That's what she said: Guitar instructor needs patience with me
- Dawn Dumont | April 21, 2014
I've been taking guitar lessons. I sat down one day and realized that my hobbies are working out, watching Netflix and avoiding going to dinner with my friends (my logic: why would I spend money on outside food when I have food at home?! Also, to my knowledge, no restaurant knows how to make popcorn with Pam spray and chocolate chips sprinkled in, properly.) So to expand myself like a human accordion, I decided to venture into the world of music.
I'm not a complete newbie to the guitar. When I was a kid living on the rez, my Uncle Frank tried to teach me and my cousins how to play. It did not go well. Instead of taking advantage of the fact that we had access to free instruments and a teacher, we took the guitars and jumped around on the living room furniture doing extended air band performances. To us, being a fake Axl Rose was even better than being a real one. (We were not bright children.)
Uncle Frank had learned to play the guitar and the fiddle from my Grandpa Bill. They were naturally talented but they were also good cuz they had lots of opportunities to practise. Back in the olden days, when there was no TV or Facebook, people entertained themselves by "going visiting." The furniture would be pushed to the edges of the room and people would play their instruments while others would square dance and jig. (For the uninitiated, a jig basically looks like an upright seizure.) Even though they sound lame, these events were very enjoyable, despite the fact that nobody could post a pic and status on Facebook saying, "wow having so much fun atm!"
When my family was in between homes, sometimes we'd stay at Uncle Frank's and I would fall asleep to the sound of Frank playing the guitar. I don't think there's a more peaceful sound in the world. (Except maybe a harp. But you don't see a lot of those on the rez, possibly cuz harp music is too hard to jig to.)
Last year I tried to teach myself to play guitar by watching How-To videos on YouTube. This worked for a few minutes until I discovered that YouTube also has videos on how to apply make up to look like Angelina Jolie. It's pretty simple you just keep applying make-up to your eyes until you can't see your face anymore.
So realizing that the independent route wasn't working for me, I bought me a guitar teacher. (Technically, I'm only renting him.)
I told my teacher that I had never played the guitar before, although he probably surmised that, when I spent five minutes trying to get the guitar out of the guitar case.
We started with tuning the guitar which was no exaggeration one of the most magical moments in my life. We used this electronic chromatic tuner thingie which is like a level but for musical notes.
He: So you see when it goes to the middle, that's when the note is a G.
Me: Cool. Hey wait, my voice is a G.
He: Yes it is.
Me: What's my cough? Cough. It's a D!
He: We don't need to know that.
Me: What if I whistle? That's an F-sharp!
He: You can stop now.
Me: What if I burp?
He: I'm going to put this away.
My instructor is patient and always attempts to answer my questions like: "can a guitar play the same songs as a piano? What about a jug? Can you play classical music on a guitar? What about on a jug? Also, how come the strings can't be made of something softer like velvet because my fingers really hurt?!"
I haven't stumped him yet, even when I asked him, "What is music anyway?"
We are working on the song, "Blowing in the Wind." My dream is to turn Bob Dylan's poetic masterpiece into a parody song about farts. With this goal in mind, I've been practising daily. Because one thing I've learned in life is that hard work always trumps natural talent. I'm starting to see improvements: like now I don't repeat "ow, ow, ow" in a continuous loop every time I attempt a cord.
The guitar will be challenging because I suspect I am tone deaf. Sometimes my teacher will show me different ways to play a song and then say, "See, now, didn't that sound better?"
And I'll simply nod because it would be harder to explain that I can't hear the difference at all. And proclaiming: "It sounds like a guitar! It always sounds like a guitar!" sounds a bit asshole-ish. But I have figured out how to get around my tone deafness I stole my teacher's chromatic tuner.