An academic year in Adult Education is approximately thirty-six weeks in duration. There is enough material within each grade to cover one academic year. Therefore I would not expect a student to complete a grade in less than a year. Whether you are working on your own or have chosen to take a course of lessons with a teacher you will be looking at a number of different topics within in each lesson. These are likely to include: your chosen pieces, scales and arpeggios, chords and other areas of technical development. A common problem I have found among most students is that they want to run before they can walk. Learning the guitar is like training to be an athlete. Like climbing a ladder or walking up a mountain you have to take it step-by-step and allow a certain amount of time in order to complete each stage of your development towards your goal.
The right hand is responsible for almost everything on the classical guitar: volume , tone colour and clarity, bringing out melodies in a two or more part texture and producing contrasts in the way the music is played. As both hands are of equal importance they are best dealt with separately. However, with a good right hand technique it is quite possible to convince listeners that they are hearing at least two people playing.
There are two main methods of plucking the strings: rest stroke (apoyando) and free stroke (tirando). Once again these are named according to their Spanish equivalents.
Rest stroke is particularly useful in developing the right hand. It helps to produce a strong clear sound, develops strength and control in the fingers and is vital for extracting melodies from an accompaniment. When playing rest stroke, after a finger has plucked a string it should come to rest on the next string.
Place the thumb on the sixth string and pluck downwards using a circular anti-clockwise movement. In this case the thumb moves forward, after playing the note, to a position slightly above the strings. Note in each case, the thumb remains straight.
Free Stroke offers a contrast in tone colour and necessary for playing arpeggios or passages where rest stroke would dampen strings that must remain sounding.
Playing the guitar involves a number of different skills and therefore in order to play a piece of music we have to tackle each of the topics afore-mentioned individually giving each point due consideration in turn. You might hear teachers say that the right hand is the more important than the left hand; that the latter just frets the notes. This is an exaggeration and a good left-hand technique should be adopted from the outset.