Key Stage 3, GCSE Music

Students who can play guitar, both solo and in groups, can contribute a great deal to the musical life of a school. At the same time they can satisfy many of the National Curriculum for Music Key Stage 3 requirements. At GCSE level, students who play guitar often have little difficulty in fulfilling the solo, ensemble, and improvisation requirements of the course.

How can Guitar Coach be used in school?

Guitar Coach teaches people how to play guitar from the complete beginner stage, however, the way Guitar Coach is used in school depends very much on the availability and accessibility of multimedia PCs and whether they are networked or not.

Where there is limited availability of PCs, students can learn with Guitar Coach individually at lunch times or after school. As the course is divided into 5 distinct levels with each level containing 5 lessons, progress can be monitored easily. Where there are a number of students learning at the same time, the ensemble pieces in the course provide material for classroom performances. The ensemble pieces consist of a tune part and 2 types of accompaniment part so both performers, and listeners can increase their understanding of the way songs work and the different roles instruments can play.

With wider availability of PCs Guitar Coach can be used in class music with the aid of a music teacher. Teachers do not need to be able to play themselves, as the course provides step by step instructions. The richness and depth of Guitar Coach provides ample scope for exploration of wider musical concepts.

In many schools where Guitar Coach is being used today, lunchtime or after school Guitar Clubs have emerged which offer good social, musical, and technological experience for students of all ages.

Peripatetic guitar teachers working in schools have found that Guitar Coach can be a useful additional resource, in particular for less able students. The video and practice facilities in the course provide excellent reference and motivation between lessons.

Why guitar?

The guitar is an instrument which can be used very easily in everyday music making and the standard of playing required for people to feel confident can be achieved in a relatively short space of time. In addition, guitars (particularly nylon string classical guitars) are very inexpensive when compared to other instruments, and can be purchased even more cheaply in quantities. Whether students have their own guitars or whether they use school instruments, Guitar Coach provides a fast convenient and inexpensive way of learning to play.

What does Guitar Coach provide for students?

• Skilled Hands

Good playing technique in strumming, fingerstyle and classical guitar.

• Good group music skills

All practising in the course involves playing along with accompaniments.

• A thorough understanding of the different ways the guitar is used

In a typical song from the course, students learn both how to play the tune part and how to play the accompaniment part. Learning how to turn a basic set of chords into an effective accompaniment is a key guitar skill.

• Good reading skills

Guitar tablature, chord boxes, fingerstyle and strumming patterns, rhythms, common time signatures, the ability to interpret a song score from a guitarists viewpoint.

• A good understanding of musical concepts and in particular how they relate to the guitar

Pitch and comparing pitches (tuning)
Beat/rhythm
Accompanying principles
Practising methods

Since its release, Guitar Coach has received widespread acclaim from all sections of the mainstream and educational press. In addition, the overwhelming view of hundreds of teachers who saw Guitar Coach in action at both the educational technology show BETT 98 in January, and the Education Show in March, was that Guitar Coach was one of the most useful and impressive pieces of software at the show and that having studied it at first hand they could see its tremendous potential as an educational resource.

Demonstrating Guitar Coach to one of the many educators who visited the Charanga stand at BETT 98. Filming for the recent Sky News TV feature on Charanga.

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Some recent comment about Guitar Coach from the educational press...

"This particular CD-ROM has proved to be very popular because it is a very well-considered guitar course with 5 levels of achievement with many lessons within each level. There are voice messages throughout and regular video examples showing the correct way to hold the instrument and the many techniques introduced. There is also a tuner button to tune each string with clear aural acoustic guitar playback. All the material is attractively and clearly presented both in visual and musical terms and would apply to either classical or folk (or even electric) guitar players Overall, there is a great deal of material to work on and this represents very good value at the price. As this product shows, the CD-ROM, if well-designed, can offer far more than a typical tutor book." - Music Teacher, March 1998

"This is an exceptionally creative and successful use of the CD-ROM medium ... It has been produced with care and the quality of the product shines through." - Interactive Magazine (Managing IT in Schools), Issue 17, February/March 1998

"A gem from this year's seasonal offerings of CD-ROM's ... Guitar Coach offers a complete primer on one CD." - Education Guardian, December 16th 1997

"The package has an easy to use interface and the course, which is made up of 25 lessons, is clearly presented throughout and makes full use of multimedia." - Educational Computing and Technology