What Taylor Swift Can Teach Music Teachers

Billboard recently ranked country darling Taylor Swift as the top music-industry earner in the past year, beating out veterans like U2 and shoo-ins like Adele.

The annual “Top 40 Money Makers” list takes into account U.S. income sources, including touring, recorded-music sales, publishing royalties and payments from an array of digital services.  According to Billboard, Swift’s net earnings totaled up to about $35.7 million, 17% more than last year’s top earner, Lady Gaga.  Not bad for a 22-year-old!

In addition to her music career, Swift has also recently delved into the film scene, lending her voice to Dr. Seuss’ ‘The Lorax’.  According to LA Times interviews and videos surfacing after the movie premiere, Swift even went out of her way to share her skills by teaching costar Zac Efron a few chords on the guitar.  Efron reported nothing but great things, saying, “In the past, everyone who’s tried to teach me guitar starts with music theory and stuff like that. I tend to just doze off after a little while. She went straight into songs. She taught me, like, four chords, and I’m already playing all the good campfire songs.”

Could Swift have a career in teaching music at some point?  Maybe!  For one thing, she took into consideration something pretty important, that some teachers overlook: what the student wants. So what can music teachers learn from the country singer?  Here’s a great take from the Start Teaching Guitar blog:

1) People want to play songs.
Taylor Swift understands something that a lot of guitar teachers tend to forget: People want to play songs!  They are less interested in music theory, sight reading, scales and chord inversions,  and more interested in being able to pick up an acoustic guitar and play some songs for their friends. This is especially true for beginners.

Later on in their musical journey, your students will be more interested in the technical aspects.  But in the early days of playing the guitar, you need to make sure you’re giving them what they really want, or they may not stick around long enough to learn anything else.

2) You don’t need to play like Steve Vai to be a great teacher.
There’s always something unique that you can share with your students, and something special that differentiates you from everyone else. It may be your extensive knowledge of music theory, or it might just be the fact that you actually care. You will tend to attract students who are looking for that specific thing, so just be yourself and do what you do best. Always try to keep learning and growing as a player and a teacher, but never lose sight of the things that allow you to genuinely connect with your students.

3) It’s critical to understand your student’s expectations.
All those other teachers Zac Efron worked with probably thought they were doing everything right. They started out trying to build a strong foundation with theory, the basics of music and making sure he understood the fundamentals of how music works. Sounds great, but they failed to understand what he really wanted from his guitar lessons.