­Guitar in the High School Classroom

­Guitar in the High School Classroom

By NAfME Member Michael Klein

This article first appeared in the Guitar Foundation of America (GFA) magazine Soundboard – The Journal of the Guitar Foundation of America.

Guitar education has been more and more commonly included in high school music programs in the last few decades. While this fact is often acknowledged within the guitar community, it is not always explicitly clear to performers, professors, college students, hobbyists, and others what exactly a high school guitar program looks like and what can be accomplished within one. Their relative newness means that many of us did not have the opportunity to participate in such programs in our own musical upbringing and may therefore not fully understand their value for students and the guitar community. This article aims to demystify such programs for those who are unfamiliar and provide a small selection of sample activities that may take place in such a classroom.

Why Is Classroom Guitar Important? 

Classroom guitar programs afford teachers the opportunity to expand our artform’s reach by connecting with students who may not have previously been involved in the arts. Teenagers are naturally searching for identity, belonging, and purpose. There are students at every school who are interested in getting involved in the performing arts but do not necessarily see themselves as “band kids,” “orchestra kids,” or “choir kids” based partially on who they perceive to be the “type” to belong to such groups and the type of music they produce. Judgmental though it may be, it creates a population of interested, though unengaged students who long for an avenue to study music. For these students, guitar programs exist to provide that pathway toward music education.

Guitar, especially when untethered from a specifically classical approach, is an extremely popular instrument. Regardless of whether a school offers any officially sanctioned courses, high school students will be learning the instrument one way or another. Unfortunately, private lessons are expensive (prohibitively so for many families), leaving a sizable portion of the student population teaching themselves guitar via the internet. While there are a great many high-quality resources for guitar education online, without curation and expert feedback, the results are often disappointing. To be able to offer these students actual interactive instruction and expert guidance is invaluable.

In addition to being able to provide much desired instruction to students while they are in high school, the longer lasting effects are also beneficial for the greater guitar community. After high school, students will either study guitar in college or they won’t. Either outcome is a net positive for all of us since those who do not make it their primary area of study are still leaving high school with a positive musical experience and are now qualified to be an informed connoisseur in the audience as well as hobbyist. Especially within the confines of classical guitar, additional audience members in the world is an important resource for the continuation of the artform. Those who do decide to go to college for guitar will be entering a world more familiar to Soundboard readers. In addition to providing opportunities and experiences for young musicians, such programs also provide a potentially alluring job market for those who want to establish a career in music.

Classroom Guitar as a Career Opportunity

When asked what they’d like to be when they grow up, small children are more likely to name careers they’ve seen before like policeman, fireman, athlete, teacher, etc., rather than hedge fund manager, county comptroller, or something else likely unknown to a young child. As such, guitarists may not consider classroom guitar instruction as a potential career pathway simply because they did not likely matriculate in one themselves. While still gaining popularity, the inclusion of guitar programs in traditional school music curricula is not the expected norm in most public high schools, and therefore our upcoming generation of guitarists is not necessarily being exposed to this option, instead opting for private instruction. High school-aged guitarists may participate in their school’s other musical offerings on secondary instruments or voice. However, without seeing guitar represented in schools, students may not think to look in that direction for future employment. Aspiring guitar educators tend to see themselves as college professors or private studio teachers rather than classroom teachers.

The classroom guitar setting affords teachers a wide variety of benefits. Working in a school setting means teachers and students have a built-in community of support. Student performances are part of a larger events calendar, presented alongside school football games, dances, theater productions, fundraisers, etc., and students and parents who attend those events may support the guitar students in a similar fashion. Students are also not just participating in the guitar program but the music department. This means the opportunity to collaborate in other disciplines. Guitar students may have the opportunity to play in the pit band for the school musical, play a movement of a concerto with the orchestra, or play electric guitar with the marching band. Furthermore, depending on the location of the school, there may be a community of guitar programs in the area to collaborate with via festivals, competitions, honor ensembles, etc.

