Working on sitting position

I took my home-made footstools to school and have introduced the students to a classical playing position. This has been very difficult to do in a large class setting. This year all three of my classes are over twenty kids. You quickly realize how much more difficult something like this is when you see 24 middle-school students in front of you doing it incorrectly.

I thought, "Now, what?". I really struggled with this yesterday and couldn't quite figure out what the problem was. I finally realized that most of the problems were coming from the students trying to sit so that the guitar and both feet were facing forward. If you're holding a guitar correctly in classical position the front of the guitar is basically facing the direction of your left foot, but your hips and other foot are facing a different direction.

This was easily resolved by simply getting them to turn their chairs at an angle and point their footstool toward their music stand. This way they could more easily visualize the sitting position and face their music. This is just one of many things that you never think about in a private lesson. You simply have the student make a couple of adjustments. But when there are twenty people in front of you doing it incorrectly, you really have to think about what it is you actually do.

I've also made a huge poster of Scott Tennant and his "3 points of contact" from his sitting position diagrams in his method book. I made it using Publisher. It's pretty funny to walk in and see a 3-foot Scott sitting there. It's really good way of simplifying the process and talking about it during class. "Sternum, inner thigh, leg", I think it is. Also, "the weight of your left arm holds the instrument in place". That's another book we got at the workshop. Nice, Scott. It's called Scott Tennant's Basic Classical Guitar Method.