Once every few months we get all the Bristol guitar tutors together for a training day at the YGA Hq in Bristol.These training days really help us stay in front of the teaching trends and ensure our tutors are up to date with songs, techniques and new teaching methods.
YGA have been working in Bristol now for over 2 years, and in that time have learned a lot. Firstly, the city is amazing! For musicians, the city couldn't be much more perfect. There are a huge amount of up and coming and established gigging venues, including 'The Fleece', 'The Canteen' and 'The Tunnels' (where we hosted our Paul Gilbert event last month). Alongside that, the city now has two awesome music colleges, including the relatively new BIMM Bristol that has helped bring even more musicians to the city.
With all of this investment in music, the guitar is becoming more and more popular in Bristol, and guitar lessons in Bristol are booming. With the need for quality guitar lessons in Bristol becoming clear, there is a lot of competition in the area. It is therefore so important that we keep ahead of the game, and that we continue to only work with thew best tutors in the area.
In our training day last month, we began by talking about the best way to approach kids guitar lessons. We teach a lot of 6-12-year-olds, and it is so important to provide a good structure to these lessons. There was a lot of experience in the room, and one of the most exciting things to get mentioned was the inclusion of fun games to enhance the course structure.
It sounds simple, but kids like games! They like competition and we really do embrace that in our lessons. Asking a 6-year-old to learn two chords is all very well and good, but explaining to the 6-year old that they need to be able to change those two chords 10 more times in a minute, in order to beat the time they set last week, is exciting and motivating! We came up with a ton of great new games that we are adding to our course material over the next few weeks, so look out for that.
To pick out another key element of the training day, we are always looking to improve our online portal for students and tutors, and we had some key suggestions. The main of which is the idea of including the moving tab software that is available for YGA Pro customers, in our main courses for YGA students. This is something we are very excited to be able to do and will be confirming it over the next two weeks. If we can, we will, and all of your tabs will suddenly be able to move and playback the audio! How cool is that?
The training day has given us a lot of improvements to make over the next few months, so keep an eye out as there will be a lot of cool new features, courses, and songs coming your way!
