Seeking Magic

Sometimes you’ve just got to smile. I love working with my students (usually), but I get the feeling that occasionally they are just not into it. I get it. I play and teach guitar for a living and sometimes I’m just not into it either. But when they are into it and really interested it becomes a real treat to spend time with them.

I was thinking of a couple of different students recently who were not a lot of fun early on. Oh, the first few weeks were fun but then the honeymoon was over and the reality set in. There was no magic wand and I didn’t possess any supernatural powers to make them awesome overnight. No secret potions or shaking of bones at midnight. Nope this was going to take work. A lot of it spread over weeks, months, and years. Reality can be such a bummer at times.

But that was then and this is now. The students I was thinking of are wonderful……now. They’re involved with the process and proud of their achievements (as they should be). They eventually did the work and I bit my tongue more than once and tried to be as patient as I could as they pushed back, or worse, ignored my directions. It was not an easy time for either of us. But we toughed it out and are now beginning to enjoy the process more than ever.

One of the things as I ask of them during the lesson is to play some old favorites. Their favorites, not mine. Now they get to control part of the lesson. For me it’s instructive to know what they like and frankly I’m often pleasantly surprised by their choices. The purpose of the exercise is to correct any mistakes that may have wormed their way into the music and also to use their choices as a way to teach them how to be more artistic. Once a student can comfortably play the notes of a song, then we can get into the interpretation. That’s where the magic is. That’s the moment when someone who can play the notes on the guitar becomes a musician. Or even (gasp) an artist.

One student reworked an old favorite a few weeks ago and played it for me during a recent lesson. It was technically correct, of course, but it was also just plain beautiful to listen to. He even found a couple of moments in the song that I hadn’t seen and played it in a way that was quite different than me. When I pointed that out he was, at first, apologetic. As if he had done something wrong. When I told him that, quite the opposite, he had done something wonderful he just beamed with pride.

One of my music teacher heroes is the late Nadia Boulanger. A Parisienne who dominated advanced music education in the early and mid twentieth century. Her former students are a list of some of the most successful composers of that era. The interesting thing is that each one sounds completely different and original. You would have no sense that they all studied with the same teacher. That has always been my goal too.

When I hear my students play in an honest and non-imitative way it makes me happy. Their goals may have changed with maturity and experience, but are fundamentally the same. To have fun. To play expressively without worrying about doing it the same way as everyone else. And thinking about these students doing that makes me smile.