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Not quite note for note
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It's exasperating when a 17-year-old aspiring to strum a guitar refuses to cut her nails.
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I ACTUALLY took up teaching the guitar quite reluctantly. First of all, being a self-taught guitarist, picking up tips and bits of advice from fellow guitarists, I could never see myself earning a fee from showing somebody how to make music. Second, I never thought I had the patience for it.
Things changed in 2001. I responded to an ad from an executive who was looking for someone to streamline his basic playing ability. Gradually, more and more people literally pestered me to teach them or their children. I gave in, and by the year-end, had a dozen students, age ranging from six to 50. I wrote my own notes and devised a course in which a student could step out of line any time, if he felt that was as far as he wanted to go. Some stepped off just after strumming three chords, some stayed at the party guitarist level, while others have gone into the slightly advanced stage.
The whole experience has been a complete learning process for me. When I teach an eight-year-old, I realise music lessons today are a far cry from what they were 20 years ago. You simply did what the teacher told you to do; none dared question anything. In this day and age, I face questions such as: "It's boring... I'm not playing it!" Then there was a 17-year-old who simply refused to cut her nails. It was a repeat performance every week, and the hapless parent would inquire: "How come she only manages a muffled sound?" I would simply point to her nails and a not-so-pleasant mother to daughter tête-à-tête ensued.
Many people, especially yuppies, opine that playing an instrument is a piece of cake. Watching this category of students being humbled by a steel string sinking into their fingertips gave me an evil sense of satisfaction — now they know what it is all about! And there's the disease that plagues most students — they hardly practice. Many a time, classes have turned out mere practice sessions, doing recaps of what happened one or two weeks earlier. I remember the words of my chemistry teacher, the Late Dr. David Chatterjie: "Teaching is not a profession, it is a vocation."
Satisfaction from teaching was something I had never felt, until a group of my students put up a concert of sorts at their workplace for the annual day. It made me feel proud, I made them use their capabilities in making music. That set another ball rolling as more probables turned up to try their hand at picking strings.
Ninety per cent of students, I have realised, already have the talent and the fine sense of hearing. All they need is to get it all in a proper order. Scores of instruction books have the basics as well as advanced material in them. The trick lies in learning to use what, where, and how. I have to help them vivify the latent elements already there, show them the way to do it right. And this is a satisfying process indeed, and the learning process never ends.
DOMINIC D'CRUZ
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