The Midwest's Premier Guitar Instruction Service!
Over 10,000 satisfied students taught since 1979!

 

Not all guitar teaching services are created
equal. Get ready to be enlightened folks!
...and the truth shall set you FREE!

 

"Eric Mantel is like the Michael Moore of guitar instruction!
He's blowing the whistle and exposing the truth about what's
really going on in the world of guitar instruction, etc."

 

The truth about learning guitar.
We have a national epidemic on our hands, folks. The mass majority of people who take guitar lessons in the United States, and even around the world, are being taught too slowly, they are being under challenged, paying outrageous money, and are purposely being held back. The reality of the situation is very simple. Most places that teach guitar have one goal in mind and that is to make money! Their goal is to make sure that your money is coming in on time each week or month, and to lock you into five or more years of guitar lessons! How does Eric know this? Because Eric used to work out of local music stores back in the late 70s and early 80s and witnessed first hand the madness and corruption that went along with working in this environment. Eric realized that none of his students were really learning anything, and these local music stores were laughing all the way to the bank while students got the short end of the stick. Eric was outraged by the conduct of these music stores and decided to take action!

For the record, this is not a personal attack on any individual or guitar teacher. It is an attack on the system and the teaching methods that these places have been using for decades. In fact, there are many great teachers out there and Eric is good friends with many of them. Again this is an attack on the system that has been used for so long, that has a lot of serious flaws in it. There are many people who have quit playing the guitar because they were being duped. Eric decided a very long time ago that there must be a better way to teach, so that people would see results right away and be excited about playing the guitar. The bottom line is that people want to see results right away, and they want to learn music that they like, and not be force fed something they don’t like.

 

1/2 hour lessons DO NOT WORK.
Most music centers usually offer ½ hour or 45 minute lessons. Common sense will tell you that you’re not going to learn anything in such a short time period, especially when the students are stacked one after the other, creating overlapping. Imagine going to college and the classes were only 30 minutes long, you had no time to get to your next class, and the teacher wrote everything out by hand for the entire class. It would be pointless to go to that school, right? An argument that these places will tell you is that 30 minutes is all you need, especially for young children. They will tell you that children have short attention spans. Eric has worked with children and adults who have ADD and ADHD for over 30 years and he believes that people with these conditions need more time, not less, to understand and absorb what they are learning.

Handwriting out material DOES NOT WORK.
If your teacher is handwriting your guitar lessons and songs out during your actual lessons – RUN FOR THE HILLS AND DON’T LOOK BACK! This is called the milking technique and is designed to delay the process of learning. The whole concept is to make sure you are given tiny crumbs of information each week, so that you don’t make any real progress. Why? Because it’s all about the money! They want your money to come in consistently week after week, month after month, year after year! YES, you're being DUPED!

 

Sight reading music vs. developing your muiscal ear.
If your guitar teacher is forcing you to sight read music RUN FOR THE HILLS AND DON’T LOOK BACK! 95% of the greatest guitar players in the world can’t read a single note of music. Learning how to play “Mary Had A LittleLamb” and “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” is NOT the way to learn. If you really want to learn how to sight read music, buy a book and teach yourself. Why spend $20 - $30 per 1/2 hour on something you can teach yourself. Sight reading music doesn’t make you a better guitar player. Sight reading is really an eye-to-hand coordination thing which doesn’t help you develop your musical ear. It's better to learn and understand MUSIC THEORY first then to sight read. You can always learn how to sight read music, just do it on the back end, not up front.

Examples:

• Find a piano player who is good at sight reading. Have them play off a sheet of music, then take the sheet muasic away. Often that person can’t play the piano. Why? Because they never developed their musical ear. They always depended on the sheet music.

• When a child is born, you don’t give that child a dictionary and have them learn by reading every word. The child learns by sound first and starts developing language by listening to human voices.

• When Eric was learning the guitar back in the early 70s, he was putting vinyl records on his record player and forced himself to learn all his favorite songs by ear. Eric had no choice in the matter because back then they didn't have the INTERNET or YOUTUBE, etc. Eric couldn't pull off TABS from the internet and play his favorite songs in the same day, he had to do everything by ear. That was the best training that Eric ever got and that's why he has such a GREAT musical ear to this day.

