The School of Feedback Guitar Blog

As if it weren't already obvious, I like to think about guitar as well as teaching it. It's a little bit to do with the stuff like money or getting clients, and much to do with the actual relationship between teacher and student. The latter, for some reason, fascinates me.

I believe that any subject can be ultimately broken down into small manageable chunks, which I like to think of as "quick fixes." One thing however that quick fixes cannot change is helping a student play guitar who doesn't want to do it. To paraphrase a potent analogy, it's like putting ice cream on top of poop. There's no quick fix for someone who doesn't want to play.

I think that there are just thousands of fantastic ways to show people just about anything on guitar, if they want to do it. Teachers can unintentionally hurt a student's desire to play by asking for too much. Sometimes, teachers can sap the student's enthusiasm by asking for quantum leaps in development, overnight. Disgusing this by saying, "Well, you need to practice okay?" is just not cool. It creates a huge amount of stress for a student, one who might just be in it to have fun. It makes them not want to play guitar AND it makes them feel bad about it. If you are a guitar teacher, do you really want to do that to someone? If you were studying guitar again, would you want a teacher to do that to you? Is it fair?

So here it went:
 
I woke up and took a couple of charcoal tablets. Felt wretched and wanted to just die. I thought I had food poisoning. It went away later though.
 
I got to see a student play Weezer's "Only In Dreams." That is possibly my most favorite Weezer song ever. I also got to see an eight year old student play a full sized electric guitar, and play it even better than he could his own guitar. It was something.
 
I helped another guy ease much of the tension he had been carrying in his body as he played shred licks. He is so good that I'm not sure what I can show him sometimes. Did I mention that his band might be on Rock Band at some point? Yeah, um, who is teaching who?
 
Teaching went so well that I forgot to set a timer later on in the evening. I like to not look at the time because it allows the lesson to be better, flow better. I rely on that timer. But somehow, in the process of teaching one guy how to think of two melodies at the same time, I didn't notice my timer not going off. As a result? Foolish me. The next person was sitting outside waiting for 40 extra minutes. Jeesh. I felt like an idiot.
 
I hope I redeemed myself. We went over some Johnny Cash. His cover of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt" is just incredible, and the guy I was helping played it quite marvelously. He also figured out how to play two Galaxie 500 songs by ear. Cool.
 
The guy after that I probably freaked out a bit, mostly because I talked him into recording a song of his. It sounds cool for just the MXL 4000 as a mic in the middle of the room, and me trying to play country style leads in the spaces. I think I might want to practice doing that a bit more for next time, as well as buy an SM-57.
 
After teaching, tango at Esquina Tango on the east side. I was exhausted before, but now I am really exhausted. I buddied up with an old friend (with contentious old problems), and made a night out of it dancing troubles away. Dancing can be like that, therapeutic.
 
I'm incredibly tired now. I probably shouldn't post this, but oh well. It's a day in the life.

There is a wise saying: You have make some space if you want something new in your life. I think this is true with teaching guitar and getting more clients. If you want more clients, you gotta make some space for them.

Sometimes, in between lessons, I'll sit in my studio without any distractions. I'll lock the door. I'll try to say to myself "Man, I really could be teaching right now." Doing this can have some interesting effects. First, it definitely preps the mind for teaching, and helps to give a bad-ass lesson to someone I like teaching anyways. Second, it's never a bad thing to think that we could be more successful (maybe in my opinion). If it goes well and works, then hey who can argue with progress?

Sometimes the temptation of filling that time with Twitter, blogging, computers, or whatever is too intense, and yeah I'll just dive in. I still recognize that I need my mind to be ready and relaxed. Doing that means emptying the space to make room for something more important, like teaching, being with friends, playing music, and having money to eat food. Food is good for the stomach. I'd rather eat than not eat. Therefore Twitter, you will get second priority.

Making a space and refusing for it to be filled with anything other than what I want (clients for me. What do you want?) tends to re-enforce the idea that I am here to teach too. The less I think about teaching during the day can means the less I find a rhythm. With any luck, I stay far away from the computer, and I just teach. Empty the space of time-wasters, fill the space with students, mentally if not physically. Maybe it's just dumb common sense, but still worth a mention.

Maybe this is like shooting fish in a barrel. Guitar teachers, educators, and performers are really easy to pick on. We make so many mistakes because we tend not to try so hard. My biggest (but most fun) mistake was signing up for Twitter. It broadcasts all of my spelling errors. I have heard hundreds of horror stories from people who I've helped play guitar. I've heard people say stuff like, "I bought this book, but it totally sucks. It's boring." Did the people who wrote those books ever stop to think that the content or it's delivery is neither appropriate or fun? Like I said, targets. We do it to ourselves.
 
