Walz Guitar - Approaching a New Song

A point guitar teachers often make is how to start learning something new. It seems like younger or inexerienced musicians have trouble accepting that you need to start slow and learn passages/phrases at an even, slow tempo.

When I'm learning something new, I try to use myself as example to support the learning slow idea. I show how I'm taking parts of the song and work on evenness. Then problem sections are controlled. More importantly, you're teaching your fingers how to play it correctly. I usually throw in a reference to the Matrix movies, where in there they make a point about being fast. Where it's more of a mental than a physical thing. If Matrix logic would be too philosophical for the particular student I'd reference video games or whatever that require certain finger movement combinations.

The resolution of the point here is to show the fruits of labor. I'll play part of Villa-Lobos Etude #1 or Layenda and get the student to understand the entirety of the point--that I couldn't do what I just did without slowing things down. Then I'll support everything with metronome practice and showing how to find phrases in music.

After playing (albeit off and on) for years, this is one of the most important aspects of approaching new music.