A classroom position also affords a host of valuable personal benefits that can make the job quite appealing. Teachers in public schools are typically given pensions, health insurance, job security, and a more than fair amount of time off. Additionally, schools tend to dismiss in the early afternoon, making it possible to maintain one’s own practice and performance habits.

It is of the utmost importance that those who might be considering this pathway understand licensure. In the United States, each state controls its own educator licensure, and therefore the process and requirements to become licensed vary slightly from one location to another. What each state has in common is the requirement that all teachers must hold a license or certification in order to teach in a public school. Those who have majored in music education for any of their higher education degrees have likely checked most of the boxes necessary for the state in which they studied. Those who have finished their studies without ever majoring in education most likely still have a pathway toward licensure that is less cumbersome than getting yet another degree. Many states offer some sort of “alternative route to licensure” program that can fill in the gaps in an expedited fashion. These programs often put teachers in the classroom before the program is even finished. Further details on specific licensure requirements can be found on each state’s Department of Education website. The only exception to the licensure requirement is that private schools operate as private businesses that may hire who they see fit. The only downsides to this route are the much smaller job market and the possibility of fewer benefits, since in private institutions, those benefits vary more from school to school.

Studio vs. Classroom 

Private instruction is certainly very familiar to anyone who has seriously studied an instrument. The following comparison between classroom instruction and a more individualized approach is not meant to make a value judgment but rather to clarify some of the advantages and disadvantages of classroom instruction by presenting it alongside something already familiar to readers. At the core of the comparison is the fact that studio teaching is one-on-one, usually once per week, and classroom teaching is “one-on-many,” several times per week.

In a one-on-one setting, the curriculum is going to be tailored specifically to the student at hand. Whatever deficiencies a student may have—technical, expressive, historical, or other—can be addressed in an efficient and direct manner without any waste of time. A drawback to this arrangement is that the lesson is typically immediately followed by six days of no instruction. Six days without instruction isn’t necessarily a bad thing as students need time to apply what they learn, but younger students who have not yet learned applicable time-management skills may struggle to make the expected progress without more hands-on assistance in that time. This is why Suzuki teachers who work with very young students require parent involvement to help bridge that gap from lesson to lesson.

In a classroom setting, it takes a little more effort to address each student’s personal strengths and weaknesses. This could mean scheduling some brief practice time during class to provide the opportunity for the teacher to circulate and interact with individuals, the use of video correspondence alongside class instruction, scheduling sectionals, or a wide variety of other solutions, each of which would require some level of conscious effort and planning by the teacher.

A benefit of the one-on-many arrangement in a school setting is the more frequent meetings between students and teacher. Classes typically meet every weekday, or at least every other weekday for approximately 200 to 250 minutes per week of instruction as opposed to the one-on-one setting, which is typically 30 to 60 minutes per week. The higher frequency of meetings allows for students to get regular reinforcement of concepts and set smaller, more frequent, more easily attainable goals.

Last, classroom programs tend to put a stronger emphasis on ensemble music simply because it is practical to do so with so many students in the same room. While the class is working on many guitar skills, most often their public performances are as a large guitar ensemble. Many private studios do an excellent job of incorporating ensemble work; however, their emphasis is primarily on solo music.

Structure of Classroom Guitar Programs

Each individual program has its own unique set of circumstances. This includes the number of classes offered, bell schedule, administrative support, parent support, funding, socio-economic status of the student body, among other considerations. While not all situations are identical, there are typically enough similarities to the structure of each program that it would be beneficial here to delve into how a program might be organized.

A typical high school guitar program offers three to four levels of classes and has several public performances per year. The National Association for Music Education’s (NAfME) Council for Guitar Education has created an exhaustive set of best practices for a four-year guitar program, organized by year. This document does an excellent job of establishing what is appropriate content for each year of instruction, helping teachers to organize their curricula and set reasonable goals.

