JazzGuitarLessons.net, improve your jazz guitar playing with a real teacher. You're listening to a podcast, which is a micro podcast on how teaching makes you a better jazz guitarist. Welcome to jazz guitar lessons, where we help guitarists learn jazz faster, express themselves more fluently, and have fun along the way. My name is Mark and if you're looking to learn jazz, form better practice habits, and especially if you enjoy a French accent, make sure to subscribe.
Yeah, so when I say my micro podcast for today, I'll try to do not as usual and bore you for 20 minutes with everything I'm talking about. This time we're only going to address one specific thing you can apply this weekend whenever you're ready. So teaching makes you a better learner or it makes you a better jazz guitarist. It makes you a better anything. If you're willing to teach what you know, you can still be a beginner and teach and, of course, on the guitar and you will help your music tremendously. Why is that? Well, because as we teach, we have to put ourselves in the shoes of a beginner. We have to deconstruct the most basic materials, and it helps a lot. It helps a teacher, I think, more than the student. And go figure, look at this. Jazz guitar lessons are the best seven years of my life now. I've been teaching extensively, and I think that's it's a teaching experience that gave me most of my musical knowledge because I had to stop and say, hey, wait, what about this lick, what about this chord? What about this scale? What do I know about it? And how can I transfer it to somebody else? So as you ask yourself the question, how can I show this complex thing like an altered scale or a lick, how can I make it easy to understand and learn? You have yourself to internalize it much more deeply than you did in the first place.
So this is a really fascinating thing. So for guitar, here's my advice. You should, I think, teach guitar whenever you can. So say to kids or to friends or family, people that are willing, you'll be amazed at what you can do once you're confronted with somebody that you're like, oh shit, I don't know. I say, I don't know much about guitar, but I know I know more than this other guy, and I'll try to make this stuff come across and show him that's how you put your third finger when you play a C chord, or even that's how you tune the guitar, or even that's how you how do you find the names of the notes? If this is still a challenge to you, explaining it to someone else will make it become easier and easier and easier every time you do it with someone else. So that's my recommendation for the weekend, especially if you're staying inside now. It's February, so it might be snowy. Anyways, it is here or cold, so if you're not doing skiing or skating or whatever outside, you can take the weekend and teach your friends.
And there is a few more life examples I'd like to discuss now, since we're on the topic, just to show you how it is important to teach in different aspects, different areas of expertise to keep honing your craft or keep perfecting polishing your art. The first example that comes to mind is at the dojo when people teach martial arts, which I started to redo recently. For the record, it's amazing how black belts in karate or whatever martial art realize that oh, in order to keep getting better after your black belt, you have to teach it to others. You have to pass it on. And that's really one of the great means to get better. So it's kind of selfish by the same time, it helps others. So it's great.
And another example of trying to teach something that helps you, helps a teacher in the end, is teaching your own language one on one, or not even teaching, but say we were hanging out and, you know, we're grabbing a beer together. And, you know, I'm not, English and Francophone. My first language is French. So say I had a spin in my sentence. My word. And I made a grammar mistake in English. If you would like to correct my mistake and go. Hey, Mark, this is not how you use that verb or that idiom. Whatever. You would kind of have to deconstruct it for yourself and see how you understand your native language, English. If I were to teach you French, that would be the same thing. I would have to deconstruct and say, why is that word used there? Or why is that? That's the order of the words, what you're using, why is the comma in that spot or etc.. Right. So that's it for podcast number 28. See, I only get you for about four minutes. I'll see you soon on jazz guitar lessons.net. Improve your jazz guitar playing with a real teacher.
