Essay: Adult Students

I often hear that children are "better" learners than adults when it comes to music and the guitar. It's not true. Children and adults definitely learn differently, but there are ways to take advantage of these differences. This essay will explore some of the myths and facts behind learning music as a child versus as an adult.

Learning Technique and Cognitive Development

Beginning with Piaget's theory of child development, researchers have understood that children and adults see the world in different ways. This makes some teaching techniques more appropriate for children than for adults, and vice versa.

Children view the world more literally and simplistically than adults do. A child who wants to do a particular activity and who enjoys that activity for its own sake is so single-minded as to be almost unstoppable. This is why children are willing to repeat the same pattern over and over again until they pronounce the word perfectly, can walk without falling over, or can get to the umpteenth level of their video game without making a mistake. They are willing to try and fail many times before they succeed. So rote learning and repetition are fairly good strategies for teaching a small child. Yet since children at that developmental level are not good at self-analysis or critical thinking, they aren't as good at fine tuning their technique. So they need closer supervision when they are students, and they need more correction and feedback than an older person who can be trained to self-correct. But without abstract thinking skills, they find it very hard to understand complex theory or relative relationships. A theoretical approach is wasted on a child. You have to demonstrate what you want. So modeling, rote learning, and imitation are useful tools for teaching a child.

Since playing the guitar is a physical skill, it takes lots of correct repetitions of each movement before it becomes easy or natural. This dovetails nicely with how children learn naturally. Of course, the theory behind what is being done takes much longer because a child must develop the ability to think relationally. Even a very intelligent child often has trouble reading and writing music before having a good understanding of fractions. He or she is more likely to pick up and follow a groove than to learn the same rhythmic pattern by reading. Children have great pattern recognition, though, so an older child or an adolescent can often be taught to play by ear. Sight reading should be kept to a minimum except to provide ongoing exposure to the notation.

If pre-adolescence can be thought of as getting a bunch of building blocks, adolescence is a time for seeing how those blocks fit together and manipulating combinations of blocks so as to build larger, more complex things. That's great for someone who already has the building blocks he or she likes and wants. But when an adolescent becomes interested in a different musical instrument or a new sport, he or she must still learn the skills from scratch. This is a potentially frustrating time. Since an adolescent has developed some critical and abstract thinking skills, he or she is likely to see repetition as boring. The only reason an adolescent is willing to do multiple repetitions of something is if he or she enjoys it for its own sake or sees consistent improvement. This means that teaching adolescents is a bit of a balancing act. There has to be enough low-hanging fruit to allow them to have fun on the guitar quickly and sound good, and enough variety to keep them interested, but enough focus on technique and skill to make sure they don't develop bad habits. The good news is that an adolescent has the relational thinking skills to learn to read music easily. He or she will instantly pick up concepts that frustrate younger students.

Teens and young adults generally have the thinking skills to grasp music theory, so unlike children they pick up the theoretical aspects almost instantly. Unfortunately, they tend to confuse an understanding of the theory behind how to do a thing with the ability to actually do that thing. A lot of the time they don't practice the basics and they have a tendency to use their practice time to rock out or have fun with the instrument instead of practicing. While rocking out is very important and everyone should do it, it's not the same as practicing something with the intention of getting better at it. So the big challenge when teaching a teen or a young adult is to make sure they're actually doing what they're supposed to be doing. It's OK to present the theory, but the theory has to be followed up with lots of applied practice.

There's a tendency in teens and young adults to want to push into advanced repertoire early and mess with music that is far beyond what their technique can support. Part of this is due to a teen's natural desire to push the limits and find out what's possible. Part of it is a response to the extra social pressure teens face. A teen who feels insecure can sometimes find a sense of self-worth in playing a musical instrument. That's fine, but if a person's image of himself or herself as a great guitarist is out of step with reality, it's a recipe for failure and for stage fright.

Sometimes people believe they can use theory as a path to playing skill. That's seldom a good idea. Just because a person can talk about the theory doesn't mean he or she can apply it. Guitar chat rooms are full of young adults who can tell you exactly how to do tapping or what a harmonic minor mixolydian scale is, but if you put a guitar in their hands and ask them to play a basic two-octave major scale in eighth notes, they can seldom do it cleanly. The biggest danger is when a player decides that theoretical knowledge can take the place of practice or playing skill. This leads to a lot of heartache, a dusty guitar, and a shelf full of books about how to make it in the music industry.

Adults are more intellectually developed than children or teens. During the process of growing up, they get used to abstract thinking. Their brains get wired to take shortcuts. They get used to reading word by word or phrase by phrase instead of letter by letter, and they get used to driving a car from point A to point B instead of focusing on each lane change or wheel movement. That's great, because it allows adults to do complex things small children can't, but that habit of thinking in the abstract sometimes causes an adult's skill with with concrete, literal movements to atrophy. They also forget just how many repetitions it takes for an action to become comfortable. When an adult learns a language, he or she is satisfied with two or three repetitions of a word and believes the word is now "known" and can be used. This is why when adults learn new spoken languages, they speak with such outrageous accents. They simply do not take the time to learn to make the sounds properly.

