The first lesson for a beginner is all over the map. Age, gender, hand size, strength, maturity, previous musical knowledge, and many more factors fall into consideration.

Let's start with the young beginner. The youngest student I ever taught was five years old. He studied, and I do mean studied, for nearly two years before I moved away and lost touch. Let's call him "T." His parents were incredibly encouraging and had really exposed "T" to music; country music in particular. They also went all out and bought him a brand new Gibson ES-335. We put light gauge strings on and next thing I knew he was playing. His incredibly tiny fingers didn't seem to impair him at all. It did take a while to get off the ground but after some months of basic reading, learning chords, and strumming. I introduced him to the basic folk fingerpicking styles. The first was the "Travis" style named after Merle Travis and used by everyone from Chet Atkins, Paul Simon, to Hot Tuna and everyone else. I found out from Mom and Dad that "T" was practicing nearly the entire evening. Man, do I wish I knew what happed to "T."

But the point of starting with "T" is that he really was the exception. "T" had everything in his favor. He was young enough to not understand failure. In fact, I would say that he just expected that he could do it. That's another thing that is not typical. It seems that one of the first hurdles with many students was just getting them to look beyond today and trust me.

For a parent that is trying to determine the right age to start a child, here are a few guidelines.

First, most girls have better manual dexterity than most boys for most of their lives. The word "most" is important. We are dealing with statistical averages. Also, girls do mature a little ahead of their male peers. Let's say that you, as a parent, have a eight year old daughter who says she wants to learn guitar. Here's a checklist:

Math skills: a student who is average to above has demonstrated the ability to handle some basic logic. This is important down the road.

Puzzle solving skills: a child who loves puzzles, brain teasers, and other mental skill games has some qualities that also help.

Previous exposure: This might be one of the more important things to note. If the child has a good singing voice (not Mom's opinion but maybe a teacher's) or already plays another instrument. A child that already plays another instrument is going to start fast.

Environment: A child that is surrounded by music will have reflexes that they don't even know they have. Children that come from a home where music is playing all the time (and I don't mean Rap) has many tools already developed.

High scholastic skills: Usually mean the child not only can learn but enjoys it. This becomes more important if the teacher you select is not a plunk-a-plunk-take-the-money-and-run type. The best teachers don't always have the ability to keep students for very long. Students that don't "get it" usually drop out sooner or later.

But what are the traits that work against a student. Here's a few guidelines to watch:

A.D.D. or A.D.H.D: You might think I'm going to say that an ADD or ADHD child isn't a good candidate. If that were true, most of the greatest musicians wouldn't be where they are now. In fact, ADD and ADHD children have a pretty high incidence of creativity. I am ADD. I didn't find out until I was 48 years old but I did find out. It explained a lot. If they cured ADD and ADHD tomorrow, thirty years later someone would wake up and realize that there has been no new art, music, literature, etc. Let's face it. Without the wild mind of creativity, we'd all be bored to death. But, it does mean that a child may have some trouble with the discipline of practicing.

To be cont'd...