Developing a Curriculum for Intermediate Guitar Students: A Teacher’s Guide

As a guitar teacher, developing a structured curriculum for intermediate students is key to helping them transition from basic proficiency to advanced playing. Intermediate students have mastered the fundamentals, but they need targeted lessons to refine their skills, expand their musical knowledge, and keep them engaged. This guide will walk you through the essential steps for creating a curriculum that meets the needs of intermediate guitar students and helps them progress to the next level.

1. Assess the Student’s Current Skill Level

Before developing a curriculum, it’s important to assess each student’s current skill level. This will help you tailor the curriculum to address their specific strengths and weaknesses, ensuring that the lessons are neither too easy nor too challenging.

Key Areas to Assess:

• Technique: Evaluate the student’s proficiency with techniques like alternate picking, fingerpicking, hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides.
• Chords and Scales: Determine the student’s familiarity with major, minor, and seventh chords, as well as their knowledge of scales such as the pentatonic, major, and minor scales.
• Rhythm and Timing: Assess the student’s ability to keep time, play with a metronome, and execute various strumming and picking patterns.
• Musicality: Evaluate the student’s sense of dynamics, phrasing, and ability to play expressively.

This assessment will provide a baseline for setting goals and creating a curriculum that addresses the student’s unique needs and areas for growth.

2. Set Clear, Achievable Goals

Setting clear, achievable goals is essential for keeping intermediate students motivated and focused. These goals should be challenging enough to push the student’s abilities while being realistic and attainable within a set timeframe.

How to Set Effective Goals:

• Short-Term Goals: These might include mastering a specific technique, learning a new scale, or playing a song at a certain tempo. Short-term goals provide immediate milestones that keep students motivated.
• Long-Term Goals: These could involve preparing for a performance, composing an original piece, or achieving fluency in a particular style of music. Long-term goals give students a sense of direction and purpose in their studies.
• Skill-Based Goals: Focus on technical improvement, such as increasing finger speed, improving chord transitions, or refining tone control.

Regularly review and adjust these goals as the student progresses to ensure they remain relevant and challenging.

3. Incorporate a Variety of Techniques and Styles

Intermediate students benefit from exposure to a wide range of techniques and musical styles. Incorporating variety into your curriculum not only keeps lessons interesting but also helps students develop versatility as musicians.

Key Techniques to Include:

• Advanced Chords: Introduce barre chords, inversions, and extended chords like sus, add9, and diminished chords.
• Scales and Modes: Expand the student’s knowledge of scales by introducing modes (Dorian, Phrygian, Mixolydian) and more complex scales like the blues scale.
• Fingerstyle Techniques: Teach fingerpicking patterns, Travis picking, and hybrid picking to broaden the student’s playing capabilities.
• Lead Guitar Techniques: Include techniques such as bending, vibrato, legato, tapping, and sweep picking to enhance the student’s lead guitar skills.

Explore Different Musical Styles:

• Blues: Explore 12-bar blues, pentatonic scales, and blues licks to develop improvisation skills.
• Rock: Teach power chords, palm muting, and soloing techniques common in rock music.
• Jazz: Introduce jazz chord progressions, improvisation over changes, and swing rhythm to expand musical horizons.
• Folk/Acoustic: Focus on fingerstyle playing, open tunings, and strumming patterns found in folk music.

By exposing students to a variety of techniques and styles, you help them develop a well-rounded skill set and discover their own musical preferences.

4. Emphasize Music Theory and Ear Training

At the intermediate level, it’s important to deepen the student’s understanding of music theory and improve their ear training. These skills are essential for more advanced playing and for developing a greater appreciation of music.

Essential Theory Topics:

• Chord Construction: Teach how chords are built from scales, including triads, seventh chords, and extensions.
• Scale Relationships: Explain the relationship between scales and chords, and how to use scales for improvisation.
• Harmony and Progressions: Introduce common chord progressions (I-IV-V, ii-V-I) and how to create harmonies.
• Modal Interchange: Teach how to borrow chords from parallel modes to create interesting chord progressions.

Ear Training Exercises:

• Interval Recognition: Practice identifying intervals by ear, both melodically and harmonically.
• Chord Identification: Work on recognizing different chord types (major, minor, dominant, diminished) by ear.
• Transcription Practice: Encourage students to transcribe melodies, riffs, and solos by ear to improve their listening skills.

Integrating theory and ear training into your curriculum will empower students to understand the music they play and enhance their ability to improvise and compose.

5. Introduce Improvisation and Composition

Improvisation and composition are key areas for intermediate students to explore. These activities encourage creativity, help students apply their technical skills in a musical context, and develop their unique musical voice.

How to Teach Improvisation:

• Start with Scales: Use familiar scales (like the pentatonic or blues scales) as a foundation for improvisation. Encourage students to experiment with different rhythms, note sequences, and phrasing.
• Explore Chord Tones: Teach students how to target chord tones within their improvisation to create more melodic solos.
• Practice Over Backing Tracks: Provide backing tracks in various styles and keys to help students practice improvising in a musical context.

Encourage Composition:

• Songwriting Exercises: Assign songwriting tasks, such as composing a melody over a chord progression or creating a chord progression using specific chords.
• Lyric Writing: For students interested in writing songs with lyrics, introduce basic lyric-writing techniques and encourage them to express themselves through words.
• Record and Review: Have students record their compositions and improvisations, then review them together to identify areas for improvement and celebrate successes.

By incorporating improvisation and composition into the curriculum, you help students develop confidence in their creativity and encourage them to explore their musical ideas.

6. Foster Performance Skills

Performance is an important aspect of musical development for intermediate students. Whether it’s performing for family and friends, participating in recitals, or playing in a band, students should have opportunities to practice performing in front of others.

Building Performance Confidence:

• Start Small: Begin with low-pressure performance opportunities, such as playing a song during a lesson or recording a performance to share with family.
• Organize Recitals: Arrange student recitals or showcases where they can perform for their peers and family. This gives them a goal to work towards and a chance to experience live performance.
• Encourage Group Playing: Encourage students to play with others, whether in a duet, ensemble, or band. Group playing builds teamwork skills and helps students learn to listen and adapt to other musicians.

Providing opportunities for performance helps students build confidence, refine their playing under pressure, and gain valuable experience that prepares them for more advanced musical endeavors.

7. Regularly Review and Adjust the Curriculum

Finally, it’s important to regularly review and adjust the curriculum based on the student’s progress and changing interests. Intermediate students are at a stage where their musical tastes and goals may evolve, so being flexible with your curriculum ensures that lessons remain relevant and engaging.

How to Review and Adjust the Curriculum:

• Periodic Assessments: Conduct regular assessments to gauge the student’s progress in key areas like technique, theory, and repertoire.
• Student Feedback: Ask for the student’s input on what they enjoy and what they’d like to focus on more. This feedback can help guide your lesson planning.
• Adapt to Interests: If a student develops a new interest in a particular genre or technique, incorporate that into the curriculum to keep them motivated and excited about learning.

By staying attuned to the student’s needs and interests, you can create a dynamic and responsive curriculum that supports their continued growth as a musician.

Conclusion

Developing a curriculum for intermediate guitar students involves balancing technical skill-building with creativity, theory, and performance. By assessing the student’s current abilities, setting clear goals, incorporating a variety of techniques and styles, emphasizing theory and ear training, introducing improvisation and composition, fostering performance skills, and regularly reviewing the curriculum, you can create a comprehensive learning experience that helps students transition to advanced levels of guitar playing. With a well-structured curriculum, you’ll keep students engaged, motivated, and on the path to becoming confident and versatile guitarists.