I will describe each year of a three-year high school program, offer some general advice for each level, and present one activity or lesson that can be employed at each level. My selection of activities is based on specific issues that arise in each class and what solutions will have the longest lasting positive effect on the program overall.

Each year of a three-year high school program will be described below along with some general advice for each level and one activity or lesson that can be employed at each level. Activities have been selected based on specific issues that arise in each class and what solutions will have the longest lasting positive effect on the program overall.

First-Year Guitar Class 

Whether middle schools in the area offer guitar or not, it is important for a program to include a class geared toward absolute beginners. Not having to rely on a small pool of already experienced students increases the reach of the program and ultimately strengthens it. It also makes the program more valuable from an administrative standpoint as any member of the student body can access the class.

There is something of a misconception that those who are in a beginning guitar course want to be there. For most students, this is true, but it is also very common that students were placed in such a guitar class for some other reason. They may have been absent on the day electives were selected. They may have indicated that guitar was one of their last choices for an elective. They may have enrolled in school late, etc. Those who did not ask to be in guitar class are not necessarily poorly behaved or close-minded; they just may need some convincing at first.

One of the challenges of teaching anything in a classroom setting is working with various levels of prior experience all in the same room, and this is most pronounced in the first-year course. Guitar students enrolled in a first-year class can be organized into the following four categories:

1. Students with no prior musical experience. These are the students whom teachers need to keep in mind when planning an entry-level course. If the course is open to everyone, the most basic components of making and understanding music will need to be covered in class.
2. Students with formal musical experience on another instrument or voice. These students are probably already proficient in how to read music but would still be placed in an entry-level course due to their lack of guitar-specific experience. They will still need to develop technical skills and learn how to apply their previous knowledge to a new instrument. These students may want to move through material a little more quickly and may warrant the occasional additional assignment or responsibility as their music theory is stronger than that of their classmates.
3. Students with informal guitar experience. Informal guitar experience is exceptionally common due to the popularity of the instrument. This constitutes self-taught guitarists, who tend to learn from online resources. This is a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because students are genuinely interested and motivated to learn, but a curse because they tend to overvalue their prior experience and may have very specific, narrow goals for themselves.
4. Students with formal guitar experience. Students who have received instruction from an expert in the past warrant a conversation about class placement as they may be ready for a higher-level course. This must be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

At its core, this year’s NAfME Best Practices outline defines specific technical and literacy goals for new students. Several points (7, 8, 9, 10, 13) indicate that an entry-level guitar course should function more as a survey of guitar styles and techniques rather than take a specifically classical approach. Students who are just beginning their journey don’t know how vast the musical world is, and one of the most important things a music educator must accomplish with new musicians is expansion of horizons. Many students will only take the entry-level course and be satisfied with that as they have other aspirations for their life after high school.

While there are infinite ways to arrange different activities for a first-year guitar class, Table 1 shows how a typical 80-minute block period might be organized at some point during the school year.

Minutes	Activity
0–15	Warmups & technique
15­–25	Rhythm exercises
25–40	Reading exercises
40–60	Melodic song
60–80	Chord song

Table 1: Organization of an 80-minute time block for a beginning guitar class.

Regardless of how long a class period is or how frequently it meets, it is important to move on from one topic to another relatively frequently to avoid attention loss among students. Keeping class activities to somewhere between ten and twenty minutes before moving on prevents most students from reaching a point of diminishing returns. There is also not enough time for every type of activity to be included in every class, and in this example, ensemble music would be included in subsequent classes.

One of the most important things students need to learn in their first year is how to read music. This is the area that will most inhibit future progress in the program. When students’ technique gets too far ahead of their ability to read, they are put in a position where music that is written out for them is too far below their actual playing ability to be engaging. This is a solvable problem, but it requires patience and buy-in to the goal of music literacy on behalf of the student. Often teachers fall into the alluring trap of thinking that simply learning musical excerpts and exercises from notation is enough to teach their students to read proficiently. However, a more proactive approach will yield better results.

