The following portfolio will aim to outline and articulate my approach to teaching a student some one-to-one lessons on guitar. I will explain how I planned the lessons, and how my approach adapted week to week. We focus primarily on fundamentals of technique and applying this in a musical context. I had the pleasure of teaching Emily Trease, an incredibly talented Jazz Singer. She was a joy to teach and did incredibly well in engaging in the content I supplied.
I will go through each lesson one by one, explaining my lesson plans and evidencing how I executed them in the context of the lesson itself. Further, I will supply copies of any recourses that I prepared.
Lesson One (4/2/26) – Plan
In my first lesson with Emily, I thought it paramount that I learn her experience level on the instrument right away. This way I knew exactly what I was working with and where to begin as a teacher. It is very important that whenever a teacher takes on a new student that they get to know them and what their strengths and weaknesses are.
Moreover, I also wanted to know what Emily’s goals were on the instrument; why was she intrigued to pick up the instrument in the first place? Guitar is an incredibly versatile instrument, capable of a myriad of sounds, textures, timbres etc., so it was super important for me as a teacher that I know what to focus on. It is worth mentioning that I chose to take this particular approach with Emily because I knew that she already has extensive musical experience. She can sing, play piano and play harp, so I knew her musical base was strong enough to discard certain beginner exercises like learning basic music theory. Any prior information that a teacher has about a student is very useful in my opinion. Before my first lesson with Emily, I already knew what kind of a student she was going to be.
This was the extent of my first lesson plan. Note how I purposefully left it quite short, leaving out the implementation of certain exercises or skills. I believe my initial questions regarding experience and goals are the only necessary pre-meditated ideas I needed going into my first lesson with Emily. This should only be the case, however in a first lesson. Once I had learned what Emily’s goals were I knew that I had to diligently plan my lessons going forward. Leaving things this open in the first lesson means that we could dive straight into whatever my student had in mind and allowed my lesson to be flexible.
Lesson One- Evidence of teaching
In in the following section, I will provide evidence from my first lesson with Emily, including a Panopto link to a video showing certain highlights from the lesson.
In conjunction with my lesson plan, I began my lesson by asking Emily what her experience level on the instrument was. I was glad to hear that Emily had some good experience on the instrument already; she knew some basic caged chords and technique, even having experience doing some guitar grades. As a teacher, this was wonderful to hear but also daunting as I knew I would be required to challenge my student perhaps more than I anticipated.
I then proceeded to ask what Emily’s goals on the instrument were, and she explained that she wanted to gain a better understanding of what she was playing on the instrument, as well as using some more extensions in her chords, and to be able to play the guitar within a Jazz context. I agreed that this was the perfect thing for her goals as a singer; to be able to accompany herself while singing would be an invaluable skill.
In this moment, I quickly thought that shell voicings would be a perfect place to start. For one, they are very versatile and can be used in a wide range of contexts, and they contain the minimum information required to get more advanced colours into our chordal playing on the guitar. They only contain the root, third and seventh. This allows Emily to move away from the massive six note chords that beginners often start with to a more simple and effective sound. Finally, there voicings also allow us as guitarists to add upper extensions like the ninth, eleventh, thirteenth, etc. When explaining the shell voicing concept to Emily in this lesson I chose to reveal these possibilities.
This established the rest of my first lesson with Emily; we focused on the basic shell voicing shapes. It was very important to me to not just show the shapes, but to explain them. Understanding how the chords are made up is an essential part of improving on the instrument. Furthermore, we also spent some time on technique; I felt that as a self-taught player Emily had neglected some technique fundamentals that were important to iron out.
As some homework for the next lesson: I wanted Emily to pick a jazz standard, ideally one that she was singing recently, to begin to learn using the shell voicings we had started to work on. This is a great exercise, as anything technical becomes much less daunting once it sits in a musical context.
Overall, I was happy with the first lesson I had with Emily. We covered a lot of information, and she was really good and picking up what I was doing and applying it immediately. I was very excited to see what she could do once she had some time to practice the content. I was also proud of my own performance as I feel I showed patience, adaptability and a good breadth of knowledge.