There is only one way to teach appropriately, and that is to experiment and get better at it. Our job is not to immediately foist a Beatles song including the solo on a student who is on their first lesson. Our job is to make appropriate but fun ways to eventually help the person play that Beatles song. If you don't try hard enough, then it is easy to become a horror story, and bad news travels fast.

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As a side note, the story above about the Beatles song, solo and all, is a true story. Guitar teachers make easy targets. My Twitter moniker is @feedbackguitar

It's not often that we hear about a guitarist who developed their musicality and technical ability in complete solitary confinement. It is really difficult for someone to do this. This means that they heard a song and learned to play it all on their own, without internet lessons (let alone private lessons), tabs, outside influence, or anything else. It's also my opinion that few are able to learn guitar or music without thinking about performance from day one. We play for ourselves, our friends, teachers, colleagues, and even people we get drunk with (if you drink and play guitar). Performing makes people nervous, too. You can't just ask the audience to not look at you! It's part of the deal. You play, the audience watches.

A microcosm of this is the guitar lesson. You play, your teacher watches. It's obvious that the teacher can overtly distort and harm a student's ability to handle an audience, even if the audience is just one person. This can be the case much of the time with classical music education. I have to restrain myself when talking about how classical music teachers approach pedagogy; I can rant for hours. My view is that classical music has been taught primarily by human beings who are trying too hard to perform like perfect musical robots. I feel that many ignore the humanity of their student's playing so that they can "measure up" to "all the others." Imagine learning under this oppressive atmosphere! It's not fun! I did it learning viola, and I despised my teacher for it!*

For this reason (among others), it takes time for brand new students to trust teachers, especially music teachers. The idea that the teacher is sort of the emissary for the audience makes the student probably extra nervous. So how do we, as teachers, have more compassion for the people we are helping? In my own teaching work, I have erred on the side of giving my complete attention and kind eyes to each student who I'm working with. I give my attention to them with my eyes primarily. Until recently, I never thought that this might not be good for everyone. It may not build trust or technique as fast as I would want it to. It might make some people more nervous.

I am going to experiment with not looking (staring?) at students as they play for the next couple of weeks, and see if there are any results. I have a feeling that there are certain people who will thrive with this situation, and there are others who would prefer the eye contact. We'll see.

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*If you study classical music with someone who is human and is a great person, then make a point to keep your relationship with that person very strong. I feel strongly that Nick Goluses at the Eastman School of Music is one of the few teachers out there that actively cares about his students, and helps them develop both their humanity as well as their musicianship.

A very good friend of mine and I were talking about my little obsession with teaching guitar. I wondered out loud whether it was a good idea to blog about how to approach teaching. It sometimes requires a lot of energy, which could be spent on making a something else (like online guitar lessons?). My friend brought up a good point:

"Nobody blogs about teaching guitar because they are all trying to be rock-stars"

So a huge puzzle piece fell into just the right spot. Perhaps the reason why few people really blog about teaching guitar (or for that matter actually look at the way they are teaching it) is because, well, they are just doing it to pass the time and get some extra dough on their way to rock-stardom. Although I am not giving up on the dream, it is important for me to take teaching guitar very seriously for the time being. It's far more satisfying to look at a task and see I did it right. That's just my own way.

The following is not a judgment. There are teachers out there who want to be rock-and-roll stars, and be at the top. They want to be in front of 10,000 screaming fans, and there is no other place for them. Therefore they look at teaching as just another step on the way there. You can learn from them, like how to not be nervous in front of others.  Also, there are teachers out there who want to teach and support their students, primarily. They want them to learn and they want to see them do well. Therefore they might look at a career in performing as something they are not interested in. You can learn from them too if you want to gather and survey the guitar and not worry about performing so much.

The point is that either teacher can help you learn, but it is good to choose the one who fits your needs and wants the best.

I chatted yesterday with another guitar teacher in Austin. We both have super-busy professional lives that we are thankful for, no doubt, but we also had one other thing in common: We don't have as much energy to write music since our focuses shifted to teaching and developing our "careers." We both felt that teaching was the easiest way to make a career in music start to happen. The mix between our professional lives and our creative lives has shifted as a result.

I've started to wonder about business and creativity. Do they really mix? Is this just another one of those "Artists are suppossed to suffer" kinds of things? I'm getting more and more disappointed in myself for not creating more music.