Usually when first-year students learn a piece of music from notation, it is no longer than eight to sixteen measures long. They are then instructed to keep returning to the same eight to sixteen measures each class for several classes to polish and perfect it as much as possible before moving on to something else. While the process of bringing a passage up to presentation quality is a necessary skill for students to learn, each return to the same piece of music yields less and less of a reading challenge as their attention is drawn to other important details. They are returning to music that sounds familiar, music where muscle memory has already begun to set in, music that has already been interpreted mostly accurately.

It is also important not to underestimate the ear of young students as once they hear their piece performed, they can rely on their eyes a little less. With this issue in mind, it becomes necessary to require students to sight-read as soon as possible. It does not matter how simple the sight-reading examples look to us—it is all about requiring students to process the symbols repeatedly and always in novel arrangements. It doesn’t matter if the initial task involves just three pitches in whole notes, because early in the year the concept of a musical staff, those three pitches, counting while playing, and the physicality of playing is all new, and therefore a simple whole-note exercise can actually be highly engaging and challenging.

Due to its physical orientation on the fretboard, students tend to have an easier time understanding pitch as opposed to rhythm. Students can see pitch locations on the staff and see their corresponding locations on the fretboard and make the connection. Rhythm can be trickier for students as there isn’t as literal a physical representation for students to appreciate. Furthermore, beginning guitar repertoire tends to be rhythmically very tame, which can limit their comprehension. For example, beginning guitar music will feature a flagged eighth note on the “and” of a beat far more often than directly on the beat, resulting in a misconception among young students that the flag means it is on the “and” of the beat. If students only ever see a new symbol in one context, their understanding of how to interpret it will not be sufficient for more difficult music.

First-year rhythm activity

To foster a deeper understanding of rhythm, it is necessary to regularly set aside time to work on it with students outside the context of other musical elements. When doing so in a class setting, brevity is crucial. While it is valuable and necessary to also read longer excerpts, limiting a rhythmic exercise to just two measures or so allows for the opportunity to really dig in with students on how to interpret each symbol that appears and eliminates the opportunity for assumptions or guesswork. In this approach, the rhythm is presented like a math problem that needs solving.

The exercise begins with the presentation of a short rhythmic example to the class either on the board or on paper. This rhythm should be carefully crafted so as to reinforce concepts that are being worked on in other components of class. This could be a new note value or concept or a particular rhythm that came up in a song. It can also be used to remind students of concepts from earlier in the year. Method books are typically good at explaining an idea when it is first introduced though may fall short by not returning to the concept frequently enough later in the year. Consider the rhythm in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Rhythm example.

Despite its brevity, there is a lot packed into these eight beats. This is a rhythm that would be very unlikely to appear in first-year guitar repertoire; however, it is strictly limited to symbols that a student would know in the second quarter of the school year. It is therefore perfectly solvable and performable even for our youngest students. This rhythm primarily serves the purpose of strengthening student understanding of the dotted quarter note, which is new at this point in the year for our hypothetical class. It accomplishes this not only by using that note value frequently but by putting it in a variety of contexts. It appears on and off the beat. It also appears as a “musical homonym” when the quarter is tied to the eighth, thus providing an opportunity to remind students what the dot accomplishes in this particular case.

After the rhythm is presented to the class, the teacher will go symbol by symbol asking the class for interpretation, beginning with the time signature. This process reinforces the concept that each note’s location within the measure is not determined by its own time value but by how much of the measure has already been occupied by the time this symbol appears. This is a common misconception among new musicians and worth making explicit. Since it is much easier for students to disengage in large group settings as opposed to one-on-one, students should be writing along with what is being discussed. This also helps students practice incorporating what they are learning into their actual music-making and creates documentation of what they are perceiving. Additionally, “cold calling,” or simply asking questions of students who have not volunteered an answer, is important to communicate to the class that everyone needs to have an answer ready, and therefore everyone needs to be engaged. As the year progresses, the activity should be altered to the presentation of a rhythm, followed by time for students to figure it out on their own, and then checking their work as a class. This fosters independent problem-solving skills and allows the teacher to walk around and observe where individual students may be struggling without having them make an error in front of the whole class.

