By: Jamie Holroyd
Teaching the guitar can sometimes feel like quite an isolated profession. But one event that brings together guitarists from all over the U.K. and abroad each year is the Registry of Guitar Tutors Conference held in London every September.
As well as being a social hub for teachers, the RGT conference allows guitar teachers to take a seat in the student’s chair for one afternoon with attendees choosing to sit in on four seminars that cover topics such as RGT exams, online teaching, various teaching styles and instrumental demos.
Guitars on display at RGT 2013
As usual, Director and RGT founder, Tony Skinner, kicked things off with a welcoming and assuring introductory speech explaining how the conference works in the wonderfully refurbished University of West London theatre.
The first seminar I caught this year, was Matt Warnock’s ‘Teaching in the Internet Age’ which began with an interesting explanation of why and how he teaches online, before he quickly moved into a very interactive Q&A session, resulting in almost every teacher in the audience raising their hand.
The ways in which the guitar can be taught have changed considerably within recent years, and the process of setting up an online teaching business can be overwhelming.
But, this seminar clearly inspired everyone in the room, as it explained how any guitar teacher can start teaching online quickly, easily and effectively.
Dr. Matthew Warnock discusses teaching guitar in the internet age.
Fresh off his flight from Northern Island, David Millar gave a thorough explanation and demonstration of the beginner acoustic guitar grades on a borrowed Taylor acoustic that sounded very crisp and warm.
Miller’s many years of teaching experience came to light as he explained repertoire that worked well with students of different age groups, and showed those of us in attendance his various teaching resources.
Alan Brown presented a seminar about building a website in the afternoon that concentrated more on website layout, content, and ranking high on Google, which was a pleasant contrast from Matt’s earlier excellent session on Skype guitar lessons.
Tony Skinner’s many years of expertise as one of the UK’s leading guitar educators and speakers were evident in the last workshop I saw that Sunday, in which he explained common problems students face in exams and exactly what examiners look for before opening the guitar teacher’s forum.
To my knowledge, this was a rare seminar from Tony at an RGT conference, and I picked up many tips that have already been useful in my teaching; particularly one about how students see major and minor chords as colours, rather than emotions.
Let’s hope Tony’s seminars remain a feature of future RGT conferences.
RGT Director Tony Skinner addresses audience
A special last minute performance was put together to close the afternoon that featured a beautiful solo performance from acoustic wiz Hugh Burns, followed by jazz guitar duet busk of ‘Blue Bossa’ with Lee Hodgson on electric guitar.
Hodgson brought the conference to a close with a requested backing track performance of “Country Boy”, which helped close the day in fine fashion.
Performing a technical song like that in front of a room full of guitar teachers can’t be an easy task!
The RGT conference is a must attend for any serious guitar teacher and is well worth the trip for any guitarist living in or around the U.K..
About Jamie Holroyd
Jamie Holroyd is a U.K. based educator, author and performer as well as the founder of www.jamieholroydguitar.com, a free website with lessons to help students across the globe play jazz and blues guitar.
