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Houston, Texas Guitar Lessons

How to Find the right guitar instructor in Houston

As a city, Houston, Texas is growing faster than ever. The city provides so much industry and art. When it comes to learning guitar in Houston, you are looking at a great population of local artists with the experience to teach it. Consider checking out some of the musicians and teachers above. There are many things one might want to consider when they are taking guitar lessons in Houston, Texas. Outside of how far they are willing to travel, or if they want to take lessons at home, there is a range of everything from styles to types. Check it all out!

From Steve Turner to Johnny Watson, Houston boasts some serious history and talent. When you figure out what type of guitar you want to learn, whether it be acoustic or electric, and then figure out what type of fingerstyle and flatpacking - which are really just techniques. You may want to look for an instructor who understands your needs.

One of the things we do at lessons.com is to provide guitar lessons in houston and work to find the best match for you. Get inspired in Houston Texas and take a guitar lesson today! Whether it be online lessons or in person, this city is filled with help.

Featured Instructor: Johnathan Dethloff

Houston Guitar Teacher Johnathan Dethloff talks to Lessons.com about his guitar lessons and his approach to helping his guitar students learn guitar. In this interview, you’ll hear what Johnathan has to say about the art of teaching guitar and how he guides his students to playing guitar they way they want to play. You can read the interview below, or check out the Johnathan Dethloff guitar teacher page to watch it.

Houston Guitar Teacher Johnathan Dethloff

Lessons.com: So we’re here today talking with Johnathan Dethloff. He’s a guitar teacher on Lessons.com. Johnathan, thanks so much for joining us.

Johnathan Dethloff: Yeah. No problem. Happy to be here.

Lessons.com: So, maybe you could start by telling us where you’re located – what city and what state you’re in.

Johnathan Dethloff: I’m currently in Houston Texas; I’ve been here for quite awhile. I travel around, and I also teach guitar in outlying regions, like Katy, and the Woodlands, and stuff like that, but I’m mostly right in the center of Houston.

Lessons.com: So, do you travel to your guitar students’ homes or do they also come to you?

Johnathan Dethloff: It’s both – all the way around. I like to kind of move my days around. I’ll have certain days where I’ll bounce around all day, or, once a week, I’ll travel to Katy, and I like to hit a couple spots along the way and give a couple of guitar lessons out there. So, it’s pretty flexible.

Lessons.com: What’s the guitar lesson climate like where you are? Do you find a lot of people like to learn guitar in Houston?

Johnathan Dethloff: Yeah, there are quite a lot of people who want to learn guitar in Houston. Houston’s a big city with all kinds of different people. It’s really a lot of smaller cities, kind of jammed into one, so there’s a strong guitar lesson climate, for sure. There’s other instruments, as well, but nothing really competes with guitar. Everybody wants to learn to play guitar. You can’t blame them.

Lessons.com: And what do you find are the styles of music most people want to learn? What kind of guitar styles do people most often request?

Johnathan Dethloff: It’s really versatile, but I get a lot of everything – blues, metal, jazz, what have you, but I think the most prominent one would probably be people who want to learn to play and sing songs with their friends – songwriter style – they want to learn to play their favorite songs and sing them at parties or around the campfire.

Lessons.com: Makes sense. And, do you find that you teach guitar to more adults or children? What’s the ratio there?

Johnathan Dethloff: That’s pretty even actually. I would say that there’s just as many adults as children, just again, because there’s just such a diverse group of people – I get all kinds of people.

Lessons.com: And, do you have an age requirement for your guitar students? How young are you willing to teach guitar to?

Johnathan Dethloff: I go pretty young. Usually, five or six would be about the minimum because, you know, with a younger kid like that, you’re not exactly imprinting the knowledge directly onto them, you’re more kind of getting their mind to think about music, so they can grow into it.

Lessons.com: Of course. Could you tell us a little bit about your overall approach to teaching guitar? What do you like to focus on?

Johnathan Dethloff: I don’t like to have a uniform, go-to plan, because everybody’s different. Everybody likes different things. Everybody likes different kinds of music. Everybody learns at a different pace. One method might click with somebody or another method clicks with another person, or so on. So I really like to tailor it, as much as I can, to the person individually, because nobody wants to have something essentially shoved in their face, that they’re not interested in. So, you gotta tailor the knowledge and the theory; it can be the kind of boring stuff at the beginning; you gotta kind of taper it with the fun stuff too. So it’s all about getting a feel for what the person likes, who they are, and what they like to do, and then go from there, and kind of feel it out as we go along.

Lessons.com: Yeah, it makes sense. Learning guitar is a very personal process.