Finally, the rhythm needs to be performed in a variety of ways. First it should be done without the guitar. Students should be instructed to clap the rhythm while speaking the subdivisions out loud. It is best not to do this along with students at first as they will try to watch the teacher and copy what they see rather than read the music. After a few repetitions, the same exercise can be transferred to the instrument in an endless number of ways.

The whole process shouldn’t take more than five to ten minutes due to the brevity of the exercise. Being able to do this type of exercise every day or every other day makes the rhythmic understanding of new guitarists very strong and allows them to tackle more difficult music with greater ease and sooner.

Second-Year Guitar Class 

The NAfME Best Practices Outline for a Year Two Guitar Class is twenty-seven points long. Most points can be boiled down to one of four categories: rhythm (4–6), chords (13–19), right-hand technique (20, 25), and the expansion of pitch range (1, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12). The rhythmic vocabulary outlined in the document is mostly like beginning guitar, with more prevalence of compound meters. The expansion of chord vocabulary places emphasis on barre chords and playing in a wide variety of keys. The expansion of right-hand technique includes a more explicit emphasis on classical playing. While the pitch range is only being expanded by three semitones, this brings position playing into the curriculum, something not discussed in year one. Since the first three of those categories are really an expansion of previously established concepts, we will take a more detailed look at getting students to become proficient at finding appropriate positions for a musical excerpt.

A typical 80-minute class period for a second-year guitar course might be organized as shown in Table 2.

Minutes	Activity
0–15	Warmups & technique
15–25	Sight reading
25–35	Upper positions
35–55	Classical exercises/etudes
55–80	Ensemble

Table 2: Organization of an 80-minute time block for a second-year guitar class.

As noted after the year-one outline of a hypothetical class, not all topics can be covered every class period. In this case, barre chords may alternate with another topic on a class-by-class or week-by-week basis.

Second-year positions exercise 

Music for first-year students almost always falls at or below the fifth fret; second-year music tends to extend to the eighth fret per NAfME Best Practices. At this point in their musical education, students should be able to use their knowledge of whole steps and half steps, combined with the knowledge that the higher-position unison of any given note appears up (in pitch) four or five frets and down (in pitch) one string, to relocate first-position pitches on or above the fifth fret. When they have mastered this information, students are ready to relocate entire melodies to new positions. To teach them this skill, first select a piece of music beneath their level. It is important that it be easier than their performance ability allows so that all their attention is on the new concept and not on any technical or musical challenges. Figure 2 shows a beginning method-book staple, “Ode to Joy.”

Figure 2: Excerpt from “Ode to Joy.”

Rather than convert the traditional notation of such an example into tablature to indicate fret locations, it is much better to use fretboard diagrams. There is nothing wrong with tablature per se, but for the purpose of this activity, it isn’t as visually concise and clear. Tablature requires that a note’s location be written out each time it appears. In the case of “Ode to Joy,” the first note, E, would be written out nine times. However, students only need to determine its location once. Fretboard diagrams better show the pitch relationships that manifest in this process as described above—for example, how that first-string open E was moved up five frets when relocated to the second string. Students can then check their work by seeing that it also appears a whole step above D just like it does on the fourth string. Teachers can even use magnetic letters or a Smart Board display to literally manipulate the notes on the fretboard in front of the class.

Another disadvantage of using tablature: If students write out a passage in that notational format to show fretboard location, how will they read the tune to perform it in its new position? Naturally, they will read it in tablature instead of the staff notation in which it was first presented to them. Conversely, by using fretboard diagrams students create a “note bank” that shows which positions work, but they still must read the traditional notation when it comes time to play.

