If you have decided to take guitar lessons with a local music school or private teacher, you might need to adjust your expectations to align with the cold reality of the world of guitar lessons. You will probably be surprised to learn that the guitar lessons themselves are almost beside the point. What you are paying for is your teacher’s experience and his ability to pass on the benefits of what he has learned over a long career as a professional musician and teacher.So what will a course of guitar lessons actually contain? It could be that your teacher will take what appears to be the easy way out and just follow a guitar tutor book chapter and verse. Of course there’s nothing wrong with that; a written tutor provides a structure for the guitar course and the teacher brings his personal experience and expertise to the lessons. Some of the subjects you will expect to find in a guitar lesson course are: how to read chord charts, simple beginner’s chords and strumming patterns and some songs that you can practice your chords on.

You would probably discuss with your guitar teacher whether or not you will learn to read sheet music. If that is not in your plans you will no doubt be learning to read guitar tab. Other lessons could be on such subjects as bass runs, barre chords and fingerpicking. If you are lucky you might find yourself a teacher who specializes in the genre you are most interested in like jazz, blues or folk. In that case, the theoretical part of the guitar lessons and learning chords and scales will be oriented towards your favorite style.

Your guitar teacher should have developed during his career, the ability to spot your weaknesses. Everybody has a few. The need to over-practice or the habit of avoiding practice. Picking too softly, pressing too hard when you are trying to make chords, and many other physical, mental and emotional eccentricities.

Correcting your physical approach to the guitar is possibly the most useful contribution to your playing that your teacher can make. Anybody can follow a written instruction telling you to put your fingers here and relax this, but we all need help in seeing how we can improve the way we play the guitar. Your guitar teacher will also pass on his attitude. If he is just filling in time, going through the motions to make a dollar, you will know it. If he loves every minute he spends with a guitar in his hands, you will know that too. So if you get the message that your guitar teacher is phoning his guitar lessons in, it’s probably best to hang up.