Reply To: Listening component in guitar class

[nafmeadmin]

Playing music as your students come in to class is a great way to expose them to different guitar styles. Instrumental artists that come to mind include; classical/nylon string finger-style: The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, Martha Masters, Andre York; steel string finger-style: Alex Degrassi, Laurence Juber; 12-string: Leo Kottke; pick-style steel string: Dan Crary; resonator guitar: Mike Auldridge; steel guitar: Doug Jernigan; electric guitar: Joe Satriani, Steve Vai; Jazz guitar: Joe Pass, Frank Vignola, Vinnie Valentino; slide guitar: Ry Cooder; a favorite of mine that combines nylon and steel: Strunz and Farah. These are examples that I think your students will appreciate.

I taught in a suburb where we had numerous nationalities represented in our school. Students would bring in some of their favorite music from their home countries. I would get the foreign language department to help me check the lyrics. Sometimes I had to find a restaurant to help (Turkish, Korean). I would figure out the chords and away we would go playing it in class. The best were the Spanish tunes we played in class were used in the Spanish classes for vocabulary lessons. They would print the lyrics and remove various words that the students would have to fill in.