Johnathan Dethloff: Exactly.

Lessons.com: And can you tell us little bit more about your background. You mentioned that you travel around a lot.

Johnathan Dethloff: Yeah, yeah. Well, I started playing guitar at age nine. It was lucky for me – I don’t remember being nine years old – but nine-year-old me decided to start playing music. So I got really, really, really into. I took guitar lessons a little bit myself, but, for the most part, I was self-taught; and then most of my experience is self-taught, because, as soon as I could, you know I was a young teenager, I formed a band, and started to do everything I could. Since then, I’ve toured around and played all kinds of big festivals and shows – played with big bands and what have you. So, once you get a taste of that, it’s hard to not want to keep going back to it. So, eventually though, I realized that I kind of wanted to do something during the daytime, as well. Right? Unfortunately, being a musician doesn’t always pay the best, especially when you’re trying to do your own music, as opposed to being a cover band or something like that.

So, I thought about teaching guitar, and I started when I lived in Austin, and it went very well, and I realized how much fun it was, because it was, essentially, getting to play music with this person that was just getting into music, and I could show them how awesome it is and how exciting it is, and it started working really well, so I decided to grow it, and here I am, and now I have twenty plus guitar students, and I love every single one of them. It’s awesome to be doing it every day.

Lessons.com: That’s wonderful. Can you tell us a little bit about your guitar lesson fees and your scheduling options? How do you like to work your lessons?

Johnathan Dethloff: Well, I like to work the scheduling – again – based on how somebody … again, everybody’s schedule is different. Right? So, it’s important to be flexible both for … the student and the teacher to be flexible, I think. Because, the important thing is that the person keeps playing and doesn’t fall out of it. It’s always disappointing every time, when somebody new comes along, and the sequences (don’t?) happen just right, and they kind of fall out of it. It has to be part of a routine.

So it can be really up to whatever works for the student. I try to push for more, because the more you put in, the more you’ll get out of it, but once a week, I would say, is a good minimum. I do have some guitar students that are every other week, or twice a week even; it just really depends, so, again, it’s very personal; it’s all about finding the right sequence of events that gets that person to stick around and really get into it.

Lessons.com: That makes sense. Sure. So, can you tell us a little bit about your equipment, I see you have a number of guitars there. Can you show us some of your favorite pieces there?

Johnathan Dethloff: I live with two of my bandmates, so, as if one of us didn’t individually have enough equipment, now it’s just a mountain of stuff here. Yeah, I have pretty much anything you could possibly need here, and these are only some of the guitars. In a room over this way (Editor’s note: Johnathan points to his right.) there are other guitars that are gathering dust. We do all our self-recording; we have all percussion instruments. There’s a piano over here (Johnathan points to a space to his left.) you can’t see, but, basically, we have really anything you can possibly imagine – too much even – too much.

Lessons.com: Understood. And do you offer guidance to your guitar students about their own guitar and equipment purchases?

Johnathan Dethloff: Yeah, absolutely. Many times I’ll go – if somebody’s brand new to guitar, or whatever instrument it might be – I’ll offer to go with them somewhere. Online is obviously a good option, but, a lot of times, people want to walk out of the store with something, so, many times, I’ll offer to go with them, free of charge, just to help them pick out something to get them going for it. And, online, if they send me a price range and what they’re looking for, I’ll happily look up things and send them their way – offer guidance or what have you.

Lessons.com: Sure … that’s great! Well listen, we’d love to hear you play guitar, just to get a sense of the stuff you like to play or teach.

Johnathan Dethloff: Yeah, yeah. I really have learned, and can teach, almost any genre of guitar, but I’d say some of my personal favorites are acoustic finger style, which is a lot of fingerpicking. I grew up playing a lot of blues and rock, then I moved into a kind of metal phase, and I’m in this folk kind of phase now; so, I’ve really seen a lot of different colors. So, let’s see now.

Editor: Johnathan starts playing a a very cool finger style guitar passage that you really should see and hear. You’ll be glad you did, and you will definitely get a sense of what taking guitar lessons in Houston with Johnathan Dethloff can do to help you learn guitar. To see and hear Johnathan play visit the Johnathan Dethloff guitar teacher page.

After Johnathan finishes playing guitar …

Johnathan Dethloff: That’s just a little riff.

Lessons.com: That’s cool. That’s really beautiful. Thank you for playing that.

Johnathan Dethloff: Yeah. No problem.

Lessons.com: Thank you for joining us, and we’re looking forward to seeing you on Lessons.com in the future.

Johnathan Dethloff: Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you.