Guitar playing is an excellent alternative to wind, brass and percussion based wider opportunities solutions, and appeals to children of all ages, and boys and girls alike.

Why Guitar?

Guitar courses are ideal for groups wishing to develop their understanding of how sounds can be combined to produce melody, harmony and chords. They will gain an understanding of texture in music, and how parts can be combined. They will also consider ways to represent sound visually, and build textures. It is possible to tailor a scheme for anything from a half term to a year, that addresses all the NC key elements of music, whilst scaffolding the learning process and fostering a love of music and music making. It is also a very 'boy friendly' solution to ensure enthusiasm and engagement.

Learning Guitar

Typically, a course will begin with a number of sessions given to a mixture of rhythm games, and playing pitch games on the open strings. Pupils will learn short pieces using a combination of rhythm patterns on the open strings, and then as fretted notes are learnt, patterns on a single string.

At the same time, pupils begin to learn chords, on both four and later six strings, and become familiar with the names of each string and the effect of covering each fret.

Singing, vocalisations and percussion are quickly integrated into the pieces learnt, to provide a variety to the texture and further differentiation of challenge.

Gradually, the group are introduced to more challenging chord and melody playing and an increasing number of parts in combination, so that they need to work hard in actively listening to the sound produced, for clues to their own role.

What Next?

Following a wider opportunities guitar based unit of work, a next steps club is a popular route to continued guitar based music-making. However, guitar playing transfers very smoothly to other wider opportunities or workshop genres, such as Samba, Steel Pans, Mini-pans, Junk Music, or with a course on melody instruments, such as woodwind or mixed brass, which can be integrated into use of the guitar skills learnt.

Locate other local schools that have been part of the project.

For resources relating to guitar, visit the Resource Library.

Links to guitar websites, and web based resources, visit the links directory.