Playing the guitar is a beautiful thing

Playing the guitar is beautiful but there are some people who teach it making it boring or worse, a misery; that does take some doing.

I was contacted by an ex pupil of mine that had just received his music degree, but in his words ‘Uni was good apart from my guitar lessons. The man who “taught me” showed me how much a teacher can really affect your enjoyment of music! So If I didn’t seem grateful at the time I was having lessons with you... thank you, because, it probably got me through my performance module.’

I have always been aware of the teachers who have the unique gift of making the guitar boring. I think a lot of reasons for this is the assumption that the guitar should be taught in the same way as a classical instrument. No offense if you are learning classical guitar, that is a different matter altogether, but not if you are learning a contemporary form of guitar playing.

I see this type of thinking a lot among teachers, that there is a correct way to do something. This may be the case if you’re learning a strict discipline for a particular instrument and style , but as soon as you get outside the confines and strictures of a way of thinking, there cannot be an ordained way of playing. Guitar was always an instrument that thrived on that lack of structure.

Remember that all of the great contemporary players had some form of idiosyncratic way of delivering music, from a Hendrix playing with his teeth approach,  to the Jeff Healey ‘play the guitar on your lap’ or a Keith Richards ‘playing the different tuning,’ to Eric Clapton ‘play so loud that your amp is about to blow up’ sort of thing. None of these follow the ‘correct way of playing guitar’ with the thumb at the back of the neck , and the hand correctly placed over the guitar strings.

So what is it that we need to do? I would suggest that a good teacher is an alchemist, one who finds which ingredients are available within the pupil and by mixing these with the ingredients that the teacher has, can create something transformational. There is really no way that you can know what the pupil is capable of, and at a best guess  it is something that is completely beyond what you believe . That has often been my experience; if I allow them to push my ideas beyond my comfort zone amazing things start to happen. This however requires bravery from the teacher.

Education sadly has become very little about opening the mind, but very much about social management and ticking boxes. Lessons become asking questions about tempo and about technicality, when in actual fact these things are taken in the stride of the pupil if they are excited about discovering how brilliant they are.

Because education and higher education in particular, is all about the dollar, it has become an economic machine that needs to be fed, creating much in its likeness. It is very different from opening the mind like a parachute, exploring the creative landscape from a distance, but still infused with the excitement of the jump.

Think about what makes music exciting for you? Ditch all the stuff that you found boring and go for that. Technical material that is required in order to make stuff exciting should be expressed in such a way that people are desperate to learn it!