Teaching Outside the Box

I often experience a bit of déjà vu when teaching beginning guitar students, because they usually share similar problems. The lessons can blur as I teach one student after another, but there are some lessons that stand out.

Today, I had a delightful lesson with an 8 year old student named Ella. I teach at her home, usually with her mom in the background observing the lesson and her sister, Lane, doing homework. Ella is a fun student. She loves playing the guitar, and she has a lot of personality. She is hilarious, actually. We're at a point in her lesson books where Ella is stuck. We can't go forward in the books, but I don't want to keep reassigning the same pages, because she will get frustrated.

Rather than doggedly trudge through the books, I've veered away a bit. We're still working in her lesson books to some extent, but I've started writing material for Ella to reinforce what she has already learned. For example, last week, I surprised Ella by writing a song for her called Elegy for Ella.

Today's lesson was so fun! We started off by playing a song in one of her lesson books. She had problems in a couple spots. Then I noticed that one of the difficult spots had the same notes that you often hear cheerleaders shouting at games. "Let's go warriors, let's go!"  After I pointed this out to her, she played those two measures more smoothly. Then Ella noticed that the last two measures were the same notes as We Will Rock You. Perfect! We changed a dry lesson song into an interesting song that had two school cheers. I reassigned the song, but wrote in the words to the two school cheers above the usic, and the song suddenly has new life and meaning to Ella.

Ella did a fine job on Elegy for Ella. We took turns playing the melody and chords for each other. It's a pretty long song for her (a whopping 16 measures!), so we're continuing to work on it. Since it's "her" song, Ella doesn't seem to mind working on it some more.

Last week, I wrote out a "mystery song" for Ella. She was supposed to learn it and figure out what it was. She solved the mystery. (It was Jingle Bells.) She asked for a Halloween song. There aren't a whole lot of Halloween carols, so I wracked my brains and finally came up with Have You Seen the Ghost of John. I wrote out the first four measures of that, and now Ella has a Halloween song to practice.

It was wonderful to see the spark come back in Ella's eyes as we modified her lesson material to suit her needs, and I think we're sparking some creativity, too. I sent a PDF of music manuscript paper to her mom to print out, suggesting that Ella might try writing a song. Instead of notes, Ella came up with lyrics. Next week, I'll help her write some notes and chords to go with her lyrics. This will be a fun long-term project.

As if the lesson wasn't fun enough, I had a delightful time with the family afterwards. Her older sister came in and showed me an instrument that she built for a class project. It was two boards held together at a 90 degree angle. Seven strings of various lengths were attached, and you could pluck them to produce different notes.

And as if THAT wasn't fun enough, while Ella was having her lesson, Lane was busy in the kitchen making a treat for everyone. She had squeezed out some clementines, added a little water, and made little glasses of clementine juice for everyone. She had set out paper plates and written our names on the plates so we'd know which one was ours. Added to each plate was a little piece of clementine with a toothpick stuck in it. It was so cute!

And I get paid for this!

Relevant Music Education

Today I spoke with a young guitar student after her lesson. She's been doing very well in her lessons, and I felt it was time she found a group to play with. It's one thing to learn your lesson material, but it's a whole new ball game when you start learning to play with others. I asked if there was a group at school or church that she could play in. She said something about her school that was disappointing. There was one period in school that was for music. The band kids would go to band. The orchestra kids would go to orchestra. The "other" kids went to a music appreciation class. If her music appreciation class was anything like those I attended as a youngster, it probably didn't go a long way toward developing an appreciation of music. Ironically, every one of the "non-musical" students in that class played an instrument…usually piano, but there were some guitarists, drummers, and bass players. While the band and orchestra students went to play in their groups, the other musicians who didn't play school sanctioned instruments languished in a music appreciation class when they could have been playing in a band of their own.

How relevant is formal music education? (And I'm writing mainly about instrumental music here.) I'm too lazy to look up statistics, but I'm guessing music education in middle school and high school is not that different from it was when I was a student. While there are a few schools that offer an outlet for, say, young guitar players, I'm betting that the vast majority of them focus almost entirely on classical music and marching band.

There's nothing wrong with a formal music education. Although I'm mainly a jazz guitarist now, I came up as a classical trombonist. I'm very much a product of a classic, classical music education, and I have a degree in music education from the University of Illinois. I don't play trombone anymore, but as a result of my education, I'm a strong sight-reader (rare in a guitarist), I can sing most anything on sight, I can arrange my own music (and write it down), I can read a score, I can lead an efficient rehearsal, and I can conduct a band, choir, or orchestra.

All that being said, I feel there's something missing. I stumbled into jazz guitar on my own just a few years ago. I had taken a few stabs at learning guitar earlier in life, but it never took. Perhaps if there had been a guitar class at my school, I would have started getting into guitar in my teens instead of my late 30s.

Like other institutions, the world of music education changes slowly in the public schools. Schools should continue to promote classical music through band and orchestra programs. Classical music is wonderful and worth pursuing, but it's just one style of many. I hope that in the future, we'll see more programs that promote the performance of jazz, blues, rock, reggae, folk, bluegrass, country, Celtic, Indian, African, and the list goes on. While it's important to study the music of the past, I hope more schools will stay relevant by teaching the music of today. In other words, I wish there was a program that gave my young guitar player an opportunity to play at school.