Abstract-thought-driven laziness is more common in adults than in teens, yet the same self-awareness and analytical skills that make them inclined to skip steps and skim over necessary work can be an asset if it's applied properly. A structured approach such as the Principles method uses the student's observation and analytical skills. An adult who is carefully watching his or her fingers, practicing slowly, and being extremely mindful and careful with each repetition will train the muscle memory just as quickly as a child making several times more repetitions in a less mindful fashion. In fact, a mindful adult using the Principles method gets far more out of an hour's worth of practice than the average child.

Teaching Techniques

The theoretical approach works well for adults. I also find that symbolic reasoning and process based teaching work well. Adults are more willing to do exercises than children are: they understand that some hands need more strength, and others need more flexibility. They're more willing to wait for delayed gratification. They also like getting maximum value out of what they learn. When they learn a new key, they benefit from picking up extra songs in that key. That's how they get the number of repetitions they need to solidify a new chord change. Yet I find that in order to hold an adult's interest I must introduce something new: a new strumming or plucking pattern, a different rhythm or time signature, or a new element of difficulty such as a fast chord change. Using well known elements in a different combination can keep it fresh.

Small children benefit from rote learning, but there's an inverse relationship between the age of a student and his or her tolerance for repetition. With a small child, the feedback has to be faster and the movements have to be smaller. I have to chop a song, or chord progression, up into smaller and easier bits. Also, there's very little desire to do exercises. There's not much interest in the physiology or terminology either. A young student generally isn't interested in "why" he or she should do something different.

Analogy doesn't work well for small children but it's good for adolescents and teens. The connection between the desired movement and the analogy has got to be really obvious in order for a little kid to get it. Adolescents and teens, like adults, benefit from quantitative measurements and instruction. They are also more open to qualitative comparison than young children, since they care more about detail. Whether a particular string is being pressed down hard enough, or whether the sound is right, is more likely to be noticeable (and important) to an older student.

Demonstration, modeling, and imitation are great for all age groups. So are the No Tempo, Posing, and Basic Practice Approach techniques described in The Principles. At times I physically move a student's arm or hand into the correct position. I also find that there's a process to learning each song. First I teach the positions, then I show the movements necessary to get from one position to another. I start with a basic strumming pattern so the student can focus on the chord changes. Once the student can change the chords at performance tempo, I add a more complex strumming pattern.

Interest

A person who can focus, and who is willing to focus on the right things, will always learn better than one who does not. This applies regardless of how talented a person may be or how quickly they grasp the theory. Adults and children who are truly interested in the guitar, and who love the guitar, find the time to practice it and play it. Yet when they start to lose interest, they demonstrate it in different ways.

A child, adolescent, or teen will stop practicing but will often keep coming to lessons because of the cool factor, or because their parents have paid for a block of lessons in advance. Sometimes learning the guitar turns out to be so different from what they expected that they actually dislike lessons. I find this happens most often with children under the age of ten. They want to try the guitar, especially the electric guitar, because they can imagine themselves with a radical haircut rocking out in front of an audience. Of course, that doesn't translate into a desire to play. Once they find out what it takes to actually get those skills, they lose interest. It isn't much different from the way I demanded ballet lessons at the age of five. I was expecting to be morphed instantly into a tutu-wearing princess. That didn't happen, and in fact some of the exercises hurt. I don't believe I practiced once. Still I kept coming to lessons in the hope that they'd break out the pointe shoes and tiaras. They never did, so I lost interest.

An older teen who loses interest will start making excuses and avoiding the lessons. Eventually, the student will quit or I'll have a discussion in which I suggest "taking a break" from lessons for a while. If the student comes back, great. Some do. Most don't.

Adults who lose interest in the guitar are far more likely to quit. In order to practice and take lessons, they have to free up time and resources that usually go toward other things. An adult who wants to play will fit lessons in around other responsibilities. They almost never goof around during the lessons.

I do have an extra option when teaching adult students. A very few adult students of mine are occasional. They aren't trying to go pro, they're playing only for their own enjoyment, and they often have heavy work or travel commitments. So they don't want to come to lessons every week, but they want a refresher or a new idea every once in a while. So they get a consultation lesson from me for a couple hours, then go off and do their own thing for a few weeks or a couple months, and they call me in on an as-needed basis to solve a problem or help them shift a paradigm. This actually works for an adult, but I'd never try to teach a child that way.

Conclusion

There's no reason an adult can't learn to play the guitar just as quickly and easily as a child learns. In fact, there's no reason an adult beginner cannot aspire to play professionally if he or she is willing to take lessons and put in the years of practice. Although adults and children learn differently, there are teaching strategies that can take advantage of both learning styles.