Now, the first step before determining which frets might work best in a change of position is to determine which pitches make an appearance in the first place. This simplifies the process by, in our example, reducing the thirty notes of the “Ode to Joy” excerpt to a five-note scale fragment—much easier to find and manipulate (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Pitch collection from “Ode to Joy.”

After determining which notes are needed, students should draw their locations on the first fretboard diagram in their lowest position (Figure 4). Their attention should now be directed toward not the lowest pitch but the lowest fret being employed. Whichever note(s) are on the lowest fret in use are the ones tethering the performer to the current position. In our “Ode to Joy” excerpt, that would be E on the open string, so the next step is to simply move E over to the second string and then evaluate playability. The result is technically playable (Figure 5), if not very comfortable for young students. It is recommended at this point to establish two rules for the sake of keeping the exercise from rambling on: (1) keep moving notes around until all necessary pitches are in a neatly packaged four-fret span; (2) once an open string is used in a position, it is not to be used again in subsequent positions. Accordingly, students should see the five-fret span required in Figure 5 and continue to search for a better solution.

Figure 4: Fretboard diagram of lowest-position pitch collection from “Ode to Joy.”

Figure 5: Fretboard diagram of “Ode to Joy” pitch collection with a five-fret span.

Students now move both C and F over to find that all notes for the song may be arranged comfortably in third position (Figure 6). At this point, students should play it in that location and then move on to another class topic. Each subsequent class meeting should add another position and play all positions determined up to that point (Figure 7). Limiting the class to one new position per class period makes it very easy to squeeze into a busy agenda and allows the topic to be revisited frequently, which is best for overall comprehension.

Figure 6: Fretboard diagram of “Ode to Joy” pitch collection in third position, four-fret span.

Figure 7: Fretboard diagram of “Ode to Joy” pitch collection in additional positions, four-fret span.

Over the course of time, the process gets faster and faster until students become proficient in seeing all their position options. Students should be equipped with blank fretboards on scrap paper, so they can use what they learned in the exercise on their other assigned music as necessary. Implementation of this type of activity in year two makes year-three repertoire much more approachable and allows the class to focus on more musical challenges rather than the more mathematical problem-solving component.

Third-Year Guitar Class 

It is not uncommon for a guitar program to be three years long even though high school is usually four years. Not all students begin their guitar studies in their first year of high school and not all of those who start will continue for the rest of their high school careers. In this scenario, students who complete a fourth year of study will be repeating the third-year course. These students can be afforded extra opportunities, more challenging parts in ensemble music, and more challenging solo repertoire alongside their third-year peers. In this situation it becomes necessary to refer to both years three and four of the NAfME Best Practices for Guitar Class outline. These two years of Best Practices include many very specific skills that should appear in selected repertoire to complete the picture of an educated high school guitarist’s capabilities. Topics include specific articulations, meters, keys, chords, harmonics, and dynamics, among other topics that need not be organized into larger categories like years one and two.

This class is typically the one that performs most and in the most competitive formats. This class should be preparing for All-County and All-State ensembles, festivals, and competitions, should they be available. It is important to select repertoire and organize the class such that these goals can be accomplished with a high success rate. Table 3 shows how a hypothetical class may be structured.

Minutes	Activity
0–20	Warmups & technique
20–30	Sight reading
30–50	Chords
50–80	Ensemble

Table 3: Organization of an 80-minute time block for a third-year guitar class.

While the topics may look like previous years, there is more time delegated to warmups and technical exercises. Since these students are playing the most demanding repertoire in the program, they need to solve problems before they arise in the music. Chords at this point in the program will lean toward jazz as students should be ready both technically and academically to discuss more complex harmonies. This is also important for students who may be interested in the school’s jazz band and may open doors for further education after high school. There is very frequently a large ensemble emphasis in this course as class performances are more plentiful. What is missing from this hypothetical agenda is solo classical repertoire. While it is possible to include this in the class time allotted, like in year two, it is also possible to delegate it to time outside of class. At this point these students should have demonstrated the requisite reliability and interest to realize certain goals on their own time.

