Iconic, Controversial and, Useful.
The iPhone is a hot topic at the moment, with people standing either side of the iconic Apple shop windows with many raving over the release of the iPhone 5, and others upset that the precious 4s is now not quite so shiny! Anyway we aren’t here to critique the different models. We all agree that the iPhone is excellent, but how are they making being a guitar tutor easier than ever?
Time Keeping Gurus
As a guitar tutor you will realise if you haven’t already, that your management of time is essential if you want to get anywhere in the world of guitar teaching. When you have one student it is all pretty simple and managing the workflow is fairly easy without the help of anything but your brain. Drop in a few more students and you suddenly have to know exactly where and when you have to be somewhere, you need to know what to prepare for the lesson and also how well your student is progressing, as to know how fast to move forwards. What’s more is that you also need to be open to being flexible and understand that your students’ also have a busy routine. Would you rather call the lesson off because it changes up your routine, or re-schedule it so that you keep the student happy and still make sure you make money?
Guitar Tutors’ Best Friend
You can also set stop clocks for lessons so you do not get carried away and run over your lesson time into another slot.
Video Recording Guitar Lessons
One of my favourite things about the iPhone and various other smartphones, is the quality of the camera on them! This is invaluable for you as a guitar tutor and allows you to give your students snippets of lessons to refresh their memory on strumming patterns, riffs, scale exercises and techniques. I use my ebooks to support my students between lessons, but the reality is that writing and diagrams can only do so much for your students. Otherwise the private lessons would not be that valuable and everyone would just buy ebooks on learning guitar. When I first tried this out I was amazed with the results and it became a common practise for me when any of my students find it hard to remember part of a lesson.
Tuning apps
Not all your students will have a tuner and there will be a day when you forget yours, so iPhone app guitar tuners are a pretty handy tool to have in your pocket!
Metronome apps
Being able to pull out a full functioning metronome from your pocket would have sounded like a crazy idea a few years ago, today it happening and helping you keep your students in time.
Creating a platform for the Your Guitar Tutor app
The iPhone has allowed guitar tutors to offer mobile education and tools to make learning guitar easier. Here is some information on my iPhone app which is designed to train guitarist to work out songs by ear http://www.yourguitartutor.co.uk/playing-by-guitar-by-ear/your-guitar-tutor-iphone-app/
Can you think of any other way in which the smart phones are making your life easier as a guitar tutor?
(Image Credit to William Hook)
Trackbacks/Pingbacks