Online Lessons at 7

Should a 7 Year Old Start with Online Guitar Lessons?

 I got lucky the first time I started teaching online. It was at the beginning of the pandemic and my students had already been with me for a while, so we transitioned over to Zoom. It was easy since everyone had the fundamentals down. Even for my students transitioning to online lessons at 7 years old were doing great.

But after a few weeks, I picked up my first new online 7-year-old student and realized there were challenges I had not even thought about. I am grateful for the technology, especially for people who are 100’s of miles from the nearest teacher.  But it did require a certain degree of relearning how to teach. And soon I wasn’t sure if a 7-year-old should start with online lessons.

Not all children struggle online, but there is definitely an art to learning the guitar online at a young age. We realized very quickly that the key is to have a little extra patience and for the parents to be prepared for the lessons to move slower. This will make things much easier. Teaching online is a wonderful tool, but the progress is much different than in person.

Tuning Online with a 7-Year-Old

One of the first skills everyone learns at the studio is how to tune. If a younger student has never touched a guitar before, I demonstrate how to use a tuner and have them tune one string. After that, I tune the rest. Each week, we add a string or two, but by then they are usually a pro.

After a few lessons, tuning becomes a habit. The student comes into the studio, takes the guitar out of the case, tunes, and is ready for the lesson. But online, things are different.

For a new student, the guitar may be way out of tune. This can seem like a nightmare for a 7-year-old who has never played. The parents can help, but even then, it could be an entire lesson to get all the strings in tune. Occasionally, this can knock the wind out of their sails.

Other teachers and parents have told me stories where multiple lessons have gone by and the only thing they did was tune. I have not experienced that yet, but can completely understand. It is not unusual to spend an entire online lesson learning to tune.

This is not to say that all 7-year-old’s have trouble, but this is an area where it will take patience.

The Environment 

The best advice I can give is to make sure the parent is nearby and the room has absolutely no distractions if possible. This is something that, even with my longer-term students, we struggled with. This was generally due to a sibling wanting attention or a quirky internet connection.

If there is a young brother or sister around, they tend to like to get involved. Even the slightest distraction for a 7-year- old can derail the lesson and take a bit to get them calmed down and focused again.

Making sure that they are rested and not hungry can make a difference as well.

Final Thoughts

I believe that a 7-year-old can do online lessons. For the best results, make sure they are rested, fed, and free of distractions. If the parent can be there during the lesson, that is a huge bonus, especially if the computer glitches. In fact, I sometimes teach the parent along with their kid. This can help tremendously and is much more fun for both of them.

Remember to be patient. They may miss out on certain things, like jamming together, since there is a lag during online sessions-even with the fastest internet connection. And the in-person interaction will be missing. But hopefully in the future we will have instantaneous video.

Thank you for reading my blog.  If you are interested in lessons, feel free to contact me.