Its inspiring to read and follow the exploits of Hugh MacLeod, who has made a steady living off of his prints, the business he promotes, and now his book Ignore Everybody. He did all of this by refusing to act out what he describes as a drama queen moment. It's that moment a person just gives up their job in order to pursue their own work. I think his point is that the drama queen moment is not a well-founded attempt at preparing for a more creative, satisfying life. This doesn't mean I am not tempted to do it! But he started from nothing, and now he is doing great. Even better is that he did it all DiY style.

I really like Hugh MacLeod's book a lot. I sometimes wish there was a better boundary between my business and my creativity. This brings to mind the issue of creativity vs marketing, i.e. which one comes first. I think of how the major record labels develop crappy singers, aka the very best vanilla to promote to an already bored mainstream audience. It's a hope to strike gold once again. It is also putting marketing in front of creativity. The marketing (the dough, the moolah, the greenbacks, the SALES) is more important with this mindset. The product reflects this mindset.

No One Cares. The product is disposable.

The trouble with putting creativity first, like before the marketing, is that one has to really and truthfully follow what they are doing even if it takes them to the grave. Maybe this is why we like entrepreneurs and artists, people who never give up: They build totally from scratch. Most people are fond of using the Van-Gogh example. His creativity was off the charts, but no one cared about him or his work in his time period. The hard part when we mix business and creativity is how to keep them both alive once both are fully developed, or are still being developed. There is always the chance that a bad business decision could set me back a year or two. There is always the chance that I could dry up creatively to the point of never wanting to play guitar again. I hope neither happens.

I guess I just wonder what that balance is. If you know the answer, tell me.

There might be only one thing worse than doing something that you don't like, and that is doing something you don't like and not choosing to do freely.

In a very pivotal situation in my musical development, I realized that I had not consciously chosen to do what I was doing. In short, I did not actively choose to keep on going. This is a dangerous ledge because the moment something went wrong, I was out and wanted nothing to do with it. Example: I was playing guitar in a jazz combo in college. I hated the song we were playing ["Moment's Notice" by John Coltrane]. My solo was horrendous. It was so bad that as soon as I was done playing, no one clapped. After the combo finished the song, we all received light applause. This was in front of all of my colleagues. I simply made an ass of myself, and I didn't CHOOSE to do so.

The result? Two things: 1. I never listened to that song ever again. 2. I never wanted to play jazz again.

I bring this up because making a choice means that one accepts the problems they are likely to encounter. Sometimes, a person may encounter people who are less-than enthusiastic about their work. They may even encounter someone telling them it's a bad idea. However, this person is less likely to believe anyone else if they choose to do it no matter what, hell-or-high water. I did not choose to play that Coltrane song. I was just along for the ride and I am still embarrassed about it to this day.

The point? This: The hardest student to teach is the student who takes lessons and doesn't choose to either quit playing or put in the time. They are only along for the ride because I try to make lessons fun. As a teacher, my goal is to get everyone bitten by the guitar-bug. Guitar is extremely enjoyable once this happens! The person who has not yet been bitten by that bug is in a position whereby they didn't make a choice to stick it out and put in their five minutes a day, but are showing up every week none-the-less. It's frustrating, because I show them the same exact thing, every time they show up.

I am not saying that we are bad people if we don't have time for guitar everyday. Who does have that? What I am suggesting is that if a person reserved the five minutes a day, they will get to the point of being totally in love the guitar eventually. Then time will pass. It is impossible to get to this point in guitar if you didn't choose to be there. Please read Seth Godin's awesome book "The Dip" if this topic interests you.

We have trained ourselves to see through bad marketing easily. Sometimes I think that "best practice" has been relegated to hoodwinking the customer into buying the product first, and then finding out if it's any good. This is unfortunately the case for guitar lessons. After all, the person searching just has to take the leap of faith and see if the teacher is good for them or not.

I think one of the reasons why people can see through marketing so easily is because the product is empty of meaning in the first place. If the product or service isn't remarkable enough, so we might naturally ignore the the marketing and advertising completely. As Seth Godin so eloquently describes in his wonderful book "The Purple Cow," if a product is not remarkable, then how could it possibly do well?

This brings me to a weird spot in my pursuits. I will be launching an online guitar lesson app sometime in the next month or two. My questions have been nothing short of "How do I make this so remarkable that anyone who tries it out tells others about it because it is so cool?" Friends and colleagues have been supportive, but also cautious with their words. I know I have a long haul to get to that point, but am ready to put the hours in. Just as long as it's nothing short of the most kick ass online guitar lesson anyone can find, I will be happy.

This was quite a babbling blog entry. Thanks for reading.