1. Collect notes → connect notes → remove delay
Your line: “Notes, collect the notes, then you connect them. Phrase level, then removing the delay between the phrases.”
Pedagogy concepts:
- Chunking — notes become phrases, phrases become larger musical units.
- Cognitive load reduction — the student is not trying to solve notes, fingers, rhythm, memory, and expression all at once.
- Sequencing — first content, then connection, then fluency.
- Deliberate practice — one specific skill is improved at a time, with feedback. Ericsson’s deliberate-practice model stresses focused, structured improvement rather than casual repetition.
Expanded:
The student should not simply “play the song.” One part is playing the song; the second thing is how he is playing — finger, phrasing, connection, delay. First collect the correct notes. Then connect them. Then work at phrase level. Then remove the delay between phrases. This is basically skill-building through smaller units.
2. Find repeated mistakes and correct them
Your line: “If you know which parts you are consistently making mistake, then you can correct them, and you can finish.”
Pedagogy concepts:
- Error-based learning — mistakes show where practice is needed.
- Feedback loop — play, observe error, correct, repeat.
- Formative assessment — the teacher is diagnosing during the lesson, not judging at the end.
- Deliberate practice — not more playing, but targeted correction.
Expanded:
The lesson is not “play more.” It is: identify the part where the same mistake happens again and again. Is it scale mismatch? Wrong fret? Wrong finger? Wrong slide? Wrong phrase memory? Once the repeated error is found, that part can be isolated, corrected, and reinserted. This is why correction-based teaching works.
3. Accuracy before speed
Your line: student says “speed is not coming.” You say: “No, no, this is good… make sure that the right notes are played.”
Pedagogy concepts:
- Fluency comes after accuracy.
- Automaticity — speed comes when correct movements become stable.
- Motor learning — wrong fast repetition strengthens wrong movement.
- Learning vs performance — looking fast now is not the same as learning well. Bjork’s “desirable difficulties” work warns that easy-looking practice can give the illusion of learning.
Expanded:
Speed is not the first target. First, the student must know: is it 6 to 4, or 5 to 3? Is it 8, 10, 11, or a nearby wrong fret? If the note is wrong, faster playing only hides the mistake. Speed should be built on correct notes, correct distance, correct finger, and correct phrase memory.
4. Finger choice matters
Your line: “Which fingers am I using?” and “Try using different fingers… then you don’t have to lift and use another one.”
Pedagogy concepts:
- Technique as problem-solving — finger choice is not decoration; it changes difficulty.
- Economy of motion — avoid unnecessary lifting.
- Motor planning — choose fingers based on the next note, not only the present note.
- Scaffolding — teacher gives a better fingering so the student can play something that would otherwise be too hard. Scaffolding means support that helps the learner do what they cannot yet do independently.
Expanded:
Finger choice is an underlying skill. Sometimes the student can play the note, but the fingering creates delay. So you ask: which fingers? Can one finger stay? Can another finger be free? Can we keep the chord shape? Can the little finger do the slide? This teaches not just the song, but intelligent movement.
5. Phrase-by-phrase practice
Your line: “I’ll play a phrase, you try to play it again, play it once you listen to it.”
Pedagogy concepts:
- Modeling — teacher plays the target.
- Imitation — student repeats.
- Guided practice — teacher corrects immediately.
- Micro-practice — one phrase at a time.
- Retrieval practice — student must recall and reproduce the phrase, not just watch passively. Retrieval practice is strongly linked with better retention than restudying.
Expanded:
Instead of watching a full YouTube lesson again and again, the student listens to one phrase, plays it, gets correction, and repeats. This reduces overload. It also makes memory active. The student is not just consuming information; he is retrieving and reproducing the phrase.
6. Do not depend too much on tab
Your line: “Watch the video, memorize it. No, don’t depend too much on the tab.”
Pedagogy concepts:
- Embodied learning — the body must know the movement.
- Aural learning — the ear must hear correctness.
- Visual mapping — the fretboard pattern must become visible.
- Metacognition — the student knows whether he is counting, hearing, remembering distance, or following notation.
Expanded:
Tab is useful, but tab alone is not playing. The student must hear the note, see the fretboard, remember the distance, and feel the movement. That is why you say: watch, memorize, do not depend too much on the tab. The goal is independent playing, not notation-reading dependency.
7. Scale underneath the song
Your line: “Underlying, you’re also learning the scale… 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11.”
Pedagogy concepts:
- Transfer of learning — the song teaches patterns usable in other songs.
- Schema building — student builds a mental map of the scale.
- Conceptual understanding — not just fret numbers, but why those notes belong.
- Conditional knowledge — knowing when a note belongs and when it changes. How People Learn emphasizes that usable knowledge depends on organized understanding, not isolated facts.
Expanded:
The student is not only learning one melody. He is learning which frets belong to the sound-world of the song. He learns where the minor sound is, where the major-scale sound comes, where the 5 appears, where chromatic notes enter. This makes the song a vehicle for fretboard understanding.
8. Slides and embellishments as later layers
Your line: “The last slide was the last embellishment… that is all optional, you can put it, try to put it anywhere you want.”
Pedagogy concepts:
- Layered learning — plain version first, ornamented version later.
- Progressive complexity — add difficulty only after the base is stable.
- Desirable difficulty — extra slides add useful challenge only when the base is playable.
- Differentiation — some students can add more gamakas; others stay with the plain version.
Expanded:
First make the song plain and correct. Then add slides, gamakas, chromatic touches, and embellishments. The slide is not compulsory at the beginning. It is a layer. This prevents the student from confusing “expression” with “too many variables too early.”
9. Reusable patterns across songs
Your line: student says “these things seem to be repeating across multiple songs, these standards.” You agree.
Pedagogy concepts:
- Pattern recognition — repeated movements become vocabulary.
- Transfer — one song improves another song.
- Interleaving — seeing similar movements across different songs improves flexible learning. Bjork’s work connects interleaving with stronger long-term learning and transfer.
- Musical vocabulary building — slides, Pa-Sa movements, gamakas, scale fragments become reusable tools.
Expanded:
Each song is not separate. A phrase, slide, scale movement, or gamaka becomes part of the player’s vocabulary. When the same movement appears in another song, the student does not start from zero. This is how song learning becomes musicianship.