Teaching is an ART FORM.
Just because you can play the guitar doesn’t mean that you’re a qualified guitar teacher. You can have a PhD, but that doesn’t make you a good teacher. Having knowledge is one thing, but to convey that knowledge in a way that’s easy to understand is the key to being a good teacher.

The loyalty factor.
Sometimes a student won’t leave his current teacher to go somewhere else that offers a better guitar program. Many students develop a rapport with their teacher, and often their lessons wind up being more like therapy sessions rather than real guitar lessons. Eric has had hundreds upon hundreds of students that have left places like that and wind up learning more in their first 4 one hour lessons with Eric than in the entire year where they were.

The convience factor.
Most people will find a place to take lessons that is near their home. The majority of people who take guitar lessons are generally only 5-10 minutes away from the place that they go. A lot of people don’t want to travel too far to take guitar lessons even though they would learn 100 times faster with Eric and save thousands of dollars in lesson fees!


The pride factor.
A lot of people don’t want to admit that they are wrong or made a mistake when it comes to choosing the right guitar instruction service. Here’s a true story that will shock you: Eric met someone who had a sister who had been taking guitar lessons at a local music store for over 5 years. Eric offered lessons to this person at a discount price and even offered a money back guarantee that he could teach more to this person in 4 one-hour lessons than in the entire 5 years she had been taking lessons. This person never responded back to Eric’s offer. Eric then made a second offer to this person and said he would just give her 4 free guitar lessons to prove a point. Still no response. The moral of this story? The mother who was paying for her daughter’s guitar lessons did not want to take the free lessons because she would have realized that she had wasted thousands of dollars in guitar lesson fees and had been duped.


It's not your fault, you just don't know any better.
Most people simply put up with what they have because they DO NOT know any better and they have nothing to compare their current guitar instruction serivce with so they settle for what they have. People soon realize that most places that teach guitar pretty much follow the same method of operation and will stay where they're at because they simply have nowhere else to go. If they do go somewhere else for guitar lessons they already know that they're going to get the same exact treatment so it's all one BIG DEAD END folks.


Here are some FUN experiments that you can do.
• Call up any place that teaches guitar and ask them how long it will take for your son or daughter or even yourself to get really really good on the guitar. The response that you will typically get it is, 3 to 5 years! THIS IS A RED FLAG!

• Ask them how many years has the student attending lessons the longest been there.
The response that you will typically get it is, 3-5 years or longer! THIS IS A RED FLAG!

• Ask them if any of their guitar teachers are WORLD RENOWNED. The response that you will typically get it is, NOPE!


• Ask them if they have a $20,000 music library that students have free access to. The response that you will typically get it is, we don't have a $20,000.00 music library.


• Once you have taken 4-6 lessons from Eric Mantel, find someone you know who has been taking lessons for 12-18 months at a local music store or music school, etc. Show them all the material that you’ve learned from Eric and they will be in shock! Videotape their reaction on your smart phone and play it back for others to see.

Learning the guitar takes both desire and commitment; it also takes a skilled and experienced teacher. Such a teacher is Eric Mantel. Do Eric's teaching methods offer advantages over other teaching services?  Yes!  1 Hour Lessons  Give You Optimal Value.  1/2 hour lessons give you minimal value. If they were effective, why doesn't our educational system use them in our Elementary, Middle and High Schools, or our Junior Colleges and Colleges?  Based on 1 hour classes, Guitar Instruction with  Eric Mantel gives you more than anywhere else. Shop and compare.

CHOICE #1: Eric Mantel / 1 Hour Lessons Give You Optimal Value

You can go to Eric Mantel for full-hour, challenging lessons for less money! Eric's been teaching professionally since 1979 — over 30 years! Your lessons will be one full hour, concentrated and accelerated, challenging! There’s always a 5 to 15 minute space before and after each lesson which means you will not be rushed in and out of the teaching studio. All teaching materials are prepared and organized ahead of time. You’ll be taught in a comfortable, spacious 20x30 ergonomically designed custom built professional teaching studio," where you can sit in very comfortable padded office chairs on wheels, where the lessons are video taped and tailored to your needs. Students have access to thousands of transcripts to songs and a music library filled with thousands of dollars of books and videos that you will have FREE access to...the list goes on and on! You will see major improvements in your playing after just one month — providing you are practicing adequately!

Eric's easy written materials, makes learning alot easier and more clear

(Click on thumbnails to enlarge)

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