Video from this lesson –
Lesson Two (25/2/26) – Plan
For Lesson two I thought that me and Emily should pick a standard to learn on the guitar. Ideally this would be one that she knows already and enjoys to sing. This would perfectly fit in with her goals on the guitar, as she expressed a want to be able to accompany herself whilst singing. I also wanted to focus on the basic shell voicings more, and further focus on which notes are which, and try and challenge Emily to work out some things on her own. In my research into how adults learn, I found that this approach works well, as adults need a level of independence within their learning process.
Due to the brief nature of our lesson, I chose not to plan anything further for this lesson, as I felt that picking a standard was the number one priority. Students need something to take home with them and to work on and introducing scales or other concepts all at once can become overwhelming. I felt that it was a much better idea to stick to the chord concept for now.
Lesson Two- Evidence of teaching
In following with my plan, I asked Emily to find a standard that she enjoyed and wanted to learn on guitar. I explained in the lesson that I felt it very important to take more technical/ theoretical concepts and putting them in a musical context as soon as possible was very important. After all, these voicings that I was teaching meant very little without being used to actually play music.
Emily chose the standard ‘Remember’ by Irving Berlin. This was a great choice, as the changes didn’t move too fast, sticking mostly to one chord per bar, and also allowed for me to teach Emily about voice leading on the guitar. This is an essential skill to have on the instrument, and one especially useful to someone learning to play in this style. Furthermore, it does contain any unusual chords that went beyond what we were learning already.
I spent some time recapping the shapes we had already gone through last week to try and further solidify them in my student’s mind. In further following my plan, I again aimed to teach Emily which note was which in the makeup of the chord. I then chose to try and test how well Emily was processing the information, by asking her how we would alter our chord shape to turn a dominant seventh chord into a major seventh chord. I know that conceptually Emily was familiar with how this would be done on a piano, so I wanted to see if she could now implement this knowledge onto the guitar.
After this, I wanted to try and play her chosen standard (‘Remember’) to tempo with a backing track. This was done at a very slow tempo to start with. I truly ascribe to the notion that anything learnt on an instrument should first be practiced super slow, but in time. After all, if one cannot play it slow, then playing it fast is out of the question.
At the end of the lesson, I assigned to Emily what I wanted her to practice for next time. I think it’s essential that teachers assign their students some work to complete independently outside of the lesson, and to set simple and clear goals for next time. With this in mind, I asked her to continue to work on the shapes we had discussed, and to maybe try and work on figuring out the B section of ‘Remember’ on her own.
This was the extent of our second lesson. Again, I was happy to see how curious Emily was about the instrument, ad how quickly she was picking up the things I was introducing her to.
In evaluation of my own teaching, I think I should have introduced some written resources in this lesson for Emily to take home with her, to make sure she could remember the information we discussed. This was something I knew had to make sure I had prepared for the next lesson. I also acknowledge that there were certain moments where perhaps I overcomplicated things beyond what they should’ve been. Despite this, I’m still happy with how I conducted the lesson, and the progress we made on this day. We were able to set clear goals, and I was very excited to see how Emily would tackle these challenges for next time.
Videos for this lesson-
Lesson Three (23/3/26) – Plan
For lesson three, based on last lesson, I knew It was imperative that I introduce some written resources for Emily to take home with her. This way it would be much easier for her to use the information that we’ve discussed in lesson independently. Not only would she be able to apply these chord voicings to her chosen standard, but she would be able to apply them to any tune she might wish to play. I wrote out some basic tablature for the major, minor and dominant seventh chords with roots on both the E and A strings, as well as introduced the half-diminished voicings so that we could really work on bringing out the minor 2-5 sound in ‘Remember’.
I decided that after introducing this resource that we should focus in on our chosen standard and try to loop the A section in time together, so that we can really get it sounding as good as possible. I think that in these early lessons its very important to be focused on one thing at a time before moving on.
This was the extent of my plan for this lesson.
