My first guitar lesson

      The other day, a family I knew wanted me to give their daughter a "formal" guitar lesson. Since it was the first time anyone wanted me to teach them to play guitar, I was glad to give it a try. I thought back to my first guitar lesson years ago and I thought about what my old teacher taught me. Then, I remembered the first song I ever learned to play: Ode to Joy by Beethoven. Coincidentally, the daughter had that song in one of her books, so we started going over it. Fortunately for me, she already knew how to read music from playing piano, so the main thing we worked on was technique. From there on out, the lesson went pretty well. I constantly adjusted her left hand so that her fingers were curved and her thumb was positioned right.
      There is one thing I did that I now realize was a mistake. During that first lesson, I tried to show her how to play harmonics. I figured that it was an easy task to do because all you had to do was lightly touch the string. I thought even a beginner could do it. I started to think it was a bad idea to show her harmonics not only because she failed to play them right, but because I realized that teaching harmonics to a beginner guitarist was the last thing you wanted to do. When you deal with beginner guitarists, you want to enforce good habits for general playing, such as pressing hard with the tip of the fingers, right curviture in the wrist, and general hand strength and dexterity. Playing harmonics requires breaking all these rules, and therefore it is a more advanced technique than I previously thought.
      One thing I did that I think was unorthodox was that I gave the girl a food storage clip as part of her strength training. What I told her to do was to open the clip with one finger at a time, using the tips of her individual fingers. I got the idea when I saw an advertisement in a magazine for a fancy finger trainer. It goes without saying that my food clip idea is much cheaper.
      As much as I helped teach our family friend, I feel like I learned a lot as well. It is an interesting experience to teach something for the first time.