Third-year, four-solo repertoire project

As previously mentioned, a minute of one-on-one lesson time is far more valuable than a minute of one-on-many class time. Given that, it is possible (class size permitting) to set up time to meet with individual students on solo repertoire. This opens the door to individualizing repertoire selection and instruction in a way the classroom cannot offer quite as easily. This project can be repeated quarterly resulting in at least four total solo pieces being learned in a school year. This may seem modest, but considering student age, experience, and all else being asked of them during class time, it actually poses an appropriate challenge. By consistently building up solo repertoire as a part of their class requirements, students are afforded the opportunity to consider participation in any festivals, competitions, or concerts without having the workload serve as a barrier. They will have something to play regardless and are now in the position of simply choosing which piece in their repertoire is most appropriate. It also puts the teacher and student in a position to prepare a college audition as part of the guitar program’s curriculum if the student is interested.

The project begins with music selection. Allowing students to have a say in selecting their music encourages them to listen to many recordings in order to familiarize themselves with what is available at their level. It also may foster a stronger sense of ownership of the project. Conversely, the teacher needs to participate in selection so as to prevent setting goals too lofty or too easily attainable for what is appropriate.

After music is selected for the quarter, students then schedule one-on-one meetings with the instructor to work on the piece. Because this is in conjunction with regularly scheduled classes, these meetings can be briefer than a traditional private lesson as the focus is exclusively on the piece at hand. The brevity of the meeting makes scheduling them a more realistic possibility for teachers. The actual frequency and duration must be determined based on the school calendar and classroom culture. At the end of the quarter students must perform their piece.

In addition to the process of learning and performing, students should also be knowledgeable about their music. It is a good idea to have students write an introduction of their piece to an audience as though they are speaking onstage. It is an open-ended prompt, but it is practical and forces students to learn more about the context of their piece. It could be biographical information about the composer or arranger, historical information about the style of music, or anything else an audience would find interesting. Students tend to find their music more compelling when it isn’t just dots and lines on a sheet of paper.

Modern Band

While guitar programs have been proliferating, so have modern band programs that specialize in learning about and performing more contemporary music. The ensemble typically features a drum kit, electric guitar, bass guitar, keyboard, and vocals, though an infinite number of variations are possible. The entire guitar program is stronger with the inclusion of an ensemble of this nature. It not only provides a learning opportunity to perform music that a more traditional ensemble cannot, but it also gives the program the ability to perform in contexts that provide much needed visibility. With louder, more upbeat, more commonly recognizable repertoire, students may find themselves performing at assemblies, sporting events, during lunch periods, or elsewhere, thus exposing the entire student body to the fact that guitar courses are offered. With student awareness comes enrollment, strengthening the program overall. Making this class co-curricular with the most advanced guitar class allows the teacher to use it to encourage students to continue their studies while maintaining a high playing level for the group.

Conclusion

Classroom guitar education provides invaluable opportunities for our next generation of guitarists as well as opportunities for those entering the workforce. Its growing popularity in schools across the country is a net benefit to all in the guitar community. Students who matriculate in guitar programs go on to be performers, teachers, hobbyists, and audience members, all of whom are of the most vital importance to guitar’s continuance as an artform.

About the author:

NAfME member Michael Klein, who is a Member-at-Large on the NAfME Council for Guitar Education, serves as the guitar director at Green Valley High School in Henderson, Nevada, and is Guitar Task Force Chair for the Clark County School District. His students have performed to great acclaim at the GFA National School Summit, the Loyola Marymount University Guitar Festival, and CCSD Guitar Ensemble Festival as well as in the Nevada All-State and NAfME All-National Guitar Ensembles. Michael earned his B.M. in music education from SUNY Fredonia and M.M. in guitar performance and literature from the Eastman School of Music.

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