Resources provided is this lesson-
Lesson Three- Evidence of teaching
In lesson three we started by me introducing my resource that I had produced of all the chord shapes which I have previously mentioned. I spoke about how I have included this half-diminished voicing in the resource, and I encouraged Emily to look at this in more detail in her own time. I was very impressed how Emily was able to pick up these new shapes very quickly and found my resource intuitive and easy to read. (clip)
We then started to play ‘Remember’, looping the A section in time to really get it sounding good. I noticed that Emily was having some trouble with the last bar of the A section, as this bar contained two chords within one bar unlike the others which only contained one. I spent some time speaking on how to remember where the 2 and 5 chord are in relation to one another. This is really great information to have, and Emily was able to internalise this very quickly. I was proud to see that by the end of the lesson she could play this A section competently. (clip)
We also briefly spoke about comping rhythms and being able to play some more interesting sounds using these basic chord structures. Whilst this isn’t something we properly worked on, Emily did start to incorporate this into her playing straight away.
This was where our lesson had to end as out time in the practice room was up. Despite being cut short, I was very happy with how this lesson turned out. I was able to introduce some resources, which were very useful to my student and will really help them in their independent practice time. Furthermore, we were able to successfully play half of the form of our chosen standard. This is fantastic progress, as when we started these lessons Emily was completely unfamiliar with the voicings that I was showing her, but she was very good at picking them up quickly. I could tell that she was putting in the practice outside of lessons. For our next lesson, I wanted to make sure that I start to introduce her to some new concepts, so that she can learn even more on the instrument and develop her technique even further.
Video for this lesson-
Lesson Four (15/4/26)
For my final lesson with Emily, I chose to focus on some different skills on the guitar. We had done some great work on chords thus far, yet this is only one section of the guitar. We next needed to do some work on scales. Scales are very important on guitar, especially for technique, as well as knowing which notes to play when improvising. I wanted to really focus in on the pentatonic scale, and use this as way to explore fundamental ideas like hand position etc.
For this reason, I prepared a resource with the pentatonic scale on it that I planned to give to Emily at the end of our lesson. This would be another vital hand-out for her to take home and study independently.
I then planned to go onto talking about how this scale can be used in a musical context. As I have previously mentioned, I think that its vital that any theoretical concepts in music be put in context as soon as possible, so that the student can understand why we learn what we do.
Resources for this lesson-
Lesson Four- Evidence of teaching
I started this lesson, as I mentioned earlier, with an explanation of some basic technique things such as hand position. I then showed Emily the minor pentatonic that I wrote out on the resource bit by bit. I also used this as further opportunity to explain the proper technique, such as the idea of using one finger per fret when playing these scales. Emily did very well in understanding the makeup of the scale. I also took some time to emphasise which note was which. This is a continuation of my personal rhetoric that it is essential to know exactly what we are playing on the guitar and thinking beyond fret numbers and shapes.
We then practiced this for a while at a slow tempo. Emily was often making the mistake of playing a natural sixth as opposed to a minor seventh, especially within the second octave of our scale. I spent some time focusing in on this part of the scale and making sure Emily understood why it was this particular way.
Once this was ironed out, I then showed Emily what sort of chords we would use this scale over. This helps by putting the scale into context. I got her to play a chord while I improvise over the scale so that she could get a good idea of what sounds were available to her by simply using the scale which we were working on in the lesson. I got Emily to then try improvising over this chord herself, just so she too could have a try at finding the notes she liked.
This was where our final lesson concluded as we had run out of time. I was very proud of how Emily conducted herself in this lesson, and how quickly she was able to pick up what I was showing her.
Video for this lesson-
Conclusion I hope that Emily was able to learn as much from me about the guitar as I did from teaching her. I think that I did a great job in my resource production, as well as my patience and explanations of what we were working on, as well as why is what important to her as a player. I think for future students I will definitely build a wider library of resources to have with me at lessons, as well as maybe working on building more of a relationship with my students. This being said, I am certain that with more lessons I definitely could have taught Emily a lot more about the instrument. I think I also should’ve planned to a time scale more closely, as my plans were looser and more open to change. Whilst this helped in some ways, it also meant that many of our
Note- I apologise for not embedding my videos, I tried to do this but something went wrong and it wouldn’t let me.
