Hello everyone. I discovered Pebber Brown by sheer luck while viewing a comment section of a youtube video, and I have been amazingly impressed with him ever since. My first guitar teacher just recently gave me a job working under him, and I am nervous about it.

I have been playing for about 18 years, and I know a lot of theory, and composition ideas, and soloing approaches, and technique development, transcribing songs etc. but my sight reading is bad, like a lot of guitarists, and I have not been as disciplined a player as I should have been during the past few years due to other life issues, not the least of which is deciding whether I want to pursue music full time as a career or finish my degree, or what...
I have a few new young students now who I think could be very good players, and I want to be able to guide them and inspire them to greatness if that is what they want for themselves. I also have a few students who are older, and I think just want to be able to play a few tunes, and I'm not sure how much they are really trying to get out of this decision to take lessons. I was just kinda hoping for some general advice from Pebber, or someone who knows how it feels to take on the role of teacher to someone. Thanks for the great lessons you have given me already without knowing it, Pebber.

Hi JAMsauce!! I'm the least qualified to address this from some perspectives. But I have a positive attitude, am curious with a quest for knowledge also down to Earth, not afraid to make a mistake and I have initiative--and that alone is what it takes to learn.

Don't feel like a fraud. When you reach Black Belt in a martial art, it doesn't mean you've mastered anything except the ability to learn. That alone qualifies one to teach younger students as having learned how to learn is in itself a skill. These forums right here have got to be the most underutilized resource on the internet I have ever seen by the way. You have direct access to an actual master here and that stuff takes awhile to soak in.

This is the real world though. I remember a friend's Dad telling me when I first started with the guitar in 1988 that Angus Young and George Thorogood had to put their pants on one leg at a time just like me. If George wanted to go get a gallon of milk, he had to jump in his car and turn the key, or walk.

Lately I've had my interest in guitar playing rekindled. After I played a few years, I fell off a ladder and broke my arm and it was a real setback physically I know I won't get over. I have often considered switching to a left handed player because sometimes you think out of the box to get around obstacles. For the next 25 years I never took practicing seriously again until now. Still through my twenties I played as much as I could.

Back then, I went into the guitar store on a Saturday morning and the store owner Jim saw me walk in and goes,"Well you're an answer to prayer. Justin the guitar teacher has the flu I just found out with no time to notify students and they are already showing. Would you give these guys lessons for about three hours and I'll buy your strings, pay you Justin's half and the store's half for filling in."

I thought, "Haha I'm an answer to prayer?? I'm your worst nightmare but what the hell."

It was a three story building and the upper tier was the studio. There was a 17 year old sitting up there waiting. I'd grabbed a nice Hamer from downstairs and went up to sit in. The kid was a little backward. He was sitting there in a Dokken t-shirt practicing when the Saints Go Marching in. He was already ahead of me on theory. But I immediately saw he was working through the Mel Bay stuff with no attention to the having fun aspect; not playing stuff he enjoyed. It is called playing music after all. So we spent the half hour doing dive bombs and working on some Judas Priest licks. He told me for his whole year it was his best lesson ever. Same thing pretty much went for the next six lessons; dive bombs, pick slides, Judas Priest, AC-DC. It's all I know how to do and it is what those kids wanted to try. I knew the regular instructor Justin was a Kiss and Black Sabbath fanatic, but he wasn't making the connection.

We had a blast and I made $75 bucks cash in three hours and two sets of Dean Markleys. I never gave guitar lessons again, but I was the one getting the lesson anyhow. I knew right then I would have to do the only thing I want to do in the first place to stay ahead of it--and that would be to practice guitar constantly. A teacher is only a highly-skilled student. Are you a highly skilled student, JAMsauce?? Then I say you are not a fraud.

Keith

I encourage you both to post a video showing your strongest work and I will do the same. We then can discuss our strong points and weaknesses. I think posting videos was Pebbers intention and the only way anyone can get a point of reference towards any positive discussion. (Especially Pebbers comments) Let's light it up!

Thanks for the encouragement everyone. I would say that I have resumed being a good student of the guitar sometime shortly after my guitar teacher gave me this job, but before my first actual lesson. I have a few lessons under my belt now, and it's going more smoothly than I thought. Pebber's videos are giving me so many ideas to try with my own students, but I still have to take it slow. I'm not sure how much I should be pushing the students to advance quickly versus how much I should just be encouraging them to not take on anything that will blow their minds too early on. I always encourage them to play with a metronome, unless they are so uncoordinated that even the metronome throws them off. I know I will have to reintroduce the metronome to those students' practice routines at some point, but I'm not sure I'm able to accurately gauge their progress. Also I need to strike a balance between building up good fundamentals and focusing on what THEY really want to learn.

I am only posting this link because Heyman suggested a sample, and I don't really know how to make a video. I'm not looking for shameless self promotion, and I hope Pebber doesn't have me CIA mindwiped, but here is my soundcloud account. soundcloud .com/jamschmitt
There is a sample of me improvising, doing cover songs, and doing a few original songs. The most "shreddy" I get is on the long improv track called smoldering funk rock jam. The stuff is not very high quality, and I would never release this stuff on an album. It's just throwaway tracks from various jam sessions and times when I felt like recording some music.

Shameless self-promotion? What?

I meant I wasn't posting that link for any ulterior motive, but only because you wanted a sample of my playing. I just wanted to make clear that I wasn't promoting my soundcloud page for no reason. sorry if it came across weird. In the forum rules Pebber reserves the right to have us CIA mindwiped.