> not overwhelming folks with too much theory out of the gate.
Thing is, it's not even "too much theory". It really is just a simple tone-semitone pattern and a few bare facts about how the usual guitar tuning works, that you'd know anyway if you've ever had to tune your guitar by hand. That's all it takes to make the guitar explainable from first principles. Then sure, you can practice the "patterns" all you want for convenience's sake, but you don't have to commit anything to memory that you could not figure out again from scratch if needed.
I would agree with you. I feel like watching videos where someone goes "hey, so here's this pattern that completely unlocks the neck for you, don't be stuck in a box anymore!" and all they're showing you is where the various notes in a key are along the neck (now I know that, but I wouldn't have known that before...) and it's WAY more confusing than if you just learn how the pentatonic scale works and how to find the notes in a key etc. And the funny thing is, the only reason I was stuck in that box in the first place is because of silly rote memorization without understanding why you play the various notes in a scale etc., it just feels like this thing that kind of compounds when you just learn patterns vs. just learning the underlying principles.
But again, I'm completely amateur at this stuff still, and I don't have any experience teaching other folks an instrument, so it's hard for me to say with any certainty that we should be teaching it one way or another I guess.
Thing is, it's not even "too much theory". It really is just a simple tone-semitone pattern and a few bare facts about how the usual guitar tuning works, that you'd know anyway if you've ever had to tune your guitar by hand. That's all it takes to make the guitar explainable from first principles. Then sure, you can practice the "patterns" all you want for convenience's sake, but you don't have to commit anything to memory that you could not figure out again from scratch if needed.