Are you a guitar teacher yourself?

Hi Im keen to chat with other comtemporary rock and pop focused guitar
teachers for the purpose of sharpening our skills and sharing resources.

If this sounds like you give me a hoy!

hey there, sounds good but just to be upfront. I'm not really a certified music teacher but have been playing on a personal level for the past 31 years and been reading up on theory for bout 20 years now from a music theory book by music professor George Thaddeus which you might be able to find from Barnes and Noble. I've had couple students in the past but the last one being some 10 years ago. ok, thats about as simple as I can summarize about myself. thanx.

I ran a music store with a ton of students. Basically 6 rooms with a huge store and tons of instruments.
I personally found the whole thing to be very frustrating and discouraging.
Most of the students were forced to take lessons by their parents. 90% of the time they'd cancel at the last minute. Mothers would complain about stupid things like "one of your teachers taught my son to use his thumb and i was told he wasn't supposed to do that on guitar"

It was good money but most of it came from renting out flutes and saxophones in the fall for school registration. I totally dreaded the fall season when all the mothers would come in to register their little rugrats.

Quite frankly I pretty much hated the whole thing and was glad to quit.

Now I just teach advanced classes in private to those who really want them.

Sorry Kevin.. but I found your post quite amusing. I know it wasn't meant like that and I am not laughing AT you.. just the situation you were in. I can totally imagine it and while I have never been in that situation I completely understand. How funny.. I suppose you can have a laugh about it now though, right? :)

Yeah...definately, like that mother who ragged me out about teaching her song to use his thumb.
I told her I didn't care if he uses his nose and his left foot, as long as it sounds good, who cares.

Yeh I was testing out a 7-string guitar the other week, trying to decide if I would get anything out of having one, as compared to another 6-string. The guy who was showing me had a couple of 7-strings himself and was explaining why the other string is there and what you can use it for. Then I made a comment about using my thumb to fret slash-chords, and he goes, "Ahhh.. so you like to play more jazzy stuff" or something along those lines. I decided that the 7-string guitar is not for me at stage.. may be later on.

I love using my thumb for that kind of thing.. Using my thumb came naturally to me. I always knew that I was supposedly not meant to be using the thumb like that but then I wasn't playing classical guitar so it didn't bother me that much. I've seen many other great guitarists use their thumb this way and I have instructed other people to use it for various chords that are otherwise hard to do.. such as the D/F# chord which Pink Floyd uses in their Wish You Were Here song. Having come up with a new chord for myself recently, I think Chris Schelgel (sorry Chris, I can't spell your name :)) labelled it the D9/F# chord or something, I can now more easily see how to fret a D/F# chord without the thumb but it doesn't sound anything like the chord used in the Pink Floyd song unless I use my thumb.