Here's something that was controversial (to me), but once I wrapped my mind around it I really liked it. I have a guitar student who is a purist. He believes that students need to start off with the proper chords on full sized instruments because they need to stretch their hands and get used to quick changes. That's definitely true... for guitarists who love to practice for hours a day and will probably take grades 9 -> music. However, for my grade 6 who is taking music as an elective, and only has two classes available, learning the guitar in that short amount of time is very challenging. Musical Futures International advocates putting a piece of sponge under the first three strings of the guitar, then teaching the students the simplified chords. At first, this bothered me because I didn't want to teach the students something incorrect and then have to fix their hand positions later on (a.k.a. perfect practice makes perfect, right?). However, I realised that if the students still used the correct fingers in the simplified chords, then it'd be easier to move to the real chords later.

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