Wombats are a marsupial animal that live in Australia.
They are soft, furry and being a marsupial, they carry their young in a pouch, custom built of course :-)
So, what does this have to do with music and Guitars?
The guys from www.teachwombat.com (Rob & Ken) have set up some awesome teaching tools for anyone thinking about becoming a Guitar teacher or for anyone already teaching Guitar.
Teachers, like parents, (and wombats) need tools to make the protege/student/child feel safe, nurtured have fun and ultimately, to help them progress.
Teachwombat.com offers a full suite of teaching tools to run a Guitar teaching business and they are not expensive.
Actually, for value for money and a unique honest approach to teaching and organising yourself, I think what they offer is unbeatable.
They cover everything for teaching a beginner through to well advanced students as well as cover you as a teacher and musician.
And just how good do you have to be to teach Guitar ? Read on.
You get a complete Guitar & Bass Guitar teaching system for a Guitar teaching business, including, extra large chord grid charts, (so much easier to see when pasted on a wall :-) backing tracks, lesson plans, mode charts, including backing tracks and PDF files for printing out to play along with the backing tracks, and more.
All in all, very comprehensive and down-loadable. Including a student and gig diary & an expense & income tracking system.
In fact if I was setting up a teaching Guitar business, I would buy all their material simply because they have done all the work for me and far better than I could have.
If there is anything they have left out, I am yet to find it.
If you are a Guitar teacher or you want to be one, no matter where you think you skills are right now, this is the set up for you.
(In case you are wondering, I am not receiving any recompense for this recommendation. I love what these guys are doing, spelling mistakes and all :-)
Check them out for yourself and go get yourself some students.
There’s a free download of 20 “Big Grid” chord charts here
These are fantastic for the wall and there’s over 100 of these Big Grid charts available.
Put them up on your studio wall or in your Guitar students room and see how easy they are to read and take in.
My favourite article from Rob & Ken is “Teaching Guitar, How Good Do You Have To Be?”
And the excerpt below from their web site is just so refreshing and sensible :-)
Well done Rob & Ken and anyone who has the good sense to check you out.
Source www.teachwombat.com
I’ve seen the books and the teach children to play guitar stuff thats out there and some of it (while worthy) is a bit wide of the mark. “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” “Merrily We Roll Along” and stuff like that. They have Playstations and School Of Rock for crying out loud. Show me a nine year old kid who wakes up with a burning desire to play “Twinkle Twinkle” and I’ll show you a child stolen from the 1950′s and beamed into the present day (and to be perfectly frank he or she would probably have been a bit wierd even in the 50′s).
The only real reason that the stuff like “Frankie and Johnny” and “Merrily We Roll Along” is in the guitar books in the first place is so that the publishers don’t have to pay the composers and owners of the songs because they are out of copyright. The fact that a tune is out of copyright presents no incentive for a nine year old to want to learn it.
As Guitar and Bass Teacher’s we have to compete with the free stuff that’s up there on youtube (some of which lets face it is very good) so it would seem a bit silly to rely on out of copyright tunes that are recognised by an ever decreasing number of people?
