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A Journey of a Hundred Miles . . .January 24, 2006 Guitar lesson last night -- the first! I arrived in the nick of time, having underestimated how long it would take to get to the teacher's house from where I'm horse-sitting, or more specifically how long it takes to get to the main road from the farm, along a very minor road, two-thirds of which is well-rutted and puddly dirt and the other third of which is single lane and paved. Then I pulled a Chilmark, so called because generally I only do it in Chilmark: miss a turn because it's either unmarked or you can't see the marker in the dark, then you make a five-point U-turn in a tight place and if you're lucky you don't break your tail-light cover on an invisible stone wall or get stuck in mud halfway up your hubcaps. The teacher lives in West Tisbury, and off an excellent, paved minor road, but still I missed the designated turn. Nerves, probably. Fortunately I pulled a U-ie and didn't break or sink into anything. We are a class of seven: so many people signed up that Steve, the teacher, split the course into a Monday group and a Tuesday group. First revelation: open tuning. After barely managing to contort my fingers into a G chord in standard (EBGDAE) tuning, I am overjoyed to be able to play a G chord with no left hand at all, because open tuning is a G chord. The C chord was a lot easier too, but I can see that fingering is going to be my big challenge in the beginner phase. "You've got a pad problem," said Steve, meaning that the pads of my fingers were pressing the strings, rather than the fingertips. I'm on it, Boss! Have already discovered that pressing with anything but the tips tends to interfere with adjacent strings, whereupon they don't sing clearly when plucked -- imagine the sound you get from tapping a bell while holding its clapper. My fingers are on the short side of average, and like those of most horsegirls I know they aren't exactly straight: the legacy of getting jammed in bolts, mashed against walls, and occasionally caught between horses' teeth. We learned a common folk finger-pick pattern and one uncomplicated flat-pick pattern. We learned the C and D chords. Steve emphasized the importance of keeping a steady beat by tapping a foot and/or counting out loud: go as slow as you need to, he said, but keep it steady; speed comes later. Even at slow speed, changing chords and strumming at the same time sometimes felt like walking, chewing gum, patting your tummy, and doing brain surgery at the same time, and when we picked up the tempo -- wipe out! Steve asked us to commit an hour a day to practice; that's what it takes to train your muscles, develop callouses on your fingertips (the tips of my left fingers are tingling while I type), and make the basic fingerings and picking patterns automatic. Doesn't matter if it's one hour in a block, or two 30-minute sessions, or four 15-minute sessions, or some other combination; just get your hour in. So far, so good: already it's getting easier to hold my left fingers on the strings (which is to say it's a little less like forcing myself to hold my finger on a hot burner). I'm also looking to see what I can learn about teaching, that mysterious art that I wish I could practice more. Two things about class #1 that I liked a lot: (1) Steve had us all sing "If I Had a Hammer" at the beginning, while he played. By the end of the course, he said, we would be able to play and sing it ourselves, though maybe not at the tempo we sang at last night. (2) He had us buddy up with someone else in the class, so we can check in with each other, support and encourage each other: how's practice going, etc. Practice may not make perfect, but it does make changes: short fingers learn to act like long ones and new skills become thinkable: Hey, a couple of months down the road I may be able to play some songs on this thing! Listening to CDs and going to concerts doesn't do this. Watching other people do it -- it just ain't the same.
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