By Joshua Friedman
Have you looked at our Video Tutorials? I’ve talked to a few teachers recently who head straight for the GuitarCurriculum music library and didn’t even know the video tutorials exist! They’ve been hugely helpful for me, and I bet you’ll like them too. Plus, there are plenty of videos meant specifically for students on everything from technique to changing strings.
There’s one category of videos I’d especially like to point to today. These are not about playing or teaching guitar, they are about the philosophy that shaped GuitarCurriculum. These are the Essentials of Teaching videos by Dr. Robert Duke.
Dr. Duke is the Head of Music and Human Learning at The University of Texas at Austin. He is also a clinical professor in the Dell Medical School at The University of Texas and was the founding director of the psychology of learning program at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles.
And he’s a great friend to Austin Classical Guitar and GuitarCurriculum! In fact, when we were first formulating the architecture of our teaching systems, Dr. Duke was our primary advisor, and helped steer us to our core philosophy: expressive beautiful music making from the very first day.
Some of my favorite videos include his video on Error correction, where he talks about the importance of providing students the opportunity to provide the solutions to their own precise problems.
I also really like Music and Joyfulness where he discusses the importance of Joy and self-satisfaction in the process of learning an instrument. As I mentioned above, GuitarCurriculum is all about beautiful, expressive music-making from day one. Find out more about the significance of this in the video below.
If you have the time in your busy schedule, give these quick 3–4-minute videos a watch. I hope they inspire you as much as they have for me.
As always, if you have questions about anything GuitarCurriculum, or anything else, please reach out to joshua@austinclassicalguitar.org.