar phrase, ‘slowly’ bend the note up to the last note in your lick. This will create massive tension that will make your phrase much more intense. Important notice: this bend will be MOST effective when you ‘delay’ it and will lose its effectiveness if you simply bend up to the note immediately after playing it (check out the video above again to see how long this bend needs to last). Then once you reach the target note with your bend, strike the string with tons of force! After you’ve mastered this, improvise several more variations of your original lick using bends in this manner.

Step #3:After trying out all of the techniques above and creating many variations of your original lick, repeat the process again using a totally new lick. This will help you think of endless supplies of new blues licks because there are many different ways to use the techniques to create innovative and unique phrases. Push yourself to think of as many variations as possible while focusing on just a few notes. Notice: I told you to try all three techniques with one at a time in order to make sure that you get the maximum amount of expression from every technique. This can be difficult at first, but it will MASSIVELY enhance your blues guitar creativity.

Listen to a demonstration of several phrases I’ve made from the techniques discussed in this article.

Once you’ve gone through the steps of this article, you will quickly gain the ability to play killer blues guitar licks at will. However, there is much more to be learned – watch this video about how to improve lead guitar playing and find out how to use rhythm to become an even more creative lead guitarist.

 

 

About The Author:
Tom Hess is a professional touring musician, recording artist and online guitar teacher who teaches guitarists from all over the world in his online guitar lessons. On his website, tomhess.net, you can get additional free tips about guitar playing, guitar playing resources, mini courses and surveys.

Tom Hess is our resident author, for other information including how to become an online guitar tutor go to http://www.internet-guitar-lessons.com/blues-guitar.html

 

What You Must Do To Become A Professional Musician

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by Tom Hess

Are you waiting for the day when you can earn a living as a professional musician by touring, writing music and releasing your records to thousands of fans? Most musicians never make it in the music industry and end up working full time hours at a job they despise. However, you do not have to accept the same fate!

First thing is first: you need to stop feeling sorry for yourself, get up and start taking action to become the professional musician you should be!

Get your music career going on the right track by following the same approach used by Olympic competitors who succeed on the highest platform in the world for their respective sports. If you have been keeping up with the events of the Olympics, you’ve seen how evenly matched the athletes seem to be from event to event. However, there are always winners and losers… no matter how good an athlete is, they will either get a medal or miss the podium altogether. The margin for error in these events is extremely thin – one athlete may miss out on a medal when they only performed ‘slightly’ underneath the level of another athlete (such as losing a race by fractions of a second, or failing to lift a weight for a single rep less).

For the athletes who come away with a medal, they gain massive popularity amongst their fans/countrymen and end up getting tons of opportunities to sign deals for endorsements or make big money in other ways. For the athletes who do NOT get a medal (for example, someone who misses getting 3rd place by 1/100 of a second in the 100 meter dash), they remain unknown to the general population and lose out on all the opportunities of those who place above them. This can cause them to feel a lot of frustration due to the amount of hard work and effort they put into their training only to come up with nothing.

Like these athletes, you have spent many years to work on your music career. You have very specific musical goals you would like to achieve through your efforts. You do not want to have spent all that time working to reach your music career goals only to end up with a career in some industry completely unrelated to music while others accomplish all the things you wanted to do for yourself. To avoid this worst case scenario, you have to take action to make yourself the absolute best musician for success in the industry. This is NOT something that someone will do for you… no one will suddenly knock on your door because they heard you playing music and immediately sign you to a record deal.

You might be thinking: “What do I need to do to set myself apart from everyone else so I can get all the biggest music career opportunities?” The answer is NOT simply becoming a better ‘musician’ than everyone else. Truth is, musicians who are the most talented are not necessarily the ones who get the most opportunities from music companies. Instead, to put yourself on top of the list above everyone else you must develop a total understanding of how to deliver ‘high value’ while eliminating the ‘risks’ you present for others when they work with you.

All musicians (whether they know it or not) bring various levels of ‘risk’ and ‘reward’ to the other people they work with in the music industry. It is absolutely imperative that you learn your own negative risks and positive assets so you can make yourself into the best candidate whenever a music company (or band) is looking for someone to work with. Hint: this kind of stuff goes far beyond just writing or playing good music.

If you don’t already understand what makes working with you ‘risky’ or ‘valuable’, don’t feel so bad. Most musicians never think about these things because there are no resources you can find anywhere that address these topics specifically. There simply isn’t a list of risks and values in the music business that you can just look up online. Why is this? The values and risks that will lead you to becoming a successful musician are specific to your personality, situation and musical goals. You need to look into what your personal value and risk is in any given scenario. This is why I haven’t merely written down a big list of risks and values here in this article.

To understand this better, think about the Olympian athletes I mentioned above. These athletes face extreme levels of competition where the difference between one athlete’s skills and the skills of another is very small. When one athlete is off by even the tiniest degree in his/her training or mental preparation, this person will end up going home without a medal. That’s why the most successful Olympians do not train by themselves. Instead, they work together with a coach who will consistently keep them performing at the highest level possible so that they do not ‘slip up’ when it is time to compete. By working with a coach, the athlete not only is able to compete at a higher level, but is able to quickly correct any fundamental flaws that would keep them from reaching their goals (something that they simply couldn’t do on their own).

The musicians who become the most successful in the music industry all use coaches in this same manner. Just like Olympic athletes, you will struggle to correct all the errors in your thinking and preparation if you try to do everything by yourself. Fact is, there are so many musicians who are just a step away from achieving great success, but are unable to see a key mental error that is keeping them from fulfilling their full potential. Only the musicians who work with coaches or mentors are able to spot any fundamental mistakes they are making in order to rise above the rest. These are the musicians who reach the greatest success in this industry.

Learn more about the benefits of working with a music industry coach by checking out this article on developing a career as a professional musician.

The bottom line is this: when it comes time for you to develop your music career, don’t go down the same path of mediocrity that other musicians take by working alone. Find a coach who when train you to achieve as much success as possible in your music career. Don’t be satisfied with merely ‘competing’ in the music industry – Go for the podium!

Take this assessment about training with a music career success coach to learn how an experienced mentor can help you reach your unique musical goals.

About The Author: 

Tom Hess is a recording artist, composer and a touring musician. Tom also mentors and coaches musicians worldwide to make it in the music industry. Go to his musician development site to get free music industry advice and learn more about the music industry.

Tom Hess is our resident author, for other information including how to become an online guitar tutor go to http://www.internet-guitar-lessons.com/page28.html