This is sort of a companion blog to my recent blog about getting kids to practice. In that essay I offered a few tips on how to motivate your young virtuoso to practice regularly. It takes work and committment on both your part and your child’s. Guitar is harder to fall into naturally than piano for young ones, maybe because you have the added challenge of having to press down strings, which can be tough on the fingers. Pushing it a LITTLE bit each day is the key to success. Leaving your eight-year-old to his own devices is wasting your money…like hoping he’ll take to doing his chores regularly. Wouldn’t THAT be great???
One of the biggest annoyances to me as a guitar teacher is when I ask a student what kind of music they like and they don’t know. Being put on the spot by a grownup–especially a stranger–can put them in a shyness mode that temporarily blanks their minds. So I start mentioning some famous rock bands and when I hit on their favorites they light up. Or if I mention one they hate (Hannah Montana to the boys) they cringe!
I’m talking about the kids who have no clue about any band, much less ones with cool guitar. 90+% of the kids have heard “Smoke on the Water”, “Crazy Train”, “Sunshine of Your Love” (they’re more hip to the old stuff than they’ll admit) or some Beatles songs. The remaining ten percent gives me a blank stare when I mention every name I can think of.
No radio.
No Mtv (probably a good thing these days).
No background music played by the parents.
They couldn’t name a famous band if their lives depended on it!
I took Karate lessons when I was a kid. Six months later this movie came out, The Karate Kid–not to mention all those bad ninja movies. Big hit at the time, so all of a sudden my friends and the rest of the universe got into martial arts. Do I need to explain why??? 
Because they thought the films were so gosh darned cool they had to get in on that Karate stuff!
Are music lessons really that different?
I don’t know if your kids will want piano lessons after watching The Piano, but there are some things you can try to keep the motivation high.
1. Listen to music: Yes, you! The parents! Turn on the radio, get XM satellite radio, check out www.pandora.com or something similar to customize an online station without commercials. Turn on the CD player when he’s brushing his teeth. They even make musical toothbrushes! Keep lots of music flowing. My parents did this when I was younger (though I suspect it was just for the love of music) and I still find myself recognizing tunes in restaurants and department stores!
2. Buy your child an mp3 player: And load that player up with music because the odds are against your kidlet doing it by himself. Or if he does you should be excited! The player goes everywhere except to school (to many little punk thieves and klutzes): Trips, errands, the grocery store, Grandmas for the weekend. IMO, get the cheap one and mark it in some way (with his name?) to make it really obvious who it belongs to. Things get lost…you don’t want that to include a $300 iPod.
3. Go to a live show: See real human beings play awesome guitar! How can a kid not be inspired to practice seeing someone like Joe Satriani play?
4. Rent DVDs of cool guitar players: Sometimes concert tickets are too expensive. No excuses! Get on to Netflix and add a bunch of concert videos by cool bands and players. Some cool names off the top of my head: Joe Satriani, Eric Johnson, Steve Vai, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, BB King. Do the research!
And you could always get my shirt with chords on the sleeves! No excuse not to practice when the chords are on your arms. 
Guitar & Bass T-shirts now available!
